Hi Hytaler,
Short version: roughly a gig per player, 4 GB as the floor, and never hand the JVM every byte the machine has. The long version is below, because the view-distance trap deserves its own section — it's the thing that wrecks otherwise fine servers.
Hypixel's own server manual puts the minimum at 4 GB and Java 25. That 4 GB covers maybe four players on a vanilla world. It's a floor, not a target — run right at it and the first time someone wanders into fresh terrain, you'll feel it.
Scale with players, roughly one gig each:
For a small community I'd just start at 8–12 GB and 3–4 cores and stop overthinking it. RAM is cheap compared to the hour you'll spend chasing lag that's really just the JVM starving.
Here's the part people get wrong. View distance doesn't cost memory linearly — it's an area, so it scales with the square. Double the view distance and you don't double the RAM, you roughly quadruple it, because you've quadrupled the number of chunks every player keeps loaded.
Hytale's default is 384 blocks. That's generous. If your server's gasping and you've got more than a handful of players, this is the first knob to turn, not the last. Drop it a notch and most players never notice the difference between 384 and 256.
You tell the JVM how much to use with
Set
The mistake I see most: 16 GB box,
Leave 2–4 GB for the system. On a 16 GB box that's
Every world and every group behaves differently — a building server and a combat server with the same player count can sit gigabytes apart. So watch it instead of guessing:
Run it under real load for an evening, see where memory settles, then size from that. You'll usually find you over-provisioned, which is the good kind of wrong.
Once you've got the numbers, the connectivity and firewall side is covered in the setup guide — and if players still can't get in, that's a different problem with its own checklist.
Short version: roughly a gig per player, 4 GB as the floor, and never hand the JVM every byte the machine has. The long version is below, because the view-distance trap deserves its own section — it's the thing that wrecks otherwise fine servers.
Table of Contents
- The floor
- A rough rule that holds up
- The view-distance trap
- Setting the heap
- Don't give it everything
- Measure, don't guess
1. The floor
Hypixel's own server manual puts the minimum at 4 GB and Java 25. That 4 GB covers maybe four players on a vanilla world. It's a floor, not a target — run right at it and the first time someone wanders into fresh terrain, you'll feel it.
2. A rough rule that holds up
Scale with players, roughly one gig each:
- 4 players → 4 GB
- 6 players → 6 GB
- 10 players → 8 GB
- 10+ with mods → 10–12 GB
For a small community I'd just start at 8–12 GB and 3–4 cores and stop overthinking it. RAM is cheap compared to the hour you'll spend chasing lag that's really just the JVM starving.
3. The view-distance trap
Here's the part people get wrong. View distance doesn't cost memory linearly — it's an area, so it scales with the square. Double the view distance and you don't double the RAM, you roughly quadruple it, because you've quadrupled the number of chunks every player keeps loaded.
Hytale's default is 384 blocks. That's generous. If your server's gasping and you've got more than a handful of players, this is the first knob to turn, not the last. Drop it a notch and most players never notice the difference between 384 and 256.
4. Setting the heap
You tell the JVM how much to use with
-Xms (start) and -Xmx (max). In the launch script or systemd unit:
Code:
java -Xms2G -Xmx8G -jar HytaleServer.jar --assets Assets.zipSet
-Xmx to what you actually want the server to have. Setting -Xms equal to -Xmx is fine and saves the JVM growing the heap mid-session.5. Don't give it everything
The mistake I see most: 16 GB box,
-Xmx16G. Don't. The OS, disk cache, your SSH session, and the JVM's own off-heap overhead all need room. Hand the server everything and you get swapping, which is slower than just having less RAM in the first place.Leave 2–4 GB for the system. On a 16 GB box that's
-Xmx12G, and you sleep better.6. Measure, don't guess
Every world and every group behaves differently — a building server and a combat server with the same player count can sit gigabytes apart. So watch it instead of guessing:
Code:
htop
# or just the server process
systemctl status hytaleRun it under real load for an evening, see where memory settles, then size from that. You'll usually find you over-provisioned, which is the good kind of wrong.
Once you've got the numbers, the connectivity and firewall side is covered in the setup guide — and if players still can't get in, that's a different problem with its own checklist.
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