Wither Boss lag resulting from accumulated dropped items/blocks

I'm playing on a Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge+. Not quite 2 years old. If it isn't playable on this, I imagine it probably isn't playable on most mobile devices.

This is fixed for me in the official 1.2 update. At least it is in the new creative world that I created expressly for the purpose of testing this. The clumping of like entities seems to be sufficient to keep the lag at a manageable level. There were still some lag jumps occasionally, but they didn't last long.

Is this still an issue in the latest version? If so, please add details about your device (eg phone/tablet model) and how badly it lagged.

Still affects 1.5.0.10
My device: LG K10

Confirmed to affect 1.5.3 on Windows 10.
I am playing on an Acer Aspire One AO722 that initially shipped with Windows 7 Home Premium but now runs Windows 10 Home, it has an x64-based AMD C-60 APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics 1.00 GHz, has 2GB of DDR3 RAM, and a 64-bit version of Windows. The FPS literally went down to 0 making me have to /kill @e to clear the lag out.

Is this fixed for everyone in beta 1.7.0.9? One of my friends have noticed the issue has disappeared in 1.7.0.9

Cleaning up old tickets: This ticket has not been updated recently (~1 year+) so is being closed as Cannot Reproduce. If you feel this is still a valid issue then please comment, or create a new ticket following the Issue Guidelines.

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This is a problem in MCPE. I am fighting the wither, and then the game lagged to about 4 FPS. 

Reopened.

This isn't really a bug, more of a lag issue.

I would like it if withers had 100% drop rate, but that would lag a lot. Is this possibly the reason that drop rate is not 100%?

Had this issue on Xbox One X.

Same issue on Bedrock Xbox one x. Lag occurs once wither drops to half health. Drop in frame rate likely caused by huge amount of tile drops from wither dash attacks/explosions. This made game unplayable. 

Had to change game to peaceful to remove wither in order to dissolve the lag (wither health bar stopped showing after player respawn and had to take the L to recover netherite gear which hadn't yet despawned after 3 attempts).

Same issue with Nintendo Switch. Game totally unplayable when try to fight the wither, days of gearirng and searching ancient debris lost because of this. 

it's the lag a mechanic of the wither? i don't think so

if the console can't handle the fight because of the behavior of the wither the figth will not be available in consoles.

You can't really play it on Nintendo Switch, the FPS drops a lot. It's frustrating
 

Also want to add that the wither fight is not possible on Nintendo Switch (playing local multiplayer).  Frame rate drops too low to play.

Don't battle the Wither until this is fixed, hopefully in the next hotfix.

It even crashed for me.

On a realm on Xbox one and the fight is impossible due to this lag.

Yeah I lost all my netherite gear because the lag was so bad. It was impossible to fight. I suggest that maybe any blocks that a Wither blows up should also get destroyed so you don't have thousands of items on the ground.

Same issue when he goes into second form it’s impossible to fight him because of the lag that is created. We had this issue on a Nintendo switch console and also on Xbox. 

I’ll add that I’ve tested on local, and on realm with the same issue. The frame rate is so bad that you can’t even switch gear or move. And the lag only occurs when you get into the area of the wither. It also only occurs during the withers second stage. 

Just encountered this today - burned through 9 totems just trying to run away from the lag affected area

its impossible to fight the wither bc of this lag but if it gets fixed that would ruin wither based farms such as obsidian farms an eye for an eye 

Same for me. The wither will remain there forever. Unbeaten. Thanks Mojang

Have found this as well on PS4. Have played Minecraft on and off for a few years I first killed the wither a few years ago (maybe that was 1.14?) and I didnt have this problem. Tried it twice today and both times he became unplayable in his blue, grounded, block destroying state due to lag from the blocks

A bit unorthodox solution, but since some people use the Wither boss for farming purposes, can we have a toggle switch that can make the wither drop all blocks or not drop anything at all? This way, you can turn the drop all blocks on when farming, and drop all blocks off when fighting.

This is just in consideration for people that make Wither-based farms. I, personally, just for the sake of fighting the wither with no lag, would prefer if no blocks dropped at all.

Just ran into the same issue playing split-screen multiplayer with my son and daughter on Xbox One X. The fight was going really well, but as soon as the second phase hit it became totally unplayable. I managed with multiple death runs to save my gear (all maximally enchanted netherite), but my son lost everything but his pickaxe and helmet. It was a real disappointment after all the preparation we put into it =/

I'm glad (also sad) to see that others are experiencing this, too. Xbox One S, local save (no realm), single-player. Spent weeks getting everything necessary for the wither battle, and now due to this lag issue making it literally impossible to strike with my sword, take off with a rocket/wings, or even just run away, I've lost THREE full sets of fully enchanted diamond armor, two fully loaded diamond swords, 16+ potions, two sets of wings of Elytra, four horses, diamond tools, and my sanity. (Y'all know how much experience and time it takes to get that much stuff...) The lag is so incredibly bad due to all these drops from the wither's path of destruction, I can't move, attack, eat, heal, fly, anything. Even just running through to grab my items and get out isn't possible, as my controller basically becomes non-responsive. SOS, this wither is alive in the wild just beyond the city's outskirts... THE PEOPLE OF MY CITY NEED ME haha

Same here. Frame rate in the withers second phase lagged so badly the game was frozen almost completely. Played two player with my 9yo son and was so heartbreaking seeing him summon the courage to join dad and help with the fight only to have the game made unplayable because mojang coded the mob this way. We lost everything and had to set the game to peaceful. The ramifications of going to peaceful are that we lost all of our unique and rare hostile mobs (Charged creeper, drowned with full gold armour, Skele Spider Jockey etc) we have caught and named and put in a hostile mob zoo. So much work lost, son is devastated. This kind of thing is enough to make people actually want to stop playing minecraft. He hasn't logged in since and now opts to play Mario every time now, lost my little minecraft buddy. Thanks Mojang.

this. playing on nintendo switch with a world I started three years ago. finally decided to do the wither. first half is fine, but when that last half starts it becomes completely unplayable. the lag is obscene. you can't even run in to get your gear, when you do the frame shows you're alive....a few moments of lag and no moving... then it updates and you're just dead. repeat. you dont even have to be near the wither. just in its area. you're just dead from the lag.

I've now made 7 different sets of gear, armor and weapons, enchanted and all, netherite and all, and I've lost them all. the moment you get even near where it's at, the FPS vanish. the game is simply unplayable now. and to make matters worse, this wither is running amok blowing everything to hell. the more it blows up, the more it lags. the more I can't stop it. the more my hard work is destroyed.

three years worth of seriously playing, down the drain.

The Wither boss fight is laggy in 1.17, and it's even more laggy in 1.18. This is mostly because of hundreds of item entities floating around.

I'm not saying that Mojang should nerf Bedrock Wither! This boss is often praised for being challenging and more interesting than the Java counterpart, and is unfortunately the only challenge left for enchanted netherite players. However, the devs need to make floating item entities less CPU-demanding. Perhaps an option to render floating items as simple 2D sprites instead of spinning 3D models? Perhaps item entities shouldn't check for so many things every tick?

In the future, perhaps bosses shouldn't be so destructive to the environment, while still being a huge challenge to overcome, as floating item entities can cause extreme lag.

Thank you so much for all the hard work, by the way. After 1.18, Minecraft can finally compete with mods, maybe even exceed them someday. Feel free to take inspiration from popular mods as they're often a culmination of what players want in the game. Bedrock doesn't have mods, so it'd be great if vanilla Minecraft can surpass mods someday!

In my opinion the blocks broken by Wither should not drop, this would solve most of the problem.

Some players use the Wither to help gather blocks, so I'm not sure that's the best solution. If blocks disappear, it will also delete difficult-to-renew blocks from worlds.

If possible, I think that the best solution is to make item entities less laggy, as this will also help reduce lag on other redstone farms as well. An option to render items as simple flat 2D sprites, instead of spinning 3D models, will help reduce lag. The item gather/clump mechanic can also have a larger radius. If possible, item entities should also not check for so many things every tick.

Affects 1.18.10.26

Work around: temporarily turn off tile drops in the game settings beforehand the wither fight

effective 1.18.12.01

Why not wither in bedrock like in java, it will greatly increase the efficiency of battling wither, basically and wither in bedrock will give FPS drop

This issue makes Wither battles almost impossible on the Nintendo switch. We have a realm for our family and I have had to go in on my laptop several times now and clean up because my kids switch lags so badly it becomes unplayable. The only workaround we have for our realm is to not fight Withers at all, which is a shame, and a serious issue for any game if its impossible to fight the ultimate boss because it is poorly implemented.

Perhaps there needs to be a mechanic where Wither detonations create clumps of dropped items that all share a single animation, and these clumps, when close together, will also merge - so instead of having ten dirt blocks all dropped and animated, they clump together and appear as a single dirt stack with a slightly altered look. Clumping and stacking like this could reduce CPU and memory load by an order of magnitude or more.

-> "Blocks hit by wither skulls are affected by Wither Magnetism and will clump together into stacks when dropped"

still affecting 1.19.81

Still an issue in 1.20