[MCPE-21854] Wither Boss lag resulting from accumulated dropped items/blocks Created: 08/May/17  Updated: 07/Jan/25

Status: Reopened
Project: Minecraft (Bedrock codebase)
Component/s: None
Affects Version/s: 1.18.30.23 Preview, 1.18.30.22 Beta, 1.18.10.26 Beta, 1.18.10.24 Beta, 1.18.10.22 Beta, 1.18.10.21 Beta, 1.18.10.20 Beta, 1.18.0.27 Beta, 1.18.0.24 Beta, 1.18.0.23 Beta, 1.18.0.22 Beta, 1.18.0.21 Beta, 1.18.0.20 Beta, 1.17.40.23 Beta, 1.17.40.21 Beta, 1.17.40.20 Beta, 1.17.11 Hotfix, 1.17.0.58 Beta, 1.17.0.56 Beta, 1.16.230.52 Beta, 1.16.220.52 Beta, 1.16.210.60 Beta, 1.16.0.55 Beta, 1.14.20 Hotfix, 1.1.0.9, 1.1.0.55, 1.1.2.50, 1.1.3.1, 1.1.5.0, 1.5.3, 1.6.0.30 Beta, 1.7.0.9 Beta, 1.6.2.0, 1.6.1, 1.8.1, 1.9.0.5 Beta, 1.14.60 Hotfix, 1.16.1, 1.16.20, 1.16.40 Hotfix, 1.16.61 (PS4), 1.16.100, 1.16.201 Hotfix, 1.16.210, 1.16.221 Hotfix, 1.17.0, 1.17.30, 1.17.32, 1.17.33, 1.17.34, 1.17.40, 1.18.0.25 Beta, 1.17.41 Hotfix, 1.18.0, 1.18.1 Hotfix, 1.18.2 Hotfix, 1.18.12 Hotfix, 1.19.10, 1.19.60, 1.20.50.20 Preview, 1.20.32 Hotfix, 1.20.41 Hotfix, 1.20.80.22 Preview, 1.21.21 Hotfix, 1.21.22 Hotfix, 1.21.30, 1.21.51 Hotfix
Fix Version/s: None

Type: Bug
Reporter: Joel Abhishek
Resolution: Unresolved Votes: 107
Labels: entity, lag, wither

Attachments: File 2023012504411400-11B64E28AD7A49CA9EC8AC007BE858C6.mp4     JPEG File droppedItemsKill.jpg    
Issue Links:
Duplicate
is duplicated by MCPE-21806 Lagging Resolved
is duplicated by MCPE-22782 When wither boss takes damage, the bl... Resolved
is duplicated by MCPE-27452 Wither Boss makes massive lag by dest... Resolved
is duplicated by MCPE-63005 Wither Fight LAG Resolved
is duplicated by MCPE-67961 Lag due to Wither Fight Resolved
is duplicated by MCPE-79865 Wither boss makes EXTREME lag Resolved
is duplicated by MCPE-81293 Withers cause too much lag Resolved
is duplicated by MCPE-88902 Wither lag issues Resolved
is duplicated by MCPE-90953 Lag while battling Wither Resolved
is duplicated by MCPE-93421 Wither Resolved
is duplicated by MCPE-96880 Wither makes game unplayable Resolved
is duplicated by MCPE-96896 Wither lag Resolved
is duplicated by MCPE-98002 Second Wither phase lag Resolved
is duplicated by MCPE-102485 Very bad FPS after creating wither Resolved
is duplicated by MCPE-102517 my game looks like a slideshow Resolved
is duplicated by MCPE-108181 MC-NSwitch:Wither summoned makes veee... Resolved
is duplicated by MCPE-113608 I have pretty good internet and my Mi... Resolved
is duplicated by MCPE-122347 Wither Resolved
is duplicated by MCPE-122450 Unbeatable Wither - Lag Issue Resolved
is duplicated by MCPE-123494 Drop of fps when the wither is there Resolved
is duplicated by MCPE-132163 Hello, the wither generates a lot of ... Resolved
is duplicated by MCPE-132503 Wither boss is lagging in his second... Resolved
is duplicated by MCPE-153139 Wither lags the game while in battle. Resolved
is duplicated by MCPE-159497 Death/Equipment loss caused by lag fr... Resolved
is duplicated by MCPE-166840 2nd fase of the Wither battle causes ... Resolved
is duplicated by MCPE-176817 Wither lags world beyond playability ... Resolved
Relates
relates to MCPE-63100 Wither skulls never despawn, causing lag Open
Confirmation Status: Confirmed
Platform: Multiple
CHK:
ADO: 72148, 1210056

 Description   

When the wither boss uses its special attack when it rotates its body 90° and moves across the ground destroying a lot of blocks, the destroyed blocks drop as items on the ground, this didn't used to happen before and it causes a lot of lag, my device has 4 GB of ram and my frames drop to about 5-10. Sorry if this is a duplicate I couldn't find the original issue.



 Comments   
Comment by dncrews [ 29/Sep/24 ]

I’m just here to confirm it’s still an issue on 1.21.30 (Nintendo Switch)

Comment by Yuuya1202 [ 25/Nov/23 ]

The longer the battle with the wither goes on, the more the lag becomes.

Comment by DTCSkiLLz [ 15/Oct/23 ]

Alternately, I fight the wither in an ocean with frost walker. Only way I've been able to beat it

Comment by Kybere [ 14/Oct/23 ]

This issue NEEDS to be resolved. The Wither fight is not possible on Xbox One as the frames reduce to as low as 1-5fps. The Wither constantly destroys blocks, all dropping individually without stacking. 

Comment by Rafael Rojas [ 14/Jul/23 ]

In the 1.20 still exists, i spawn 4 withers, 2 at same time, 3 of them make a dash down to Y0, it make a hole and then dash in horizontal, up and down. A lot of blocks cause the game Lagging, i try to kill in Y65.

Comment by bleh [ 10/Jun/23 ]

Still an issue in 1.20

Comment by Hangekisobu [ 12/May/23 ]

still affecting 1.19.81

Comment by Bill Bigge [ 02/May/22 ]

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"

Comment by Godofnoob [ 05/Mar/22 ]

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

Comment by Godofnoob [ 04/Mar/22 ]

effective 1.18.12.01

Comment by Mr. K [ 08/Jan/22 ]

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

Comment by Natthan [ 05/Jan/22 ]

Affects 1.18.10.26

Comment by Molly Oliver [ 18/Oct/21 ]

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.

Comment by :v [ 17/Oct/21 ]

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

Comment by Molly Oliver [ 15/Oct/21 ]

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!

Comment by Alan McRea [ 26/May/21 ]

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.

Comment by GravelGrinder [ 24/Mar/21 ]

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.

Comment by Tyler A. James [ 15/Mar/21 ]

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

Comment by Justin Carstens [ 11/Feb/21 ]

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 =/

Comment by Lex de Jesus [ 12/Jan/21 ]

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.

Comment by Adam [ 06/Dec/20 ]

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

Comment by P [ 01/Dec/20 ]

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

Comment by christian gusman [ 30/Nov/20 ]

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 

Comment by Elizabeth [ 29/Nov/20 ]

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

Comment by Derrick Workman [ 14/Nov/20 ]

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. 

Comment by Derrick Workman [ 14/Nov/20 ]

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. 

Comment by ThatPixelPig [ 13/Nov/20 ]

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.

Comment by Chris DeJohn [ 03/Aug/20 ]

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

Comment by GameParrot [ 11/Jul/20 ]

It even crashed for me.

Comment by GameParrot [ 10/Jul/20 ]

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

Comment by Brady R [ 02/Jul/20 ]

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

Comment by Francisco Fuentes [ 29/Jun/20 ]

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

Comment by Fernando Campos [ 29/Jun/20 ]

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.

 

 

 

Comment by Mynthiieey [ 27/Jun/20 ]

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).

Comment by Ben [ 27/Jun/20 ]

Had this issue on Xbox One X.

Comment by DelightfulHam [ 30/May/20 ]

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%?

Comment by [Mod] OcelotOnesie [ 30/May/20 ]

Reopened.

Comment by William Gao [ 22/May/20 ]

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

Comment by [Mojang] Mega_Spud (Jay Wells) [ 22/Jan/20 ]

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.

Quick Links:
📓 Issue Guidelines – 💬 Mojang Support – 📧 Suggestions – 📖 Minecraft Wiki

Comment by Jonathan Hanzel [ 03/Oct/18 ]

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

Comment by Jonathan Hanzel [ 20/Aug/18 ]

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.

Comment by Lio [ 14/Jun/18 ]

Still affects 1.5.0.10
My device: LG K10

Comment by [Mojang] Mega_Spud (Jay Wells) [ 06/Jun/18 ]

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.

Comment by BD [ 26/Sep/17 ]

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.

Comment by BD [ 11/Sep/17 ]

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.

Comment by [MCPE Helper] Aspergerian [ 05/Sep/17 ]

This shouldn't be much of an issue in 1.2, as items/blocks dropped next to each other will group up, which can minimize the lag as much as possible.

However it may still lag if you're using an older device, there's not much that can be done there.

Comment by BD [ 05/Sep/17 ]

Yeah I just tried fighting the wither for the first time and the lag gets so bad I can't even turn. It is completely impossible to fight the wither like this. The game slowed down so far that there was literally several seconds between each hit of the wither effect. I'm surprised the game didn't actually crash. Can the number of drops be reduced somehow to make the game stay playable?

Edit: didn't mention that I am playing in 1.1.5 which should be added to the affected versions.

Comment by David Frost [ 11/Jun/17 ]

One of my friends went off in my world to spawn the wither and kill it himself while I was busy mining for diamonds. The lag got so bad in my game that I couldn't play any more and had to shut down. I restarted in peaceful mode, despawning the wither.

When I went to join him in the Nether to see what had happened and what had caused my game to slow nearly to a stop, there were blocks of netherrack everywhere, enough to fill my three-hopper furnace to capacity and then some. Not to mention stacks of gravel and soul sand.

We haven't tried spawning the wither since.

Comment by [Mojang] Mega_Spud (Jay Wells) [ 08/Jun/17 ]

I can confirm this issue on Windows 10 - The amount of dropped items is so great, that it's caused a massive amount of FPS drop. Testing in creative I used the /kill @e[type=item] command 3 or 4 times, but the lag would build up again very quickly as the wither broke and dropped blocks.

Comment by Matt Smith [ 29/May/17 ]

I had a similar experience. My wither fight wasn't going well, as he took off in the opposite direction instead of coming at me. I was able to engage him, but by the time he started doing his corkscrew bullet attack there were so many blocks on the ground that my game crashed. When it came back online, I made my way to the nearest chest to dump my stuff and try to pick up all the blocks on the ground but they mostly despawned and the wither was gone (no star).
I'm not sure what to do differently next time, but I've only managed to get 1 skull so far. I really need a beacon, so I might look for the magic bedrock formation?
My device is not as great (iPad Air) but it made the wither unplayable, which drastically decreases my satisfaction with the game. I wonder if it would be as bad if he didn't do the corkscrew attack? The explosions destroy over half the blocks so I certainly think it would be better.
edit: The magic bedrock formation was nerfed in PE per MCPE-21844, but I plan on attempting the fight above ground before giving myself a nether star in creative. The main contributor to entity-lag-crash is the corkscrew attack combined with the silk touch skin, but his AI is a problem too--how he drifts up and away from the player when underground.

Generated at Sat Jan 11 15:32:38 UTC 2025 using Jira 9.12.2#9120002-sha1:301bf498dd45d800842af0b84230f1bb58606c13.