One of the biggest appeals of Minecraft is its ability to give players a chance to create their own world. And we’re not talking about a small-sized world either. Majority of players love to create large-sized worlds, most especially if they’re playing with a lot of crafters and builders.
But having large worlds in Minecraft can become problematic. In the game, there’s something referred to as CHUNKS.
How exactly do chunks affect the game and why is it important for Minecraft players to know how to fix problems caused by chunks?
We’ll answer those questions and more in this article…
What Are Minecraft Chunks?
Chunks are the materials that form the Minecraft world. Think of it as the game’s DNA, to be exact. The sky, water, and ground are made up of chunks. A chunk is composed of 16×16 blocks across a horizontal space that stretches down for 256 blocks, giving you about 65,536 blocks.
When you load into your world, chunks are also loaded to create the environment around you. To keep it simple, chunks are loaded based on your immediate vicinity or draw distance settings. Chunks are continually loaded into the game as you move about. When you create something, like a Minecraft kitchen or base, you’re creating using new chunks to form them.
Why Do Chunks Bug Out?
Chunks are rendered (loaded in) and de-rendered (loaded out). They don’t remain in your field of vision. Once a certain scenery is past your draw distance, those chunks are de-rendered. For example, if you move farther away from your house and you can no longer see it, that means the chunks that comprise the house and everything around it have been offloaded. This allows your gaming PC to run smoothly consistently.
The problem here is that these chunks eventually bug out because of how they render and de-render when the landscape changes. For example, building a Minecraft castle or something bigger will probably cause you to de-render chunks when you go about it.
But don’t worry, there’s an easy fix for this bug and that’s to refresh your chunks.
How Do You Refresh or Reload Chunks?
Back then, reloading chunks was problematic. You had to exit your world and relog back in. This would allow players to reload fresh chunks in their positions. Nowadays, at least for Minecraft (PC JAVA), there’s a shortcut to doing this.
To do this, you only need to press F3 and A together. Chunks will reload where you’re standing and it will cascade all throughout the world. A debug notice will also pop up in the message tab that says chunks have been reloaded.
Doing this reload will clear out any bugs and other anomalies without interrupting your gameplay. Note that this method will only work for the PC Java version. Mobile versions and console versions of the game will still need you to exit and relog the game to reload or refresh chunks.
What Are Other Useful F3 Commands?
F3+A is not the only useful command you can use in the Minecraft PC edition. Here’s a short list of other shortcuts.
Just press F3 and the corresponding letters below to do the following:
- S – reloads all web resources
- T – reload textures
- F – increase draw or render distance
- P – to toggle auto-pause when another window is open
- B – toggle mob hitbox
- N – to switch between Spectator and Creator mode
- I – copy block and entity data into the clipboard
- ESC – pause game without going through the menu
- H – toggle detailed item descriptions
How Do You Reset Chunks?
Resetting chunks is different from reloading chunks. Reloading is just re-rendering chunks into the game, like how you’d refresh your computer with the F5 button when desktop is open.
Resetting chunks will remove all the loaded chunks and any mods in the game.
But resetting might come at a price. Your Minecraft world will never be the same after resetting. You’ll lose your progress and everything you’ve built.
But why would you need to reset to begin with? Well, when a Minecraft world becomes too big, your computer performance becomes affected. In most cases, reloading chunks becomes a band aid solution. Another bandaid solution would be to delete an active chunk to relieve the lag.
Before you reset your world, you should have a back up of your Minecraft world. You can find your saved world under the “.minecraft” folder under the “%appdata” file.
Now why would you need to hit the reset button? Sometimes, when your world becomes too large, game performance may take a hit. In instances like this, a temporary solution would be to delete an active chunk or two from your world to alleviate the performance lag. Press “Windows button +R” and type in %appdata” and you’ll see your saved world, or worlds for that matter.
Thankfully, resetting chunks isn’t as easy as reloading them, so you don’t have to worry about resetting by accident. You need a third-party program like MCA Selector for the PC Java edition in order to reset the chunks. You’ll then open your world through the MCA Selector app to reset the chunks.
For Minecraft Bedrock Edition, you’ll need to use a different app called Amulet, which is a bit more complicated to do.
Is There a Way to See Chunk Borders?
For Minecraft Java Edition, you can press F3 and G together to see the chunk grid. The chunk grid is your point of reference that allows you to see how chunks are rendered and de-rendered as you move.
The wireframe or grid appears on the chunk you’re standing on, so this grid moves as you move. You’ll be able to see the boundary of the chunks within your field of view. For example, if you stand on the chunk where your doorway is currently located, you’ll see how far you’ll need to go before this specific chunk is de-rendered, and vice versa.
For Minecraft Bedrock edition, there’s no option to see chunk borders as there are no grid tools available. But thankfully, the recent update already ensured that the Minecraft players who own Bedrock will also own the Java version, and vice versa. Players will just switch from the Bedrock to the Java edition to use the border tool.
Wrapping Up
There’s a big difference between resetting and reloading chunks, and each of them have their own consequences. Reloading chunks will simply refresh the environment around you, while resetting deletes everything. You can’t bring back deleted chunks, or chunks were reset.
