How to Host a Pixelmon Server

What Is Pixelmon?

Pixelmon brings the Pokemon experience into Minecraft. Wild Pokemon spawn across biomes based on their habitat type, players catch them with craftable Pokeballs, battle other trainers, challenge gym leaders, and work toward completing the Pokedex. It is the most popular Pokemon mod for Minecraft and has been actively maintained for years through the Pixelmon Reforged and Pixelmon Generations forks.

Unlike kitchen-sink modpacks, Pixelmon is a single large mod (with a few optional additions). This makes server setup simpler in some ways, fewer mod conflicts, fewer dependency chains, but the mod itself is heavy. Pixelmon has thousands of custom models, textures, and animations that need to load, plus a complex spawn system that tracks biome types, times of day, weather conditions, and more.

Choosing Your Pixelmon Version

There are two main Pixelmon distributions:

• Pixelmon Reforged, the most widely used version. As of 2025/2026, it supports Minecraft 1.20.2 on Forge. Check the official Pixelmon site for the current recommended Minecraft and Forge versions.
• Pixelmon Generations, a community fork with some different Pokemon and features. Also Forge-based.

This guide focuses on Pixelmon Reforged since it has the largest community and best documentation. The server setup process is similar for both.

Server Requirements

Forge and Java

Pixelmon runs on Forge. The specific Forge version depends on which Minecraft version Pixelmon targets, always check the Pixelmon download page for the recommended Forge build. For Minecraft 1.20.2, you need Java 17. For any version 1.16.5 or below, Java 8 is required. Match your Java version to your Minecraft version, not to Pixelmon specifically.

RAM Allocation

Player Count	Minimum RAM	Recommended RAM
1–5 players	4 GB	6 GB
6–15 players	6 GB	8 GB
15–30 players	8 GB	10 GB
30+ players	10 GB	12 GB

Pixelmon is lighter on RAM than most kitchen-sink packs because it is essentially one mod. The memory usage scales primarily with player count and how many Pokemon are spawned in the world at any given time. Servers with aggressive spawn rates or large player counts will push toward the higher end. Use the RAM calculator for a more tailored estimate.

Installing Pixelmon on Your Server

Unlike modpacks, Pixelmon does not have a traditional "server pack" download. You set up a Forge server and then add the Pixelmon mod jar to it:

1. Download and install the correct Forge server version for your target Minecraft version.
2. Download the Pixelmon Reforged server-side jar from the official site.
3. Place the Pixelmon jar file in the mods/ folder of your Forge server.
4. Accept the EULA in eula.txt.
5. Start the server.

java -Xms4G -Xmx6G -jar forge-server.jar nogui

The first boot generates Pixelmon's config files in the config/pixelmon/ directory. These files are where you will spend most of your tuning time. For a refresher on Forge server basics, see our server startup guide.

Configuring Pixelmon

Spawn Rates

The most impactful setting for both gameplay and performance is the spawn rate. In the Pixelmon config, look for spawn-related settings:

• Pokemon spawn rate, controls how frequently Pokemon spawn near players. Higher values mean more Pokemon in the world, which increases entity count and memory usage. The default is balanced for singleplayer; on a server with 20+ players, reduce this by 15–25%.
• Max spawns per player, caps how many Pokemon can be spawned around each player. Lowering this from the default helps prevent entity overload on busy servers.

Shiny Rates

The default shiny rate in Pixelmon mirrors the mainline games: roughly 1 in 4,096 encounters. Many servers adjust this to make shinies more attainable. Common community rates are 1/2048 or 1/1024. Remember that changing this affects the server economy if you allow shiny trading, rarer shinies hold more value.

Legendary Spawn Timer

Legendary Pokemon spawn on a global timer. When the timer fires, a legendary has a chance to spawn somewhere in the world near a random player. The default timer interval, spawn chance, and announcement settings are all configurable. On larger servers, you may want to increase the spawn frequency slightly so that more players have a chance to encounter legendaries during their play sessions.

Boss Pokemon

Pixelmon includes boss Pokemon, larger, stronger versions of regular Pokemon that appear as overworld encounters. You can configure boss spawn rates independently. Some servers disable bosses entirely and use them as event rewards instead.

Adding Other Mods Alongside Pixelmon

Pixelmon plays well with many server-side utility mods. Common additions include:

• LuckPerms (via SpongeForge or standalone), for permissions and ranks.
• GriefPrevention or FTB Chunks, for land claiming, since players build gyms and bases.
• Economy plugins, many Pixelmon servers have a player economy for trading Pokemon.
• JourneyMap or Xaero's Map, quality-of-life mods for navigation (server-side optional, client-side recommended).

Avoid adding mods that heavily alter mob spawning or biome generation, as these can conflict with Pixelmon's internal spawn system and cause Pokemon to stop appearing in certain biomes.

Common Issues

Texture Pack Size

Pixelmon's resource pack is large, over 500 MB of textures, models, and sounds. Players connecting for the first time need to download this. If you are using a server resource pack, be aware that the vanilla resource pack system has size limits and can be slow. Most Pixelmon servers let the client mod handle textures rather than pushing a server resource pack.

Pokemon Not Spawning in Certain Biomes

Pixelmon maps Pokemon spawns to specific biome types. If you use a custom world generator that renames or redefines biomes, Pixelmon may not recognize them and nothing will spawn there. Stick to vanilla biome IDs or configure Pixelmon's external spawn JSON files to map custom biome names to spawn pools.

Entity Count Spikes

On large servers, the combined entity count of Pokemon, players, and vanilla mobs can grow quickly. Use /pokekill (built into Pixelmon) to despawn all wild Pokemon if you need an emergency cleanup. For ongoing management, tune the spawn settings mentioned above and consider reducing vanilla mob spawn limits in server.properties since players are generally more interested in Pokemon than zombies.

Performance Tuning

Set view-distance=10 in server.properties, Pixelmon benefits from a slightly higher view distance than heavy modpacks because players need to see Pokemon spawning at a distance. However, if you have 30+ players, drop it to 8.

Use simulation-distance=6 to keep distant entities from ticking unnecessarily. This is especially important for Pokemon AI, which runs pathfinding and behavior trees every tick for every loaded Pokemon.

Set up a world border of 5,000–8,000 blocks to prevent infinite world generation. Pre-generate inside the border using Chunky to eliminate chunk gen lag during normal play.

For JVM tuning, Pixelmon does well with standard Aikar flags since it runs on modern Forge/Java versions. Check our JVM flags guide for the recommended configuration. Monitor your server with Spark to identify whether tick lag comes from Pokemon AI, chunk loading, or something else entirely. Astroworld Hosting offers Pixelmon-ready plans with the right Forge and Java versions pre-configured. For the full performance picture, see the optimization guide.

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