ItemStacking

ItemStacking is a lightweight, high-performance optimization plugin for Minecraft Paper servers designed to eliminate item entity lag without compromising the vanilla gameplay feel.

On survival servers, activities like mining mountains, tree-chopping, or running large crop farms drop thousands of items on the ground. Minecraft's default 5-minute despawn window means these items hover in loaded chunks, creating severe client rendering lag and server tick delay.

ItemStacking solves this by merging matching items on the ground into a single entity—even beyond the vanilla stack limit of 64!

🚀 Key Features

• Infinite Ground Stacking: Stack blocks and items on the ground to 100, 1,000, or more.
• Custom Configurable Materials: You choose exactly which items should stack (e.g. Cobblestone, Stone, Dirt, Netherrack) so rare/custom items are left untouched.
• Multi-Layer Merging Engine:
  • Spawn-Time Merging: Items merge instantly when they drop.
  • Default Merge Interception: Works seamlessly with Bukkit's built-in stack merges.
  • Periodic Water & Flow Scan: A highly optimized background scan merges items that flow together in water streams.
• Smart Performance Optimization:
  • The actual item count is stored securely in the entity's metadata (PDC). The physical item size on the ground never exceeds 64, preventing client-side graphical bugs.
  • Uses Mojang's native spatial indexing (octree) for nearby searches instead of heavy loop calculations.
• Vanilla-Safe Pickup Logic:
  • When a player walks over a stacked item, it populates their inventory using standard, vanilla-safe stacks of 64.
  • If a player's inventory only has room for 30 items, they pick up exactly 30, and the remaining stack stays on the ground.
• Hopper & Hopper Minecart Support: Hoppers pull items from the stack one by one, preserving hopper sorting speeds and item pipelines.
• Visual Display Nameplates: Displays a sleek floating text tag above stacked items (e.g. Cobblestone (x350)). You can configure the tag to only show up when the stack size exceeds 64, keeping the world looking clean and vanilla for small drops.

🛠️ Commands & Permissions

• /itemstacking reload (Alias: /istack reload)
• Description: Reloads the plugin configuration on the fly.

• • Permission: itemstacking.admin (Default: Server OP)

⚙️ Configuration (config.yml)

The default configuration file is clean and fully documented:

# Configuration for ItemStacking plugin
# Enable or disable the plugin
enabled: true
# The radius in blocks to search for matching items to stack
merge-radius: 3.0
# The frequency in ticks to scan for items on the ground (20 ticks = 1 second)
# Set to 0 to disable periodic scanning and only stack on spawn.
scan-interval: 40
# Minimum count of items in a stack before the custom name tag is displayed.
# Set to 65 to only show the tag when the item exceeds the vanilla stack size (64).
# Set to -1 to never show the name tag.
min-count-for-name: 65
# Format for the custom name tag displayed above stacked items
# Use %material% for the item name, %count% for the quantity.
display-name-format: "&7%material% &e(x%count%)"
# List of materials that are allowed to stack beyond 64.
stackable-items:
  - COBBLESTONE
  - STONE
  - DIRT
  - GRASS_BLOCK
  - SAND
  - GRAVEL
  - NETHERRACK
  - OAK_LOG
  - DEEPSLATE
  - COBBLED_DEEPSLATE
  - ANDESITE
  - DIORITE
  - GRANITE
  - COAL
  - RAW_IRON
  - RAW_GOLD
  - RAW_COPPER
  - REDSTONE
  - LAPIS_LAZULI
  - WHEAT
  - POTATO
  - CARROT