How despawn mechanics change
In vanilla Minecraft, monsters that pick up dropped items or equip armor become persistent. That prevents them from despawning naturally over distance or time. In active worlds, persistent monsters accumulate in unexplored caves and dark spots. This buildup contributes to entity lag. The issue grows even more noticeable in modded games where extra mob varieties and higher spawn rates fill the mob cap quickly.
Let Me Despawn changes this behavior directly. It tweaks the standard despawn check so mobs that picked up or equipped items can despawn naturally, just like any standard entity. A clean fix for unwanted entity buildup.
Item safety and name tags
A common worry with despawning mobs is losing valuable equipment. If a zombie picks up your weapons or armor after your death, you don't want that gear deleted from the world.
Let Me Despawn handles this by dropping all picked up and equipped items right onto the ground when the entity despawns. Your items remain behind in the world for you to recover.
Named mobs stay untouched. If you name an entity with a name tag, the mod preserves vanilla behavior and prevents that mob from despawning.
Configuration and commands
You can configure specific mobs to stay persistent if your setup requires it. The mod reads from a JSON configuration file located at config/letmedespawn.json. Any mob added to this file retains its vanilla mechanics and won't despawn after taking items.
You don't have to edit configuration files outside the game. The mod provides in-game commands that manage the list:
- /letmedespawn add <mobName> adds an entity type to the configuration.
- /letmedespawn remove <mobName> removes an entity type from the configuration.
Both commands update the mob exclusion list in real time. You don't need to restart the game or perform manual reloads. If you update the configuration file on disk, you can reload it using /almanac reload.
Technical details and requirements
Let Me Despawn is authored by frikinjay and released under the GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0 only. Real talk, it supports Neoforge, Fabric, and Quilt mod loaders.
This mod is server-side only. Client-side installation is unsupported and unnecessary, meaning players connecting to your server don't need the mod installed on their own computers.
