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Ticking entity crash (java.lang.NullPointerException in entity tick)

A 'ticking entity' crash means one specific entity in the world (a mob, a player, a minecart, a falling block, etc.) is throwing an exception every time Minecraft tries to update it. The server crashes immediately on the next tick after the world loads the chunk containing that entity. The crash report names the entity type and often includes its UUID — which is the key to removing it.

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How to fix it

  1. 1

    Find the entity UUID in the crash report

    The crash report lists the offending entity under 'Entities being tracked by server'. It looks like: Entity Type: minecraft:zombie, Entity ID: 1234, UUID: 550e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440000. Copy the UUID — you'll need it for the fix command.

  2. 2

    Kill the entity with a command

    If the server manages to load before crashing, connect quickly (or use console/RCON) and run: /kill @e[type=<entity_type>,distance=..100] or by UUID: /data merge entity <UUID> {Tags:["kill_me"]} then /kill @e[tag=kill_me]. On Paper servers with CoreProtect you can also use /coreprotect purge or the admin killall tools.

  3. 3

    If the crash happens before you can connect, edit the NBT

    Stop the server. Open the region file containing the bad chunk in an NBT editor (NBTExplorer, Amulet Editor, or Chunker). Find the entity by UUID and delete it. The entity's chunk coordinates are usually in the crash — convert chunk coords to region file path: region r.X.Z.mca where X=floor(chunkX/32) and Z=floor(chunkZ/32).

  4. 4

    If you can't edit NBT, restore from a backup before the entity existed

    Sometimes the entity was spawned by a broken mod event and the NBT is too corrupted to parse cleanly. Restore the world from the last backup before the crash started. You lose recent progress but gain a server that boots.

Alternative causes

These can produce the same error message — worth ruling out if the steps above don't resolve it.

Ticking block entity (chest, furnace, hopper)

Block entities tick too. A 'Ticking block entity' variant means the same issue but it's a tile entity — a chest, furnace, hopper, or mod-added block. The fix is the same: find the block position in the crash and remove or reset it with /setblock or NBT editing.

A mod update broke an entity that was saved to the world

If you updated a mod and now get this crash, the updated mod may have changed how it serializes entities. Existing entity NBT from the old version fails to deserialize cleanly. Downgrade the mod or remove affected entities using the old mod's version.

Frequently asked

Where exactly is the bad entity?

The crash report's 'Entity being ticked' section lists coordinates — those are world coordinates (X, Y, Z). The chunk is chunkX=floor(X/16), chunkZ=floor(Z/16). The region file is r.floor(chunkX/32).floor(chunkZ/32).mca inside the world's region/ directory.

Will removing the entity corrupt the world?

No — entities are stored independently from terrain. Deleting one entity leaves all blocks and other entities intact. The only thing lost is that entity (mob, item, minecart).

Can I prevent ticking crashes?

Not entirely — they're caused by bugs in mods or edge cases in Minecraft. Paper and its forks (Purpur, Pufferfish) have a skip-entity-ticking-on-exception option that catches these crashes and removes the offending entity automatically instead of crashing.

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Last reviewed 2026-06-15. If a step is wrong or out of date, tell us — we'll fix the article and the auto-pattern at the same time.