An oversized world will typically manifest as FoundryVTT having a very slow initial load-in, or failing to load at all.
A good rule of thumb for world sizes is:
Normal: <= 10 MB
Large: 10-20 MB
Huge: 20-40 MB
Typically you’ll start to see trouble around the 30+ MB mark. This is around the fact that FoundryVTT sends the world databases (that comprise that size) to every player on load. This will hurt players/users with slow internet connections the most.
NOTABLE EXCEPTION: If you have things in Compendiums in-world, your world db files can be sized perfectly fine, but the whole “World” size will still be massive, and you won’t see the loading issues. Compendiums are not loaded to all users on World load (thankfully).
How do you check World Sizes on The Forge?
Quite easily! First, don’t try to determine your world size from an export (which you can do here: https://forge-vtt.com/setup), that zip will be compressed-size, which isn’t helpful for our purposes.
To find accurate World Size on The Forge:
- Navigate to here: https://forge-vtt.com/setup
- Click “Select Data Files to Delete” (we won’t actually be deleting anything)
- Take a look at the “Worlds” tab, as below
(Major caveat, and the importance of the below checks, Compendiums can be large, and WON’T hurt world loading speed, but DO contribute to World Size).
If you have worlds that load strangely, please join us on The Forge Discord (https://forge-vtt.com/discord) and ask for help in #forge-help, we’ll be happy to give you a hand!
World Size Troubleshooting
We have often seen issues caused by modules where, due to some bug, the module will jam garbage into one (or more) of the world database files. This can result into worlds that balloon from a nice, safe 5-10 MB up to in excess of 500 MB (I believe we’ve seen a max of 750 MB before).
To find the troublesome module:
- Navigate here: https://forge-vtt.com/setup
- Click “Export World(s)”
- Unzip the zip that downloads
- Navigate to the unzipped folder
- Now navigate into the “data” folder, which contains the db files of the FoundryVTT world
- Hunt for a db file that seems excessively large
In the above case, it appears my chat.db is getting pretty large, in order to help my Players and I loading into FoundryVTT, I could clear the chat log (in FoundryVTT on The Forge) to get things working again.
Fixing an enormous chat log (FoundryVTT won’t even load)
- Export World
- Unzip the export
- delete the chat.db file
- Use “Summon Import Wizard” here: https://forge-vtt.com/setup to re-upload the world
Fixing an enormous actors.db or items.db
- Export World
- Unzip the export
- Use a text editor (like Notepad++) to find the offending section (typically a massive repeat of something, like commas, or
0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0) - Delete the offending repeating information
- Use “Summon Import Wizard” here: https://forge-vtt.com/setup to re-upload the world
