When hundreds of monsters chase players and compute paths at the same time, it takes a lot of CPU.
Why Large mob pulls or mass spawns send many monsters chasing players at once → Effect Each monster runs its own pathfinding → On screen Slow motion in that hunting ground only
Cache paths, cap the number of path computations, split the work across several ticks.
On the graph
Rises with load · Server tick time, monsters per zone
Where to look
Number of monsters chasing players and tick time, per zone. Without a separate count, per-function CPU share of the game process from perf top -p
Confirmed if
Tick time grows during large mob pulls and mass spawns, and pathfinding (path search) functions take a large share of CPU time
Ruled out if
Ticks grow when there are few monsters but many players: points to AOI calculation or broadcast fan-out
Check with
Game server or client logs and metrics
Sources
AI.NavMesh.pathfindingIterationsPerFrameUnity Pathfinding processes only a set number of nodes per frame, spreading the work over several frames, so the game stays smooth even with long paths or many requests at once