# Waiting a Tick

Sometimes waiting a tick is required in a situation to allow something to happen, or give the server time to process.

{% hint style="info" %}
What is a tick? A game tick is when things on a server are updated. Minecraft splits a second into 20 game ticks.

You've probably encountered ticks before if you've ever played with the `randomTickSpeed` gamerule.
{% endhint %}

***

## While loops

A wait (although not necessarily a 1 tick wait) is absolutely required in a while loop. While loops will run as fast as possible, and so without a wait (or limited number of iterations) they will overwork the server, leading to a crash.

If a while loop is running for a few iterations and is guaranteed to stop, the wait is not needed. This is helpful when returning, as waits cannot be used when returning.

{% hint style="info" %}
For more information on while loops, see the (not-yet-created) Loops page.
{% endhint %}

## Lag prevention

Since Skript tries to compress everything into one tick, adding a small delay can break up code or tasks into chunks to be evaluated separately one after another instead of all at once.

A prime example of this is setting large amounts of blocks. If you are setting a whole bunch of blocks at once, that can cause freezing.

Instead of setting all the blocks at once, break it up into segments the server can handle easily with a 1 tick wait in-between. One way to do so is to loop the blocks and use the following snippet to wait 1 tick every `{_number}` iterations (and thus blocks) inside of the loop.

{% code overflow="wrap" lineNumbers="true" %}

```python
if mod(loop-iteration, {_number}) = 0:
  wait 1 tick
```

{% endcode %}

## Delays

Certain events are called *just before* the event actually happens. An indication of this is whether or not the event is cancellable; cancellable events are called early, while non-cancellable events are called after the event happens, which is why they cannot be cancelled.

Some examples of events like this include `on teleport:` and `on pick up:`, where you'll need to wait a tick for the player to be teleported to the new location, or for the item to enter the player's inventory.


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