I know items only start despawning when they are loaded, but I recently lost my gear in the nether looking for a good nether fortress, so I am wondering if I change my render distance to 2 or 4, will it prevent the items from being loaded sooner?
Yes, but with a caveat. The total number of loaded chunks around the player in a singleplayer world follows the formula of "(2r - 3)^2" where r=render distance as shown in Options. Formula values are capped at a minimum of 9, so there's zero difference between renders of 2 or 3 (2 would have an actual value of just 1 chunk whereas 3 would have an actual value of 6 chunks). These chunks are arranged in a square around the player defined by the formula "r - 1", so a render of 2 or 3 would have only the adjacent chunks loaded while a render of 4 would have 2 rings of chunks loaded around the player (a 5x5 square).
I don't think item-despawning timers are paused in any loaded chunk, which is different to how mobs interact with loaded chunks (when a chunk goes lazy, a mob is unable to despawn).
I know items only start despawning when they are loaded, but I recently lost my gear in the nether looking for a good nether fortress, so I am wondering if I change my render distance to 2 or 4, will it prevent the items from being loaded sooner?
Yes, but with a caveat. The total number of loaded chunks around the player in a singleplayer world follows the formula of "(2r - 3)^2" where r=render distance as shown in Options. Formula values are capped at a minimum of 9, so there's zero difference between renders of 2 or 3 (2 would have an actual value of just 1 chunk whereas 3 would have an actual value of 6 chunks). These chunks are arranged in a square around the player defined by the formula "r - 1", so a render of 2 or 3 would have only the adjacent chunks loaded while a render of 4 would have 2 rings of chunks loaded around the player (a 5x5 square).
I don't think item-despawning timers are paused in any loaded chunk, which is different to how mobs interact with loaded chunks (when a chunk goes lazy, a mob is unable to despawn).