Difficulty

Mobs in full armor are a common sight in higher difficulty levels.

Difficulty is an option in Minecraft that has a direct impact on the ease of gameplay, allowing the game's challenges to be tailored to the player's skill level.

World settings

There are four difficulty levels in the game: Peaceful, Easy, Normal and Hard. These can be changed in the settings, as well as with the /difficulty command.

Peaceful

No hostile mobs can spawn naturally, except for evokers ‌^{[Bedrock Edition only]}, vindicators ‌^{[Bedrock Edition only]}, shulkers, hoglins, piglins, piglin brutes ‌^{[upcoming: BE 1.16.20]}, and the ender dragon. Of these mobs, only the Ender Dragon can deal damage to the player. No spiders, cave spiders, zombified piglins or endermen – neutral rather than hostile mobs – can spawn naturally. When any of these mobs attempt to spawn (whether naturally, through mob spawners, spawn eggs, or commands), they are removed from the game instantaneously. When the difficulty is switched from any other setting to Peaceful, all mobs that are not allowed to spawn on Peaceful are removed from the world. Players regain health rapidly over time. Despite this, it is still possible to die if damage is received quickly enough. The hunger bar never depletes; in Java Edition, players therefore cannot eat anything except golden apples, chorus fruits, and milk buckets, unless the player switched to Peaceful when their hunger bar was below the maximum. Players can eat normally in Bedrock Edition. Additionally, if the hunger bar is below the maximum, it quickly regenerates.

It is, for the most part, currently impossible to complete Minecraft while playing on Peaceful, because The End cannot be accessed unless a seed with the End Portal already filled in is used, or by trading with villagers for eyes of ender in pre-1.9. Blaze rods are for the most part required to activate the End Portal, and due to the fact that eyes of ender have a 10% chance of already existing in each of the end portal frame blocks, and the only way to obtain blaze rods to make the eyes of ender is directly from a blaze, there is only a 1 in a trillion chance that the portal is activated without any player intervention. Not all achievements can be completed in peaceful difficulty. Even though evokers can spawn in peaceful, they do not summon vexes.

Easy

Hostile mobs spawn, but they deal less damage than on Normal difficulty. The hunger bar can deplete, damaging the player until they are left with 10 if it drains completely. Cave spiders and bees cannot poison players on Easy difficulty, and the wither does not cause the Wither effect, although wither skeletons do. Lightning sets only the struck block on fire, not surrounding blocks. Zombies do not break down doors, and do not turn villagers into zombie villagers. Zombies and skeletons rarely wear full sets of armor. Hostile mobs like zombies, skeletons, and spiders, husks and strays deal about 1 or 2 damage.

Normal

Hostile mobs spawn and deal standard damage, about 2 or 3. The hunger bar can deplete, damaging the player until they are left with with 1 if it drains completely. Zombies do not break down doors, but villagers killed by zombies have a 50% chance of turning into zombie villagers. Zombies and skeletons rarely wear sets of enchanted armor. Vindicators can break doors.

Hard

Hostile mobs deal greater damage than on Normal difficulty. The hunger bar can deplete, damaging the player until they die if it drains completely. Zombies can break through wooden doors and can spawn reinforcements when attacked. Spiders can spawn with a beneficial status effect (speed, strength, regeneration & invisibility), with these effects having an infinite duration in Java Edition. Villagers killed by zombies always turn into zombie villagers. Pillagers spawn near the player, with their attacks dealing 4 damage. In Bedrock Edition, if the world type is infinite, they deal 5 damage.

Hardcore mode‌^{[Java Edition only]}

Main article: Hardcore

At the world creation screen, selecting Hardcore from among the game mode options causes the player to spawn in Hard difficulty, does not allow it to be changed, and allows the player only one life. In a single player world, if the player dies, they can choose to respawn in Spectator mode or delete the world. In multiplayer, the player's gamemode is automatically set to Spectator mode upon their death.

The only way to change the difficulty of Hardcore is to use the Open to LAN feature in the pause menu to enable commands, or to use an .NBT editor on the world's .NBT file.

Currently not available in the Realms.

Moon phase

The phase of the moon has effects on the spawning of slimes in swamp biomes, and contributes to the calculation of regional difficulty. The fuller the moon is, the greater the effect.

The moon does not actually have to be in the sky for this effect to take place, since the moon exists in daytime and across dimensions.

	Moon phase	Value	Percentage
	Full	1.0	100%
	Gibbous	0.75	75%
	Quarter	0.5	50%
	Crescent	0.25	25%
	New	0.0	0%

Regional difficulty

Regional difficulty values shown on the debug screen

Regional difficulty or local difficulty is a value between 0.00 and 6.75 that the game calculates by considering not just the world difficulty setting, but also the inhabited time of a chunk, the total daytime in the world, and the phase of the moon. This value is shown on the debug screen as the first value listed after the heading "Local Difficulty". This value determines several aspects of the difficulty of gameplay (see below).

The inhabited time of a chunk increases for each tick a player spends with the chunk loaded. This is a cumulative measure of time—if 50 players spend a single hour in a chunk, it counts the same as if one player spent 50 hours there. The effect of inhabited time on regional difficulty is capped at 50 hours.

The total daytime in the world is the value from /time query daytime added to the "Day" on the F3 debug screen converted to ticks, i.e. daytime + (dayNumber * 24,000). This is not the same as the actual playtime in the world (the value from /time query gametime). It affects the regional difficulty after the first 3 in-game days, and has no additional effect after 63 in-game days.

In pseudocode, the calculation of regional difficulty is:

# DaytimeFactor, ChunkFactor, and RegionalDifficulty are floating-point variables
# MoonPhase is as in the table above.

if (difficulty is Peaceful) return 0

if (TotalDaytime > 63 in-game days) DaytimeFactor = 0.25
else if (TotalDaytime < 3 in-game days) DaytimeFactor = 0 
else DaytimeFactor = (TotalDaytimeInTicks − 72,000) / 5,760,000

if (ChunkInhabitedTime > 50 hours) ChunkFactor = 1
else ChunkFactor = ChunkInhabitedTimeInTicks / 3,600,000

if (difficulty is Normal or Easy) multiply ChunkFactor by 0.75

if (MoonPhase ÷ 4 > DaytimeFactor) add DaytimeFactor to ChunkFactor
else add (MoonPhase ÷ 4) to ChunkFactor

if (difficulty is Easy) multiply ChunkFactor by 0.5

RegionalDifficulty = 0.75 + DaytimeFactor + ChunkFactor

if (difficulty is Normal) multiply RegionalDifficulty by 2
if (difficulty is Hard) multiply RegionalDifficulty by 3

return RegionalDifficulty

The raw regional difficulty therefore is always 0.0 on Peaceful and ranges from 0.75 to 1.5 on Easy, 1.5 to 4.0 on Normal, and 2.25 to 6.75 on Hard.

Clamped regional difficulty

How clamped regional difficulty relates to regional difficulty

The clamped regional difficulty is a value between 0.00 and 1.00 based on regional difficulty. This value is shown on the debug screen as the second value listed after the heading "Local Difficulty". This is yet another value that affects the difficulty of gameplay (see below).

The regional difficulty value is clamped as follows:

if (RegionalDifficulty < 2.0) value = 0.0;
else if (RegionalDifficulty > 4.0) value = 1.0;
else value = (RegionalDifficulty − 2.0) / 2.0;

Thus, on Easy, where regional difficulty is never higher than 1.5, the clamped value is always zero.

On Normal, the effects reach the maximum after 63 in-game days (1,512,000 game ticks) in a fully-inhabited chunk on a full moon; and on Hard after 63 in-game days the effects reach the maximum in chunks inhabited 4 ¹⁄₆ hours during a full moon and remain at maximum in chunks inhabited over 16 ²⁄₃ hours.^[verify]

Effects

Mob damage

The damage mobs deal to players is affected by the difficulty of the game. The below values represent the amount of damage taken per hit.

• This only applies to mobs attacking the player. Mobs attacking other mobs always deal the 'Normal' damage listed, regardless of difficulty.
• Values for the creeper and ghast assume the player is directly adjacent to the explosion.
• The damage of slimes and magma cubes depends on their size. Tiny-sized slimes, while hostile, are unable to do damage directly.
• Mobs deal no damage on peaceful, apart from wolves‌^{[BE only]} and llamas.

Mob	Difficulty			Status effect(s)
	Easy	Normal	Hard
Bee	2	3		Poison for 10 seconds on normal difficulty and for 18 seconds on hard difficulty
Blaze (melee)	4	6	9	No
Blaze fireball	5			No
Cave Spider	2	2	3	Poison for 7 seconds on normal difficulty and for 15 seconds on hard difficulty
Creeper explosion (normal)	25 × 12.5	49 × 24.5	73 × 36.5	When exploding: No If having a potion effect when exploding, it leaves an effect cloud with the effect, like a lingering potion.
Creeper explosion (charged)	49 × 24.5	97 × 48.5	145 × 72.5
Dolphin	2	3	4	No
Drowned				No
Drowned trident (Ranged)	8			No
Drowned trident (Melee)	5	9	12 × 6	No
Elder Guardian		8		Inflicts Mining Fatigue III for 5 minutes on nearby players
Ender Dragon (Melee)	6	10	15 × 7.5	No
Ender Dragon (Breathe)	Deals damage from area of effect cloud			Area effect cloud of Instant Damage
Ender Dragon Dragon Fireball
Enderman	4	7	10	No
Endermite	2			No
Evoker fangs	6			No
Ghast fireball (Impact)				No
Ghast fireball (Explosion)	9	17 × 8.5	25 × 12.5	No
Giant (unused)	26 × 13	50 × 25	75 × 37.5	No
Guardian	4	6	9	No
Hoglin‌[JE only]	3	4	5	No
Hoglin‌[BE only]	3	6	9	No
Husk	2	3	4	Hunger when attacking any mob for 7 × RD seconds
Illusioner arrow	1 – 4		1 – 5	Throws Blindness spells on the player, if regional difficulty is 3 or greater
Iron Golem	4 – 11 × 5.5	7 – 21 × 10.5	10 – 31 × 15.5	No
The Killer Bunny	5	8	12 × 6	No
Llama spit	1			No
Magma Cube (big)	4	6	9	No
Magma Cube (medium)	3	4	6	No
Magma Cube (small)	2	3	4	No
Phantom	4	6	9	No
Piglin arrow‌[JE only]	2			No
Piglin arrow‌[BE only]	1 - 5			No
Piglin‌[JE only]	3	4	6	No
Piglin‌[BE only]	5	9	13 × 6.5	No
Pillager arrow	3	4	6	No
Polar Bear	4	6	9	No
Pufferfish (Melee)	2	3	4	No
Pufferfish (Poison)	5			Gives the player Poison for 7 seconds
Ravager (Melee)	7	12 × 6	18 × 9	No
Ravager (Roar)	6			No
Shulker bullet	4			Levitation for 10 seconds
Silverfish	1			No
Skeleton arrow‌[JE only]	1 – 4		1 – 5	No
Skeleton arrow‌[BE only]	Damage varies with proximity			No
Skeleton (melee)	2		3	No
Slime (big)	3	4	6	No
Slime (medium)	2		3	No
Slime (small)	0			No
Spider	2		3	No, but can spawn with effects
Stray arrow ‌[JE only]	1 – 4	1 – 4	1 – 5	Slowness for 30 seconds when their tipped arrow hits any mob (including another stray)
Stray arrow ‌[BE only]	Damage varies with proximity
Stray (melee)	2		3	Slowness for 30 seconds
Vex	5	9	13 × 6.5	No
Vindicator	7	13 × 6.5	19 × 9.5	No
Witch	Deals damage by throwing potions			Throws splash potions of Poison, Instant Damage, Slowness, and Weakness
Wither Skeleton	5	8	12 × 6	Wither for 10 seconds
Wither Skull	5			Wither II for 10 seconds on Normal difficulty and 40 seconds on Hard difficulty
Wither (dash attack) ‌[BE only]	15 × 7.5			No
Wolf (tamed)	3	4	6	No
Wolf (hostile)	2		3	No
Zoglin	2	3	5	No
Zombie			4	No
Zombified Piglin‌[BE only]	5	8	12 × 6	No
Zombie Villager	2	3	4	No
Zombified Piglin‌[JE only]		4	6	No

Other effects

Attribute	Notes	Condition
		World difficulty	Regional difficulty (RD)	Clamped regional difficulty (CRD)	Moon phase only
Mobs have higher melee damage against players.	Easy: 1⁄2 of Normal damage, rounded down, +1 Hard: 1 1⁄2 times Normal damage, rounded down	Yes	No	No	No
Guardians (both types) have higher laser damage.	Easy/Normal: 1 Hard: 3	Yes	No	No	No
Explosion damage to players is higher.	Easy: 1⁄2 of Normal damage, rounded down, +1 Hard: 1 1⁄2 times Normal damage, rounded down	Yes	No	No	No
Starvation more harshly affects health.	Easy/Normal/Hard: starvation brings health down to 10/1/0 HP	Yes	No	No	No
Mobs that spawn with armor are more likely to have more armor.	Easy & Normal: 75%/56%/42% of having 2/3/4 pieces; Hard: 90%/81%/73% of having 2/3/4 pieces	Yes	No	No	No
Zombies are more likely to spawn with weapons.	1% on Easy and Normal, 5% on Hard	Yes	No	No	No
Zombies are able to spawn reinforcements.	Hard only	Yes	No	No	No
Zombies are more likely to be able to break wooden doors.	A zombie having the ability to break a door: (10×CRD)% The door actually breaking: Hard only	Yes	No	Yes	No
Villagers killed by zombies have a greater chance of becoming zombie villagers.	0% on Easy, 50% on Normal, 100% on Hard	Yes	No	No	No
Zombified piglins spawn from Nether portals in the Overworld more often.	1⁄2000 per block tick on Easy, 2⁄2000 on Normal, 3⁄2000 on Hard	Yes	No	No	No
A skeleton or stray does not wait as long between bow & arrow attacks.	Easy/Normal: 2s cooldown Hard: 1s	Yes	No	No	No
A skeleton or stray is more accurate in ranged attacks with its bow.	Easy/Normal/Hard "inaccuracy" value is 10/6/2	Yes	No	No	No
Damage from arrows slightly increases.	Easy/Normal/Hard damage bonus = +0.11 / +0.22 / +0.33	Yes	No	No	No
Phantoms spawn more frequently.	A spawn attempt succeeds if the local difficulty is greater than a random value between 0.0 and 3.0.	No	Yes	No	No
Phantoms spawn in larger groups.	Easy: 1-2 Normal: 1-3 Hard: 1-4	Yes	No	No	No
Spiders can naturally spawn with status effects.	Normal and Hard (10×CRD)%	Yes	No	Yes	No
The Poison effect given by a cave spider lasts longer.	Normal/Hard: 7s/15s	Yes	No	No	No
The Poison effect given by a bee lasts longer.	Normal/Hard: 10s/18s	Yes	No	No	No
The Wither effect given by a wither skull lasts longer.	Normal/Hard: 10s/40s	Yes	No	No	No
A wither shoots wither skulls when idle.	Normal/Hard only	Yes	No	No	No
A wither spawns 3–4 wither skeletons when brought below half health.‌[Bedrock Edition only]	Normal/Hard only	Yes	No	No	No
Lightning can cause fires in the surrounding blocks, not just the block struck.	Normal/Hard only	Yes	No	No	No
Fire lingers for a bit longer.	The raw encouragement value of blocks surrounding fire gets a bonus of (Easy/Normal/Hard) +47 / +54 / +61, before being adjusted for fire age, humidity and rain.	Yes	No	No	No
Mobs are more willing to take fall damage when pursuing a target.	Easy: 33% + 8 Normal: 33% + 4 Hard: 33%	Yes	No	No	No
Lightning strikes are more likely to spawn a skeleton trap horse.	Chance = (RD)% (0.75–1.5% on Easy, 1.5–4% on Normal, 2.25–6.75% on Hard)	No	Yes	No	No
Burning zombies are more likely to set their target on fire, and the burn duration is longer.	Chance = (30×RD)% Burn time = 2 × RD seconds	No	Yes	No	No
The Hunger effect caught from being attacked by a husk lasts longer.	Effect time = 7 × RD seconds	No	Yes	No	No
Illusioners can cast blindness.	If RD > 2.	No	Yes	No	No
Skeletons can shoot flaming arrows.	If RD > 3.	No	Yes	No	No
Skeletons and zombies are more likely to have the ability to pick up dropped items.	Having the ability: (55×CRD)%	No	No	Yes	No
Zombies are more likely to have a greater follow distance.	if (random # in range 0–1.5) × CRD is greater than 1, that becomes a bonus multiplier on the follow distance.	No	No	Yes	No
Zombies are more likely to be "leader zombies" (gaining a bonus to max HP, a bonus to the chance to spawn reinforcements, and the ability to break doors).	Any given zombie being a "leader": (5×CRD)%	No	No	Yes	No
Mobs are more likely to spawn with armor.	Chance of getting any armor at all: (15×CRD)%	No	No	Yes	No
Mobs that spawn with weapons are more likely to have enchantments.	Chance for the main hand item = (25×CRD)%	No	No	Yes	No
Mobs that spawn with armor are more likely to have enchantments.	Chance per armor item = (50×CRD)%	No	No	Yes	No
Mobs that spawn with enchanted equipment have higher levels of enchantments.	Level = 5 + 18×CRD	No	No	Yes	No
Slimes are more likely to be bigger.	Small: (33×(1-CRD)/2)% Medium: 33% Big: (33×(1+CRD)/2)% in other words: Small/Medium/Big: 17%–33% / 33% / 33%–50%	No	No	Yes	No
Slimes are more likely to spawn in swamp biomes.	See above	No	No	No	Yes
Raid has more waves	Easy: 3 waves Normal: 5 waves Hard: 7 waves	Yes	No	No	No
Illager patrol can spawn vindicator‌[Bedrock Edition only]	Easy and Normal: 100% pillager Hard : 80% pillager, 20% vindicator	Yes	No	No	No
Illager patrol can spawn on any light level‌[Bedrock Edition only]	Easy: Light level 0-7 Normal and Hard: Any light level	Yes	No	No	No
Vindicator and Pillager spawn from raids having higher chance to drop special loot.‌[Bedrock Edition only]	Normal: 65% chance Hard: 80% chance	Yes	No	No	No
Vindicator are able to break down Wooden Door	Peaceful and Easy: unable to break door Normal and Hard: can break door	Yes	No	No	No

History

Java Edition Classic
June 14, 2009					Notch discussed how his vision for Survival mode would incorporate the concept of difficulty: "When generating a new level or loading a creative mode level, you also select a difficulty. Difficulty levels will probably vary from 'challenging' to 'impossible', since I want the game to be difficult. If it's not fun to always be challenged, I'll add easier difficulties."
Java Edition Indev
0.31		February 5, 2010			Added the option to change difficulty to Peaceful, Easy, Normal, or Hard.
Java Edition Alpha
October 22, 2010					Notch tweets stating that he is "changing 'difficulty' to 'realism'. Lowest setting = creative. Highest setting = starve". This was never implemented; however, a "hardcore" mode was added along with a creative gamemode.
Java Edition
1.0.0		Beta 1.9 Prerelease 2			Hardcore mode added.
1.6.1		13w16a			Regional difficulty added.
1.16		20w17a			Difficulty can now be chosen on world creation.
Pocket Edition Alpha
0.4.0					Added peaceful difficulty.
0.12.1					Added easy and hard difficulties.

Issues

Issues relating to "Difficulty" are maintained on the bug tracker. Report issues there.

See also

• Health
• Hunger
• Gameplay
• Tutorials/Gathering resources on peaceful difficulty

Gameplay

View at: Template:Gameplay/content [edit]