Gameplay

This article is about general gameplay in Minecraft. For instructional material, see Tutorials.

A fresh Survival game.

Gameplay in most game modes of Minecraft consists mainly of adding and destroying a variety of different blocks in a randomly generated world.

With these blocks, players can manipulate the world around them, building and destroying structures. As gameplay in Minecraft is so open and unguided, players often set their own goals and play the game as they see fit. An example of this is the Minecraft minigame, Spleef.

Game modes

"Gamemode" redirects here. For the command, see Commands/gamemode.

Animation summarizing the Survival, Hardcore and Creative game modes

Minecraft has 5 gamemodes: Survival, Creative, Adventure, Spectator‌ and Hardcore‌. The "demo mode" is Survival with the --demo attribute, which defines if the game is from a trial version or not.

In the level.dat file, Survival mode is gametype=0, Creative is gametype=1, Adventure is gametype=2, and Spectator is gametype=3. Hardcore is Survival with the addition of hardcore=1 (a normal world uses hardcore=0 instead). This knowledge allows hacking to change game modes by editing the world's level.dat. The command /gamemode can be used to switch between these (except Hardcore, as it cannot be set using commands). For example, /gamemode creative puts the player into creative mode.

In Java Edition, a player with operator permissions on a server or cheats enabled is able to open a GUI by pressing F3 and F4, which then allows the player to cycle through the four available gamemodes available with /gamemode by pressing F4.

In Bedrock Edition, the gamemode can also be changed by quitting the world, going to Edit World, tapping either Creative or Survival, and then returning to the game if cheats are enabled.

Survival

Main article: Survival

In this mode, players have to gather all their materials to build, craft items and tools and gain experience points. There is a health, hunger, and armor bar, an inventory, and also a oxygen bar when underwater, suffocating,‌ or in lava.‌ If a player runs out of hearts (health), the player dies and returns to the spawn point. Upon death, the player emits smoke, loses all experience and items, and a death message. Maximum reach is 5 blocks.

Creative

Main article: Creative

The player has access to an infinite amount of almost all blocks and items available, and can destroy them instantly. Players are invulnerable, unless they fall into the void,‌ and do not have health, armor, or hunger, and can fly. The player has access to items not available in Survival mode, e.g. spawn eggs. The player cannot see command blocks if they look through the creative GUI - they need to spawn command blocks with the /give or /setblock commands. Max reach is 6 blocks.

Adventure

Main article: Adventure

Players can interact with objects such as levers and buttons, and can interact with mobs. However, they can break blocks only with tools having a CanDestroy data tag, and place blocks only if the block they are holding has a CanPlaceOn data tag, making this mode good for adventure maps. Max reach is 5 blocks.

Hardcore

Main article: Hardcore

In this mode, which plays in the same way as Survival mode, the difficulty level is permanently set to "Hard", and when the player dies, the only choice is that the map must be deleted, or the player is sent permanently into spectator mode.

Technically, Hardcore is a game mode modifier rather than a game mode. However, without cheating, it is possible to get only "Hardcore Survival". To obtain "Hardcore Creative" mode, the player must edit the game world with external tools, or opening to LAN, and turning on cheats. There is almost no visible difference between "Hardcore Creative" and "Non-Hardcore Creative". Because of this, "Hardcore" usually refers to "Hardcore Survival". On a server, a player who dies gets put into spectator mode, while all other players remain in survival mode. When looking at a hardcore singleplayer world, the gamemode is "Hardcore Mode!" and the color is red.

Hardcore is not technically a game mode as it cannot be enabled with the /gamemode command.

Spectator

Main article: Spectator

When in spectator mode, players can clip through blocks, enter the perspective of other entities by left-clicking on them, and are invisible to all players and mobs except for other spectators. The player can't interact with blocks, entities or their inventory. When in third-person mode, they look like a transparent, floating head with no body. The player can use the scroll wheel to adjust the speed at which they are flying, unlike flying in Creative mode.

Table of game modes

Below is a brief summary of the different available features in each game mode.

Feature	Survival	Creative	Adventure	Hardcore	Spectator
Premium account	Required for multiplayer	Required	Required	Required	Required
Multiplayer	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Crafting	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Smelting	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Brewing	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Enchanting	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Inventory	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Partial
Health	Yes	Hidden	Yes	Yes	Hidden
Respawn after death	Yes	Yes	Yes	After death either delete world or respawn in not changeable Spectator Mode	Yes
Block placing/breaking	Yes	Yes	No, unless the player has a CanPlaceOn data tag	Yes	No
Mobs	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Maximum amount of blocks (so far)	Partial	Yes	No	Partial	No
Daylight cycle	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Cheats	Preset to no, but changeable	Preset to yes, but changeable	Preset to no, but changeable	No	Preset to yes, but changeable
Preset difficulty	No	No	No	Yes	No
Hunger	Partial	No	Partial	Yes	No
Available in Bedrock Edition	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
Can phase through blocks	No	No	No	No	Yes

Video

Note: This video is outdated, as Spectator mode was added after this video's release.

Gameplay 

View at: Template:Gameplay/content [edit]