Difficulty

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 when creating a world, in the settings, as well as with the /difficulty command.

While the difficulty settings modify the challenge in Survival mode, they also affect hostile mobs in Creative mode the same as in Survival; for example:^[verify]

• Hostile Overworld mobs cannot spawn naturally in Creative Peaceful.
• Zombies have the same difficulty-dependent chances as in Survival to convert villagers into zombie villagers (0% in Creative Easy, 50% in Creative Normal, 100% in Creative Hard).
• Hostile mobs killed by mob grinders in farms drop higher-value items in Creative Hard.

Survival mode is affected by difficulty as described in the sections below.

Peaceful[]

No hostile mobs can spawn naturally, except for shulkers, hoglins, zoglins, piglin brutes, evokers‌^{[Bedrock Edition only]}, vindicators‌^{[Bedrock Edition only]}, and the ender dragon. Llamas are the only mob that are able to do damage in this difficulty. 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 monster 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. TNT deals no direct damage to the player, but it does give knockback still, meaning a player can be killed by it if it launches them too far upward. The hunger bar never depletes; in Java Edition, players therefore cannot eat anything except golden apples, chorus fruits, milk buckets, honey and suspicious stew, 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 regenerates quickly.

End portals cannot be activated by the player in Peaceful difficulty, because it is impossible to acquire the twelve eyes of ender necessary to activate an end portal by killing endermen.^{[note 1]} However, it is possible for an end portal to be activated by naturally generating with an eye of ender already embedded within all 12 end portal frames. For any given end portal, there is only a 1 in a trillion chance of this happening.^{[note 2]} However, because of the huge number of possible seeds, over 8 million seeds are known to generate such end portals. ^[1]

Also, not all advancements / achievements can be completed in Peaceful difficulty.

Easy[]

Hostile mobs spawn, but they deal ¹⁄₂ of the damage they would on Normal difficulty plus 1. The hunger bar can deplete, damaging the player until 10 remain 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 don't wear full sets of armor. Hostile mobs like zombies, skeletons, 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 1 remains 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 approximately 1¹⁄₂ times the damage they would deal on Normal difficulty, and in some cases drop higher-value items when killed. The hunger bar can deplete, not only damaging but also killing the player 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, and invisibility), with these effects having a nearly 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[]

In Java Edition, 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, a player who dies can choose to respawn in Spectator mode or return to the title screen. In multiplayer, upon death, the player's game mode is automatically set to Spectator mode.

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.

This difficulty is currently not available in 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.

Regional difficulty[]

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[]

The clamped regional difficulty (also known as special multiplier) also 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 (1512000 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 applies only 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 to players on peaceful.

Mob	Difficulty			Status effect(s)ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ[edit]
	Easy	Normal	Hard
Bee	2	2	3	Poison for 10 seconds on Normal difficulty and for 18 seconds on Hard difficulty
Blaze (melee)	4	6	9	No
Blaze fireball	9 + fire for 5 seconds			No
Cave Spider	2	2	3	Poison for 7 seconds on Normal difficulty and for 15 seconds on Hard difficulty
Chicken Jockey	2.5 × 1.25	3	4.5 × 2.25	No
Creeper explosion (normal)	22.5 × 11.25	43 × 21.5	64.5 × 32.25	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)	43.5 × 21.75	85 × 42.5	127.5 × 63.75
Dolphin	2.5 × 1.25	3	4.5 × 2.25	No
Drowned				No
Drowned trident (Ranged)	8			No
Drowned trident (Melee)‌[BE only]	5	9	12 × 6	No
Elder Guardian (Laser)	5	8	12 × 6	Inflicts Mining Fatigue III for 5 minutes on nearby players
Elder Guardian (Spikes)	2		3
Elder Guardian Ghost (Spikes)	2		3	No
Ender Dragon (Melee)	6	10	15 × 7.5	No
Ender Dragon (Wings)	3	5	7	No
Ender Dragon (Breath)	3 per second			Area effect cloud of Instant Damage
Ender Dragon Dragon Fireball	6 per second
Enderman	4.5 × 2.25	7	10.5 × 5.25	No
Endermite	2		3	No
Evoker fangs	6			No
Ghast fireball (Impact)	6			No
Ghast fireball (Explosion)	7	12 × 6	22.5 × 11.25	No
Giant	26 × 13	50 × 25	75 × 37.5	No
Goat	1	2	3	No
Guardian (Laser)	4	6	9	No
Guardian (Spikes)	2		3	No
Hoglin‌[JE only]	2.5 × 1.25 to 5	3 to 8	4.5 × 2.25 to 12 × 6	No
Hoglin (baby)‌[JE only]	0.5 × 0.25		0.75 × 0.375	No
Hoglin‌[BE only]	3	6	9	No
Husk	2.5 × 1.25	3	4.5 × 2.25	Hunger when attacking any mob for 7 × floor of RD seconds
Illusioner arrow	2 to 5	3 to 5		Throws Blindness spells on the player, if regional difficulty is 2 or greater
Iron Golem	4.75 × 2.375 to 11.75 × 5.875	7.5 × 3.75 to 21.5 × 10.75	11.25 × 5.625 to 32.25 × 16.125	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)	2.5 × 1.25	3	4.5 × 2.25	No
Panda	4	6	9	No
Phantom‌[JE only]	2		3	No
Phantom‌[BE only]	4	6	9	No
Piglin arrow‌[JE only]	3 to 4		4	No
Piglin arrow‌[BE only]	1 - 5			No
Piglin (Melee with Sword)‌[JE only]	5	8	12 × 6	No
Piglin (Melee without Sword)‌[JE only]	3.5 × 1.75	5	7.5 × 3.75	No
Piglin‌[BE only]	5	9	13 × 6.5	No
Piglin Brute	7.5 × 3.75	13 × 6.5	19.5 × 9.75	No
Pillager arrow	3 to 4		4	No
Polar Bear	4	6	9	No
Pufferfish	2		3	Poison for 5 seconds
Ravager (Melee)	7	12 × 6	18 × 9	No
Ravager (Roar)	4	6	9	No
Shulker bullet	4			Levitation for 10 seconds
Silverfish	1			No
Skeleton arrow‌[JE only]	2 to 4	3 to 4	4 to 5	No
Skeleton arrow‌[BE only]	1 to 4, varies with proximity		1 to 5, varies with proximity	No
Skeleton (melee)	2		3	No
Skeleton Horseman arrow‌[JE only]	Varies with skeleton bow enchantment			No
Skeleton Horseman arrow‌[BE only]	Varies with skeleton bow enchantment			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
Spider Jockey (spider)	2		3	No, but can spawn with effects
Spider Jockey arrow‌[JE only]	3 to 5			No
Spider Jockey arrow‌[BE only]	Damage varies with proximity			No
Stray arrow‌[JE only]	3 to 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	No
Trader Llama spit	1			No
Vex	5.5 × 2.75	9	13.5 × 6.75	No
Vindicator	7.5 × 3.75	13 × 6.5	19.5 × 9.75	No
Warden (Melee)	16 × 8	30 × 15	45 × 22.5	No
Warden (Ranged)	6	10	15 × 7.5	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 (birth explosion)	35.5 × 17.75	69 × 34.5	103.5 × 51.75	No
Wither Skull	8	8		Wither II for 10 seconds on Normal difficulty and 40 seconds on Hard difficulty
Wither (dash attack) ‌[BE only]	15 × 7.5			No
Wolf (hostile)	3	4	6	No
Wolf (tamed)	4			No
Zoglin	2.5 × 1.25 to 5	3 to 8	4.5 × 2.25 to 12 × 6	No
Zoglin (baby)	0.5 × 0.25		0.75 × 0.375	No
Zombie	2.5 × 1.25	3	4.5 × 2.25	No
Zombified Piglin	5	8	12 × 6	No
Zombie Villager	2.5 × 1.25	3	4.5 × 2.25	No

Other effects[]

Attribute	Notes	Condition
		World difficulty	Regional difficulty (RD)	Clamped regional difficulty (CRD)	Moon phase only
Mobs and explosions do higher damage to players.	Peaceful: No damage Easy: 1⁄2 of Normal damage + 1 (never higher than Normal damage) Hard: 1 1⁄2 times Normal damage	Yes	No	No	No
Guardians (both types) have higher laser magic damage.	Hard: + 2, added before calculating the difficulty-scaled mob damage	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, 1⁄1000 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.	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.[note 3]	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 + randInt(0,18)×CRDwhere randInt(0,18) is a random integer between 0 and 17.	No	No	Yes	No
Slimes are more likely to be bigger.	Small: ((33×(1-CRD)/2)+16.5)% Medium: 33% Big: ((33×(1+CRD)/2)+16.5)% 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 size	RD + 1 illagers (rounded up)	No	Yes	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

Video[]

History[]

• 

  First image of the difficulty lock.

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

Notes[]

References[]