The mob spawn cap for natural spawns can be adjusted by enabling the Change Mob Quantities feature. This feature is off by default so you would have to specifically enable it. Show During the normal world tick Minecraft will spawn mobs based on their class and the class mob cap. The Minecraft defaults are:
Minecraft will cap the number of mobs of a given type within all currently loaded chunks. Note that this only applies to natural spawning. Mob spawns from spawners and other modded sources can exceed this cap. However, once spawned they will affect the natural mob spawn process. (This is why you see less mobs in the world on servers where players have mob spawn systems producing large quantities of mobs. Not that I am salty or anything…) Keep in mind that Minecraft has worldgen related mob spawn. This is entirely separate from natural mob spawn. Worldgen spawns occur when a chunk is initially created. This is how you get all the cows and pigs populated in new chunks. As you can see by the CREATURE cap in the table above (10) natural spawn for animals is limited to 10 mobs in all currently loaded chunks. This is why you rarely see animals spawn on servers. It is more than likely a player has an animal pen with at least 10 mobs, and once that chunk is loaded no more natural animal spawn will occur. You will have to find newly generated chunks. OK - so why use this feature?
Note Mods can do their own mob spawning and not adhere to what Minecraft rules are. This feature cannot do anything about that. All this feature does is modify the constant values that Minecraft uses. Configuration¶
Farms on multiplayer servers are super slow (duh), is there a way to increase the speed? I put up the mob cap to 140 and it made the farms much faster but I don't know the repercussions of this. There are about 5 players on average on my SMP and I'm not sure what to do or if there's something wrong with putting the mob cap up to 140. Are there other solutions or is the mob cap thing fine? Any plugins, datapacks, etc?
"Respawn" redirects here. For the block to set a spawn point in the Nether, see Respawn Anchor.
This article needs to be updated. Please update this page to reflect recent updates or newly available information.
Player spawning[]World spawn[]See also: Multiplayer spawning details New players initially spawn within a small area surrounding the world spawn point when the server is not in Adventure mode. This area is 21×21 blocks by default, but can be changed by the spawnRadius gamerule in both single and multiplayer. Upon death or return from the End dimension, the player respawns within this area unless the player's individual spawn point changed (by using a bed or respawn anchor, or the /spawnpoint command). In Bedrock Edition, the world spawn radius is set to 5 by default but can be changed by the player in the world settings under Game. When set to 0, the player will spawn in the crosshair of four blocks. When set to 1, the player will always spawn on the North-West of those four blocks. The maximum spawn radius is 99999999 but when rejoining the world it will set it to 128. Although you can still temporarily have it at 99999999 but when clicking on the Respawn button, this will often lead to not being able to respawn; the death screen will stay, tilting the camera and zooming in slowly with the text “Generating World” at the bottom. When the player first loads into the world or respawns, the game searches within the world spawn area and tries to place the player on a random grass block. Upon spawning, the player is placed on the highest valid spawn point block of the X and Z spawn coordinates, even if this would set the player above the maximum build height. However, if there are no valid spawn points but a grass block that was determined to be an invalid spawn point due to being blocked by a block above it (though the grass block would decay soon after), the game checks the closest two free spaces from below and the player spawns there. If there are absolutely no grass blocks, the player spawns directly at the world spawn point, which can even result in players spawning above the Void if there are no blocks at that location. The world spawn point also determines the center of the permanently loaded spawn chunks. The world spawn point itself can be changed using the /setworldspawn command. Bedrock world spawn search[]
This section needs to be updated. Please update this section to reflect recent updates or newly available information. In Bedrock Edition, when a player creates a new world, the world spawn point is restricted to specific biomes. The algorithm starts searching from coordinate 0,0, continuing outward until an acceptable biome is found for the world spawn point. Using add-ons, a rare biome can be designated to cause the player to spawn at a distant location, but the game crashes if the biome does not exist or cannot generate. The algorithm searches for these biomes: The player spawns within a 5-block radius of the point selected in the chosen biome, sometimes resulting in the player spawning outside the intended spawn biome, ending up in a beach, river, or swamp biome. It is also possible (but rare) for a player to spawn initially underwater and start drowning.[1] A search for a valid world spawn biome is not performed for Flat and Old world-types. Adventure mode[]When the server's settings specify the default game mode as Adventure (using the server.properties), then the normal spawning mechanic is ignored, and players are spawned directly on the world spawn point. This includes the X, Y, and Z coordinates, even if there is no block there, and even if there are blocks above it. If the Y coordinate is not within a valid spawning area, then the server looks up until it finds one, up to a maximum of Y=256. If there is space to spawn, but it is in mid-air, the player spawns in mid-air, even falling into the Void if there is a hole. Location[]There are several ways to determine the world spawn point:
Individual spawn[]The individual spawn point of the player can be changed by sleeping in a bed, using a respawn anchor, or using the /setworldspawn or /spawnpoint command. If the individual spawning area of the player is obstructed upon death, the player respawns at the world spawn. Sleeping in a bed allows for leniency in obstruction, in that the player respawns on other blocks near the bed if the original point becomes blocked. The same is true for the respawn anchor. If the spawn point set via /setworldspawn or /spawnpoint becomes obstructed, the player is not given this leniency in respawning. Natural generation[]Animals[]In Java Edition many animals generate upon initial chunk creation. These spawns occur only once per chunk. They are not affected by the /gamerule doMobSpawning command. One in ten newly-generated chunks attempts to generate animal mobs, usually in packs of up to 4 of the same species. The spawn attempt always starts on top of the highest available block in a randomly chosen column within the chunk. The chosen position must not be a solid block for the animals to generate. Once the starting position is chosen for a chunk, a second position is chosen in a 9×9 block area around the starting position. Blocks toward the center of the 9x9 area are more likely to be chosen than blocks toward the edge. The block does not need to be a grass block nor does it need to be illuminated as it does with mob spawning. If an animal can spawn at the second position, it does so. The second position becomes the first position, and a new second position is chosen like before in a 9x9 area. This process can repeat until each chunk has attempted to spawn 1–4 mobs. In Bedrock Edition animals do not spawn during chunk generation, but they continually attempt to spawn everywhere as part of the environmental spawning algorithm, according to their spawn weights, biome tags, and block requirements (see Bedrock Edition under Spawn Cycle, below). There are 2 types of animals: common animals and biome-specific animals. Common animalsCommon animal mobs do not spawn in desert, badlands, beach, snowy plains, river, ocean, or mushroom fields biomes.
Some animal mobs spawn only in specific biomes.[more information needed] Randomness for animal spawning is derived from the world seed, which means that worlds with the same seed always generate chunks with the same animals in the same places. Monsters[]Monsters cannot spawn when the difficulty is set to Peaceful (except piglin[BE only] and hoglin). At any higher setting they spawn when block light level is 0. The player cannot sleep when a monster (other than hoglin; and in Java Edition, also include slime, magma cube and non-hostile zombified piglin) is nearby, even if the monster has no path to the player. Common monstersCommon monster mobs can spawn in almost any biome in the Overworld (except for mushroom fields or deep dark). They can spawn on the surface and underground. The weight determines the spawn rate in the Bedrock Codebase. Biome-specific monstersSome monsters spawn only in specific biomes. Other mobs[]In Java Edition these mobs still spawn if the /gamerule doMobSpawning command is set to false, because they spawn as part of structure generation. In Bedrock Edition nothing spawns if the /gamerule doMobSpawning command is set to false. Animal mobs
Spawn cycle[]Java Edition[]Mobs are broadly divided into seven categories: hostile, passive, water creature (squids and dolphins), underground water creature (glow squids), axolotls, water ambient (all 4 types of fish), and ambient (bat). Most mobs have a spawning cycle once every game tick (1⁄20 of a second), but passive mobs have only one spawning cycle every 400 game ticks (20 seconds). Because of this, where conditions permit, hostile mobs spawn frequently, but passive mobs (animals) spawn rarely. Most animals spawn within chunks when they are generated. Mobs spawn naturally within chunks that have a player horizontally within 128 blocks of the chunk center. When there are multiple players, mobs can spawn within the given distance of any of them. However, hostile mobs (and some others) that move farther than 128 blocks from the nearest player despawn instantly, so the mob spawning area for such mobs is more-or-less limited to spheres with a radius of 128 blocks, centered at each player. Every 24000 game ticks (20 minutes) the game attempts to spawn a single wandering trader with two leashed llamas within 48 blocks of a player or at a village meeting place, if no wandering trader exists in all loaded chunks. The trader does not spawn when the player is underground. Java Edition mob cap[]There are two caps, a global cap and a per-player cap. Note the spawn density mechanism may also be considered a "cap" of sorts, but takes effect later in the spawning process. The mob caps are checked once for each spawn-eligible chunk. Spawn for the chunk may take the total number of mobs over the cap. The caps for each mob category are as follows:
The "misc" category is used only by entities that are not mobs, do not spawn naturally, and/or following different spawning rules than other mobs. As such the mob cap has no bearing on mobs of this category. Global mob capAll non-persistent loaded mobs are counted against the global cap, including those in chunks not in range of a player or eligible for spawns. The cap is scaled by the total number of chunks within a 17×17 chunk square around any player. The cap is then scaled as globalCap = mobCap × chunks ÷ 289. Because chunks that are in the range of multiple players are counted once, more chunks and higher mob caps result from the players spreading out. Per-player mob capEach non-persistent mob in a chunk that has its center within 128 blocks horizontally of a player is counted towards that player's per-player mob cap. For each chunk, spawns are only allowed if at least one player has that chunk in range and has not reached their per-player mob cap. Pack spawning[]For each spawning cycle, attempts are made to spawn packs of mobs per each eligible chunk. An eligible chunk is determined by the same check for which chunks are random ticked. A random location in the chunk is chosen to be the center point of the pack. If the block in which a pack spawn occurs is an opaque full cube, further pack spawn attempts are canceled. There are a maximum of 3 pack spawn attempts per mob category. The pack is spawned within a 41×1×41 (that's a 41×41 square that is one block high) area centered at the initial block. Mobs spawn with the lowest part of their body inside this area. For each spawn attempt, from the location of the previous attempt, a location up to 4 blocks away from the previous attempt is chosen at random. Thus, the spawns are heavily skewed toward the center of the pack. Approximately 85% of spawns are within 5 blocks of the pack center, and 99% within 10 blocks of the center. If the pack spawn enters a biome different from the starting biome, the rest of the pack and that spawn are canceled. All mobs within a pack are the same species. The species for the entire pack is chosen randomly, but based on a weight system from those eligible to spawn at the location of the first spawn attempt in the pack. The game checks on each spawn if the number of mobs that have been spawned for the pack is equal to the max spawn attempts, as well as the location's spawn potential. Pack spawn sizePack spawn attempts max out at:
When the max pack size is less than the number of possible spawn attempts, some spawns attempts fail, but are seen more commonly in practice. Based on the number of mobs that have been successfully spawned. If the max pack size is greater than the number of spawn attempts, one gets only the number of spawns from the spawn attempts. Some mobs have a minimum and max pack size, meaning there is an even chance for any number of spawn attempts between them occurring.
For all dimensions, structure-based spawns take priority over biome for hostile spawns. This means that in a swamp hut, pillager outpost, nether fortress (outer bounding box only when there is nether bricks below it[JE only]), and ocean monument, one sees only the corresponding hostile mobs for that structure within that structure. In the Overworld, this depends on the location:
In the Nether: Spawn conditions[]Whether a spawn condition fails differs from the above determination if the game tries to spawn them in that biome. For example, dolphins can have pack spawns that occur inside of frozen ocean and deep frozen ocean biomes, but no other biomes. These rules apply to variants of the same mob, such as baby zombies and spider jockeys. Each individual spawn attempt succeeds only if all of the following conditions are met:
The basic rules for spawning are as follows:
When doing the light check in the Overworld and End, the spawn chances are randomized and a spawn only occurs if the light level is less than or equal to a random number between 0 and 7. In the Nether, as long as the light level is below 11, the spawn is allowed. Some mobs have some additional rules in addition to the ones above.
If all of these conditions are met then the mob is spawned. The warped forest and soul sand valley biomes introduced a new mechanic to limit the amount of mobs that naturally spawn in them. The spawn cost (also called spawn potential or spawn density) takes on a value for each block in the biome. Certain mobs increase that value by some number ("charge") divided by their distance to the block. If a new spawn attempt would bring the "potential" of the spawning block above a certain threshold, the spawn attempt is canceled. This results in mobs not spawning too close to one another in these biomes, and new spawns in the area are completely blocked long before the full mobcap of 70 hostile mobs is ever reached. More specifically, a mob may be spawned at a location if sum( existing mob's charge ÷ distance to mob ) × new mob's charge < new mob's maximum potential. While the code allows for different mobs to have different charges and maximum potential, in both exiting biomes all checked mobs have the same charge and maximum potential. Which mobs contribute to the charge, how much they add, and what the maximum potential is are all biome-specific. In soul sand valleys, skeletons, ghasts, striders and endermen all add 0.7 (divided by distance), and the maximum potential allowed is 0.15. In warped forests only endermen affect the cost. There they add 1.0 each, and the maximum potential is 0.12. Due to the limited total number of mobs in soul sand valleys and warped forests, a larger-than-usual amount of mobs spawn in any space outside of these biomes, including in Nether fortresses. Notes
Bedrock Edition[]Environmental spawning in Bedrock Edition shares broad similarities to natural spawning in Java Edition: mobs spawn in a radius around the player subject to block conditions, lighting conditions, biome conditions, naturally generated structure conditions, and caps. Many mobs spawn in groups (called "packs" in Java and "herds" in Bedrock). One notable difference from Java Edition is that most animals can spawn at light level 7 or higher rather than 9 or higher. There are two types of environmental spawns: cluster spawns and structure spawns. Structure spawns reproduce specific types of mobs at specific locations within certain naturally generated structures, such as nether fortresses, swamp huts, etc. Cluster spawns account for all other types of environmental spawns, including mobs that spawn individually (i.e. not in a herd of 2 or more). Both types of environmental spawns follow the same rules for spawn conditions and mob caps, except that structure spawns can exceed the monster population cap by 1 (see below). Mob spawning in bedrock edition happens within a spherical shell 24-44 blocks away from the player on simulation distance 4. It happens a quasi-spherical shell 24-128 blocks away from the player, restricted by a simulation distance and/or to roughly 96 blocks horizontally, on simulation distances 6 and higher. This means that mobs can spawn directly above or below the player (for example, phantoms in the sky or zombies underground). Mobs can spawn only in chunks that are being ticked. There is a 11⁄2000 chance of the mob spawning algorithm attempting to run per chunk, per tick. Bedrock Edition mob cap[]There are three mob caps that affect environmental spawning: a global mob cap, population control caps for general mob types, and density caps for specific mob types. The global mob cap is set at 200 regardless of difficulty. The global mob cap affects only environmental mob spawning, and does not affect mobs spawned through breeding, spawn eggs, the /summon command, spawners, or any other type of mob spawning. Chickens created by thrown or dispensed eggs are counted in the global mob cap. Only mobs that have spawn rules count toward the global cap (i.e. armor stands and minecarts do not take up cap space). In addition, mobs that are within ticking areas (both those around players and those set manually using the /tickingarea command) count toward the global mob cap; mobs not ticked do not count toward the global mob cap. The population control caps limit how many mobs of each type and category can spawn within a 9 chunk by 9 chunk square region surrounding the chunk in which the spawn attempt is made. Mobs in chunks outside a ticking area still count toward population control counts as long as they were previously loaded (i.e. within simulation distance at some time) after relogging. The population control caps are split up into two distinct categories: a cap for surface mobs, and a cap for cave mobs. Cave mobs do not count toward the surface mob cap, and surface mobs do not count toward the cave mob cap. Whether a mob counts as a surface mob or a cave mob is determined by where or how it spawned, not where it happens to be at the moment. For cluster spawns, those that spawn on the highest spawnable block at a given coordinate count toward the surface cap, and any that spawn below the highest solid or non-solid but spawnable (e.g. ice or upper slab with air above) block count toward the cave cap. Structure-spawned mobs and converted mobs (i.e. drowned converted from zombies, witches from villagers, zombified piglins from pigs, and medium and small slimes from killed larger slimes) always count toward the cave cap, and spawner-spawned mobs always count toward the surface cap. There are five categories of mobs: ambient, animal, monster, pillager, and water_animal. The population control cap for each category and location of mob in each dimension is as follows (* denotes values that are coded in the game but not actually used by any mobs):
Some specific mobs types also have their own density caps. The density caps limit the number of those mobs to some amount below the applicable population control cap. Density caps are checked in the same manner as the population control caps. Caps are below (n/a indicates that the mob does not spawn in that environment at all). Bedrock spawn conditions[]See also: Simulation Distance The following rules apply to most mobs:
Cluster spawning[]Cluster spawning happens in two stages: first attempt to spawn surface mobs, then attempt to spawn cave mobs. Before spawning, the population control cap is calculated based on the 9 chunk x 9 chunk square area surrounding the current chunk. Spawning begins by picking a random X and Z location within the chunk currently being evaluated. The Y coordinate is determined by starting at the world height and searching downward for a solid-top-surface block with a non-spawn-blocking block above it. The first such block that is found is considered to be the surface, and the algorithm attempts to spawn a surface mob herd. However, if the algorithm finds a solid block before finding a spawnable solid-top-block (e.g. if it finds a tree trunk directly under leaves), it does not make any surface spawn attempt. The algorithm then continues to search downward for the next suitable block with a non-spawn-blocking block above it. When a block meeting the criteria is found, the algorithm attempts to spawn a cave mob herd at that block location. Cave spawn attempts continue until the Y coordinate reaches the world bottom, and do not stop even if a cave herd was spawned. Surface and cave cluster spawn attempts then go through the following steps to figure out what mob to spawn and how many:
Structure spawning[]Structure spawn attempts occur at specific relative X and Z coordinates in naturally generated structures, known as "hard-coded spawn spots". The structures that have hard-coded spawn spots include swamp huts, ocean monuments, pillager outposts, and nether fortresses. Whenever a successful cluster spawn attempt occurs within a chunk that contains a hard-coded spawn spot, the environmental spawning algorithm also attempts a structure spawn. (Note that a "successful attempt" here means that a spawnable block was found, even if the spawn was then blocked by light level check or mob cap check.) The structure spawn attempt follows the same rules and steps described above for cluster spawning, with the following changes:
Other types of spawning[]General[]
Animals[]Monsters[]
Other mobs[]
Despawning[]Java Edition[]All monster, ambient, and aquatic mobs excluding shulkers, withers, elder guardians and ender dragons despawn unless they have been marked persistent. Other mobs that are not monster, ambient, or aquatic that do despawn include ocelots, stray cats, and wandering traders.
Mobs are persistent, meaning they do not despawn and do not count toward the mob cap, when they:
Following mobs also have another way to prevent despawning and do not count toward mob cap: Bedrock Edition[]In Bedrock Edition, like Java, despawning occurs based on distance and chance.
Mobs with persistence do not despawn. Mobs gain persistence in the following ways:
The following entities always have persistence: History[]
This section is missing information about Bedrock Edition. Please expand the section to include this information. Further details may exist on the talk page.
Gallery[]
Issues[]Issues relating to "Spawn" are maintained on the bug tracker. Report issues there. Trivia[]
References[]External links[]Gameplay
|