How to use the Ravine Finder
Ravines are deep, narrow canyons cut through the ground, often with exposed ores on their walls and caves branching off. The Ravine Finder replays the game's canyon carver for your seed step by step, so it draws each ravine's whole path on the map, gives its width and depth, and tells you whether you can see it from the surface.
- Enter your seed and a Java version from 1.18 to 26.3; ravines are drawn as bands along their path.
- Sand-coloured paths open to the sky, blue ones cut the sea floor, brown ones are buried underground. Below sea level expect water at the bottom.
- Click the marker at a ravine's start for its width, length and Y range, and copy the coordinates or a /tp command.
How ravines generate
Every chunk has a 1 in 100 chance to start a ravine (the canyon carver). It starts between Y 10 and Y 67, gets a random direction, a width between 0 and 6 (usually around 2) and a length of about 80 to 110 blocks, then winds along that path, widest in the middle. The game skips one step in four, which is why ravine floors are uneven.
Ravines are carved after the terrain, so they cut through noise caves and other ravines. Where they meet an aquifer the bottom fills with water, and below Y -54 with lava.
Why look for ravines
A ravine is the fastest way underground in a new world: its walls expose coal, iron and copper, and deeper ones reach gold and redstone. Surface ravines are easy to spot from a distance; buried ones are found by caving or by digging down at the path shown here.
Editions and versions
| Dimension | Overworld |
|---|---|
| Editions | Java, up to 26.3 |
Questions
Is the Ravine Finder accurate?
Yes. The start, width and path come from the game's own carver code, and against worlds generated by the official Java 26.3 server (two seeds, twelve areas of 256×256 blocks) 97.5% of the 283 path points we checked were really open in the game. About half of those points were under water: below sea level most ravine floors are flooded by aquifers, so bring a bucket or boat.
What does the width mean?
It is the carver's own thickness value (0 to 6). At its middle a ravine reaches roughly 1.5 + width blocks to each side of the path, and it is several times taller than it is wide.
Can I see every ravine from the surface?
No. Most start well below the surface and stay buried; the finder marks the ones whose path reaches the top of the terrain (open to the sky) or the sea floor.
Does it work for Bedrock?
No. The engine replays Java's canyon carver only; Bedrock ravines are not modelled, so the finder is Java only.
Updated · data for Minecraft Java up to 26.3