Finding Rare Biomes in Your Seed

How biomes are chosen since 1.18

The Overworld biome at any point is decided by six noise values sampled there: temperature, humidity, continentalness, erosion, weirdness and depth. Continentalness separates oceans from inland; erosion decides whether the land is flat or mountainous; temperature and humidity pick the climate; weirdness chooses between variants; depth selects cave biomes underground. Each biome owns a region of that six-dimensional space, and the point gets whichever biome's region it falls in.

That is why rare biomes are rare: they own small regions, often at extreme values. Mushroom fields need the lowest continentalness, which only occurs far out in deep ocean. Cherry groves and meadows need mountainous erosion at moderate height. Ice spikes are a weirdness variant of snowy plains. The deep dark needs great depth under high ground. Since Java and Bedrock share these functions from 1.18 on, a rare biome is in the same place on both editions for the same seed.

The biome finder draws the result for your seed and the Highlight biome option dims everything except the one you pick. Three biomes popular enough to deserve it have their own pages that highlight on load: the mushroom island finder, the cherry grove finder and the pale garden finder.

How far the rare biomes are on five real seeds

The table gives the distance from spawn to the nearest patch of each biome on Java 26.3, read from the engine's biome map at a 16-block resolution (the deep dark at Y -40), so treat the coordinates as the centre of a patch, not a block to stand on. The spread between seeds is the point: a cherry grove is 300 blocks away on one seed and 2,700 on another.

Seed 8675309123456789 is the biome collector's seed: a pale garden about 258 blocks from spawn around -72, 248, a dark forest at 168 blocks, bamboo jungle and jungle within 210, lush caves and the deep dark underground within 190, and a cherry grove under 1,000 blocks away. Seed 0 has the closest mushroom fields of the five, around -968, -552, a thousand blocks from spawn and reachable by boat across the deep ocean that surrounds it.

Mushroom fields

Mushroom fields are the safest biome in the game: no hostile mobs spawn there naturally, even in the dark, and the mooshrooms give milk, mushroom stew and leather. They form only at the lowest continentalness, which means an island in deep ocean, far from any other land, usually 1,000 to 3,000 blocks from spawn and sometimes much further. The mushroom island finder highlights every patch; bring a boat, and a bed, because the trip across the ocean is the whole challenge.

A mycelium island is also the classic site for a mob-proof base and for a guardian farm, since the deep ocean around it holds monuments: on seed 0 the nearest monument is at -1136, -240, in the same ocean as the mushroom fields at -968, -552.

Mushroom Islands & Frozen Oceans! ▫ Minecraft Survival Guide S3 ▫ Tutorial Let's Play [Ep.65]27 min

Cherry groves, meadows and the mountain biomes

Cherry groves arrived in 1.20 and grow on the same mid-height mountain terrain as meadows, next to groves and snowy slopes. They give pink petals, cherry wood and a view, and the mountains around them hold emeralds, iron at height and, underneath, the deep dark. Seed 123456789 has one about 312 blocks from spawn around 56, 264, close enough for a first base.

Frozen peaks, jagged peaks and stony peaks are the tops of the same mountains and show up in the same places; if you want a mountain base with a cherry grove below it, highlight the grove first and read the peak biomes around it on the map. Meadows, besides being pretty, are one of the six village biomes.

Pale gardens and dark forests

The pale garden, added in 1.21.4, is the grey relative of the dark forest, with pale oak trees, hanging moss, eyeblossoms and the creaking that only moves when you look away. It shares the dark forest's climate and is rarer, so it usually borders a dark forest. Both can host woodland mansions, which is the other reason to look for them; the mansion guide explains how the mansion grid and these biomes interact.

In a world created before 1.21.4, pale gardens only appear in chunks generated after the update. Set the finder's version to the one your new chunks use and the highlight shows where they will be.

Ice spikes, jungles, badlands and the deep dark

• Ice spikes are the weirdness variant of snowy plains: towers of packed ice on snow. Packed ice is the point, for ice roads and builds. They sit inside larger snowy areas, so look for them where the map is white; seed chunkscout, which spawns in a snowy taiga, has them 1,370 blocks out.
• Jungles and bamboo jungles are hot and humid: parrots, pandas, ocelots, melons, cocoa and jungle temples. Seed -1234567890123 has a jungle within 220 blocks of spawn and a bamboo jungle within 400.
• Badlands are hot and dry with terracotta cliffs, mineshafts on the surface and far more gold than anywhere else. Eroded badlands are the variant with hoodoo spires. Both are far on four of the five seeds here, which is normal.
• Deep dark is a cave biome, so it does not appear on the surface biome map. Switch the map's Biome layer from Surface to Deep (Y -51) and the sculk regions under the mountains appear, with the ancient cities inside them; the Caves (Y 0) layer does the same for lush and dripstone caves. Seed 8675309123456789 has deep dark under spawn within 200 blocks.

Searching seeds for a biome

If the biome you want is thousands of blocks away on your seed, the seed finder accepts biome conditions such as a mushroom field within 500 blocks of spawn or a cherry grove at spawn, and tests seeds until it has matches. Biome conditions are the cheapest to test, since no structures need checking, so they return quickly even for rare biomes. Combine one biome with one structure and you still get results in reasonable time; stack three rare biomes and you will wait.

Because the Overworld biome map is shared, a seed found for Java works for a Bedrock player who wants the same biome, as long as the version band matches; only the structures differ.