Fire

Fire is a harmful non-solid block.

Obtaining
Fire cannot be obtained as an item under any circumstances.

It can be placed using flint and steel or a fire charge. Fire spreads quickly across flammable blocks, and can spontaneously ignite when flammable blocks are near lava.

The explosion from sleeping in a bed in the Nether or the End creates fire, as does the explosion of a ghast fireball or the impact of a blaze fireball.

In the Bedrock Edition, it may be obtained as an item via inventory editing.

Natural generation
Fire naturally generates across the terrain of the Nether.

Lava generated next to flammable blocks can naturally ignite fires (see below).

Lightning strikes can also set fires.

Usage


When placed, fire burns for a short and randomly determined amount of time. If nothing flammable is adjacent to it, the flames die out. Water that touches fire extinguishes it.

Burning entities
Mobs and players catch fire when exposed to it. Fire obstructs the player's view slightly, inflicting health damage at a rate of per second. This is the same rate that the player gains health in Peaceful difficulty, so fire alone cannot kill the player in this mode. A player continues burning for 8 seconds after moving out of the fire block, which deals additional damage unless the fire is extinguished by rain or water. Attacks from burning zombies also set fire to the player.

Items or blocks falling into fire briefly catch fire and disappear, extinguishing the fire block on which it fell.

If a mob that can drop meat dies while on fire, it drops the cooked version of it, with the exception of the fish dropped from polar bears, common drop of fish from guardians and the rare drop of fish dropped from guardians.

Nether mobs do not catch fire and cannot be damaged by fire.

Being on fire is not considered a status effect and therefore cannot be cured by milk.

Spread
Fire spreads over flammable surfaces. Fire can climb up walls, across floors and ceilings, and over small gaps. More precisely, a fire block can turn any air block that is adjacent to a flammable block into a fire block. This can happen at a distance of up to one block downwards, one block sideways (including diagonals), and four blocks upwards of the original fire block (not the block the fire is on/next to). Therefore if the player is using fire to build a fireplace, caution is needed. Blocks in the way do not prevent fire from igniting blocks above it—so even if the player protects a wooden roof with cobblestone between it and the fire, the fire ignores that cobblestone.

Fire spreads from a still lava block similarly: any air block one above and up to one block sideways (including diagonals) or two above and two blocks sideways (including diagonals) that is adjacent to a flammable block may be turned into a fire block.

Flammable blocks
Fire can spread onto and burn away any flammable block (or in the case of TNT, ignite it). On the other hand, fire that is not adjacent to any flammable block does not spread, even to another flammable block within the normal range.

In the following table, the higher the encouragement, the more quickly a block catches fire if fire is available to spread there. The higher the flammability, the more quickly a block on fire burns away. These are relative values; actual flammability and burn time depends not only on these values, but on difficulty, rain, the age of the fire, and a certain amount of randomness due to block ticks, among other things. Fire spread is also reduced significantly if the flammable blocks are located in a rather humid biome. Humid biomes are swamp, mushroom island and jungle with all of their respective variants excluding jungle edge.

Non-flammable blocks
Non-flammable blocks can be lit but do not burn away, and such fire does not spread. Non-flammable blocks other than netherrack or magma blocks extinguish themselves after a few seconds.

Certain blocks can catch fire from nearby lava, though they do not burn away:

Extinguishing
Fire burns out after a while on its own; however, the player may want to extinguish the fire as soon as possible to prevent damage. Punching or hitting the side of a burning block extinguishes the fire on that side and makes a "fizz" sound. Hitting fire while holding a tool does not reduce the tool's durability. Placing blocks on the fire also extinguishes it. Water and lava extinguish fires that they flow into, and thrown splash and lingering water bottles extinguish fires in the block hit and the four blocks horizontally surrounding it.

Mobs on fire are extinguished when in water or in a cauldron containing it. In the latter case, one layer of water disappears.

Fire extinguishes more quickly if nothing flammable is present, and very soon after it consumes a flammable block immediately beneath it.
 * Fire has an age property that determines how it extinguishes, ranging from age 0 when the fire is set, and growing to age 15. For fire older than age 3, if nothing flammable is adjacent to the fire, or if the block below doesn't have a solid top surface, the fire is extinguished by the next block tick. At age 15, as long as there isn't a flammable block below the fire, a block tick has a $1/4$ chance to extinguish the fire.

If fire is exposed to rain, it extinguishes quickly.
 * Rain affects fire if it falls directly onto the fire, or into the four adjacent blocks. Specifically, no matter the age, any block tick has a 20–65% chance of rain extinguishing the fire, depending on the fire's age: 3 percentage points per age of the fire.

Fire can be extinguished by hitting it using a sword or trident in Creative mode, unlike other blocks.

Eternal fire
When lit, netherrack and magma blocks maintain fire forever, unless extinguished by any method except rain. Bedrock in the End also burn eternally.

If is , fire lasts forever until it is put out by the player, and does not spread or affect flammable blocks.

Trivia

 * Sometimes, in survival, when the player walks into a fire briefly and walk out quickly enough, the player takes only a little bit of damage, but does not stay on fire.
 * Fire uses two texture files, one for the inner fire and one for the outer fire.
 * Each end crystal continuously generates a block of fire at its location, if the crystal is placed or generated in the End. This fire is incapable of spreading.

Bedrock Edition

 * Burning mobs turn orange and emit large fire particles around their body.
 * The fire spreading mechanic is based on how it would be prior to Java Edition Beta 1.6.
 * When the player is on fire, there is a different burning animation on the screen than in Java Edition (it partially obstructs view when looking downwards).