Tutorials/Far Lands



The Far Lands are a dangerous place, both for players (due to lots of darkness, hostile mobs and falls) and the device Minecraft runs on. But, if you want to go to this place, here is how to reach it and lessen the lag.

How to reach
In the Java editions of Minecraft, the Far Lands can only be found in versions from Infdev 2010/03/27 (though they existed in previous versions, the world became non-soild half-way to the far lands, which made it impossible to reach without teleporting) to Beta 1.7. They start generating near the coordinates of ±12,550,821 on X and Z axes. Given that one block’s side is one meter long, the distance to the Far Lands from the world’s center of coordinates can be measured as about 12,551 km (7844 mi). There is no conventional way of using Creative or commands to quickly reach this huge distance, since they didn't exist in these old versions, except for multiplayer. Instead, the different methods listed below are used. There is also a glitch in 1.12 where if you, exit before you hit the ground, load the world in beta 1.7.3, you will be 124 blocks short of the far lands, this is a very easy way to reach it if you don't have the single player commands mod.

Directly by the Overworld
Just walking in the Overworld towards any direction (positive or negative X and/or Z axis) is the most time-consuming way; reaching the Far Lands from the world center would take well over a month of overall Minecraft gameplay. However, it is safer than walking in the Nether and doesn't require items difficult to obtain. Crafting a bed before starting the long journey is recommended; sleeping in it before the night falls completely will avoid the annoyance of hostile mobs in the way. Crafting a handful of boats will also help crossing large water bodies. Pay attention to heights and avoid falling from them. Since hunger was not present prior to Beta 1.8, you won't need much food but only enough to restore your health in case of you losing it by falling or being hit.

By the Nether
Walking one block in the Nether is equal to walking eight blocks in the Overworld. Thus, by traveling through the Nether, it is possible to reach the Overworld Far Lands in just over a week. However, since the Nether is a rather dangerous dimension and many different items are required to construct a nether portal, it will take you a considerable time of trivial Minecraft play in order to obtain material and proper equipment.

When finally in the Nether and adequately protected, the player must travel a few million blocks in the X and/or Y axis. It won't be so far as in the Overworld, but it will still be a long trip. Another portal will be required to exit the Nether, so, before proceeding, it is recommended to mine all the obsidian blocks of the portal and take them with you in order to lately reconstruct the portal. Evidently, flint and steel must also be taken.

The Nether is a very dangerous place, so be very aware of mobs, lava, fire and high heights all around, and bring as much as food as you can to restore your health after the likely unfortunate events that will happen in your way. When the sufficient distance (see below) is finally reached, using the rebuilt portal will place the player near or in the Far Lands.

The nether portal in the Nether must be placed no further than at X/Z of ±4,000,000, because beyond that point, the portal would attempt to teleport the player to coordinates beyond X/Z of ±32,000,000, which is the limit on the world coordinates. Likewise, an Overworld portal even near X/Z of ±32,000,000, would lead the player to the coordinates near X/Z of ±4,000,000 (less than one-third of the way to the Far Lands), so it is not possible to reach the Nether Far Lands by this way. Placing the portal near X/Z of ±1,568,852 would allow the player to reach the inner edge of the Far Lands. If you reach X/Z ±12,550,820 in the Nether, the "Nether Far Lands" will generate. More info about the Nether Far Lands can be found here.

If you tried to make a nether portal at the Nether Far Lands, you would end up at ±100,406,560 X/Z, which is impossible, because beyond 32,000,000 at the Overworld, blocks stop generating and "fake blocks" will generate. You can't edit the terrain beyond ±32,000,000 X/Z, so the Nether Portal can't appear past this point. This is a dangerous but faster method then walking from the overworld.

Commands
Commands weren’t avalible in Minecraft singleplayer until after the Far Lands were removed, but if the player is on a beta multiplayer server, then the player can do the  command..


 * or to teleport near the Edge Far Lands. Make sure flying is on or player damage is off, as it teleports above the height limit. 0 can be really anything between roughly -12,550,820 and 12,550,820.
 * to teleport near the Corner Far Lands. Also make sure you’re protected from falling damage.

In both above cases,  can be negative.

In the Nether, these commands will teleport you above the top layer of bedrock, so make sure to either teleport lower, turn "no-clip" on, use Spectator mode if possible, or a combination of them.

To not get instantly hit by loads of lag, it can be better to teleport to a few hundred meters away from the Far Lands or if using a mod, use lag reducing mods such as Optifine or Fastcraft.

(Note: In relatively recent versions of pocket edition, while teleporting to the above coordinates is still possible, terrain generates as normal but the player cannot move freely)

External programs
External editors such as an NBT editor or MCEdit can be used to edit the coordinates of the player.

MCEdit
Alternately you can use MCEdit to get to the far lands, however, you may die a few times before getting it right. Start the Minecraft Launcher and create a new profile in Beta 1.7.3 (check the box that says "Allow use of old Beta versions"). Create a new map, walk around for a few seconds, then save and quit. Open the map in MCEdit and move the player's position to a few hundred meters from the Far Lands (so as to not get hit by the full force of the lag all at once). When doing this, it is a good idea to set the player's spawn point here, so if you die, you will be able to respawn near the Far Lands and not have to go through the whole process again (a similar method can be used in the possible situation where you spawn above or below ground.) The Far Lands' land distortion starts at 12,550,821 (x or z, although if you go for a corner where they meet expect double the lag, due to the mobs) so it is better to go to the X/Z 12,550,400-12,550,600 range. Save and quit, load up the world (in Beta 1.7.3), and as it is a new area it will be empty for a while as it loads up. Once there, it is a good idea to turn your render distance down if you have not done so already, as this will help with the lag. Once there hit F3 and check to see which direction increases the number (which will display something around 1.2550E7 because 12,550,000 is considered too long by the game to display.) You should notice strange physics immediately, however, the wall of distorted terrain is still a 200-400 meter walk away (if you used the provided number range.) Once the edge of your view range hits the start of the distorted terrain you will start to get a large amount of lag. Now, you need to explore the Far Lands as much as you can before the lag makes the game too slow to play because once you convert your map into Beta 1.8 or higher, the only Far Lands terrain you will have to explore is the terrain you generated in 1.7.3. Load your map in a newer version, and now you have the Far Lands terrain to do things to. Just remember that any terrain that you did not explore in Beta 1.7.3 will generate as normal terrain. If you want a lot of the beta 1.7.3 land to generate then once things get too laggy you can keep using MCEdit to teleport yourself 100 blocks further. After changing location with MCEdit and closing the map (Vital! You can corrupt the map having it open in 2 programs at once!) start Minecraft up, load the level, pause while looking at the sky (this lessens the CPU load) and give it a short time to process the changes (waiting until there are no chunk updates left may take too long). View distance doesn't seem to affect newly generated terrain distance (notice the explored area circle around you when using a map doesn't change when view distances change) so keep it turned down even though that seems counter-intuitive. Then save and quit and use MCEdit to move yourself another 100 blocks. Keeping either X or Z at 12,550,820 and lowering the other one by 100 each time will let you tour the edge of the wall. Increasing past 12,550,820 will let you explore the interior of the Far Lands, however, the chance of appearing embedded in solid blocks is higher. You might want to consider visiting all 4 corners and mapping 1 square km around them. One last warning: do not ever change the worldspawn (the default spawn location where you appear at the start and reappear at if you die and your bed is obstructed) to a Far Lands area, either with a map editor or on later versions, cheats. The area in a 10 chunk radius around the worldspawn is always loaded, and so any lag in that area is also always loaded.

World customisation and mods
Using customized worlds (before Java Edition 1.13) to crank up the Coordinate Scale option to high enough numbers can cause the area where the Far Lands would be to be walkably close to the origin of the world. The Far Lands can then be activated using mods. This will probably not cause as much lag as conventional methods since the gravel falling bug is only due to excessive effects and not the terrain.

Changing the Height Scale up to similarly high options (such as 134000000) will generate the Sky Far Lands, without mods.

Switching from modern to classic
You can make a new world in modern Java edition and run the following command Leave modern Java edition and go to Beta 1.7.3 or older. If you suffocate, repeat the process again. If you do this at the correct Y position, you should see the Far Lands.

What to do at the Far Lands
These sections cover things that can be or should be done when the Far Lands are reached.

Avoiding lag
The Far Lands are a very laggy place, due to excessive coordinates and entities; however, the lag can be lessened by the following means.

If the Far Lands are ported (see below), and the player has access to commands, the  command will stop mobs from spawning, and the  command can be used to remove excessive entities in the vicinity (use about 3 times per minute for greater efficiency; although it will kill any entity other than the players, including minecarts, paintings, potentially useful mobs etc.; 300 can be any desired distance), and  can disallow sand and gravel dropping as items (but mobs wouldn’t drop anything either) (sand and gravel will not cause excessive drops in Far Lands made to spawn closer). If not ported, use mods and/or multiplayer to get appropriate commands. Alternatively, if the terrain is ported, it can be possible to also perform the first command with the use of command blocks, along with a redstone clock. Also, if you are using Minecraft 1.9 or newer, you may use a command block on the “repeat” setting, along with toggling “always active”. Another option is to add lag reducing mods, like Optifine or Fastcraft.

Additionally, the render distance could be brought down to render less of the area, which can help with the lag. Looking at the sky leaves lag-inducing entities away from the point of view, also lessening the lag.

However if you want to play on beta and you cannot install Single player commands, you can remove the lagging entities from an area via some precise saving and re-logging. you would to this by first NBT editing yourself to 500 blocks away from the Far lands and start walking to them. Keeping f3 open, when you see the Far Lands and the entity count starts rapidly stuttering, you save and quit then reopen the world, when you join back you have to press escape and open the menu as fast as possible, then you relog back and walk around long enough to check whether the entity count is stuttering rapidly. If it is not stuttering, then you have cleared that portion of land from lag. if it is still stuttering then you need to keep relogging and checking the count till it calms down. This whole process is kind of just luck since the entity counter seems to calm down at random points, if you can clear out a lot of terrain in one go, that's better but if you can't do it in time and the entity counter calms down at 2000-3000, then you are going to be left with residue lag and have to manually destroy the gravel entities on the ground. Alternately you can get the entity counter to stop going up steadily but it will still be dilating up and down a bit, this is a semi stable state and is the most common state for the Entity relog, while it is easiest to get it to this, its not the best because you can easily make it unstable again, although doing this is a bit more uncommon. To get a fully stable piece of land is the best but it is tedious, annoying and the chance of doing this while still beating the entity counter is stupidly unlikely, to get this you just keep relogging until the entity counter doesn't dilate rapidly at all. Unfortunately, sometimes hitting a semi stable state is not possible when you are deep in the farlands, or in the corner farlands, in this case you have to hit a fully stable state, which involves saving on the same frame that all the randomly falling gravel in the area has finished falling or gets destroyed but has not reloaded yet.

Porting the terrain


It is possible to port the Far Lands terrain from pre-Beta 1.8 into modern versions. To do that, after starting a pre-Beta 1.8 world and later reaching the Far Lands, start going (or teleporting) around to generate the Far Lands while getting rid of lag by the methods above. After generating the desired amount of terrain, convert the world into modern versions, and you will have the Far Lands terrain to do things with.

If you are using a mod, load as much terrain as you can, then convert to vanilla Minecraft of the same version.

Building the Far Lands
Building them would take a few months, but the end of them leads to the Void. As of them being 1336 blocks wide, it takes 19 months to reach the end! However, you need the following materials:


 * Stone
 * Dirt
 * Grass Block
 * Ore (if you want to have mines inside your own Far Lands)
 * Wood
 * Leaves

And it takes 25 months to build!