Drops

Drops are items which appear when mobs and some other entities die. There are three basic types of drops: normal drops, rare drops, and Experience Orbs. Only normal drops appear when a mob is killed other than by the player.

Common drops
Common drops may occur whenever a mob dies, and appear at the location of the mob at the moment it receives the killing damage. Most mobs have particular items which it may drop when killed. Some common drops only appear when mobs are killed by the player, but they are still much more common than rare drops.

For each of these items, there is a random (uniform) distribution of numbers of that item it will drop; for example, a Cow will drop 0-2 Leather items and 1-3 Raw Beef items. Since the range includes 0, it is possible for no leather to be dropped. If the mob is killed with a weapon with the Looting enchantment, then the upper limit of the range is increased by the level number of the enchantment.

If a mob is a baby animal or a villager, it will not drop anything when killed.


 * ''Note: The term "common drops" was chosen by the authors of this article. It is not known to be an official term.

Rare drops
Rare drops occur in addition to the common drops. Unlike most common drops, they only occur if the monster is killed by a player. All rare drops can also be obtained by other means; there are no items which are exclusively available through rare drops. Rare drops are always a single item, not multiples.

Rare drops have a 2.5% chance of occurring when a monster dies, and a 20% chance of being enchanted rare drops in general for all weapons a mob may drop. Using a weapon with the Looting enchantment increases the chance of a rare drop by 0.5% per level, and also increases the chance of enchanted weapons (up to 50% with Looting III). All types of non-enchanted rare drops are equally likely.

When items are enchanted, the enchantment is chosen in the same way as using an Enchantment Table with a cost of 5 levels. It is possible to get multiple enchantments. This means that the following enchantments may occur on golden swords: and the following enchantments may occur on Bows:
 * Sharpness I–III
 * Smite I–IV
 * Bane of Arthropods I–IV
 * Knockback I–II
 * Fire Aspect I–II
 * Looting I–II
 * Power I

Experience Orbs
Experience Orbs only drop if a mob dies less than five seconds after being attacked (melee, bow, snowballs, eggs) by a player or by a player's pet wolf or cat. Their total value will always be the specific amount of experience granted by killing that mob.

Experience Orbs are similar to items but not the same. Unlike other drops, Experience Orbs appear at the location of the mob's corpse at the moment it disappears in a puff of smoke. Experience Orbs will move towards nearby players.

History
Experience Orbs were added in Minecraft Beta 1.8 (the Adventure Update) but it had no use until the next update. This was also the first version in which more mobs dropped more than one kind of item. Before Beta 1.8, skeletons were the only mobs that dropped two different items.

Before Beta 1.8, Zombies dropped feathers and Zombie Pigmen dropped cooked porkchops. This changed and they dropped rotten flesh, and eventually zombie pigmen dropped golden nuggets.

During the expanse of the Adventure Updates (Beta 1.8 to 1.0), many drops were added. Rotten flesh, Ender Pearls, Gold Nuggets, Ghast Tears, Spider Eyes, Blaze Rods, Snowballs, and many more meats, along with Experience Orbs.

During the Snapshot Releases (1.1 - 1.2), Magma Cubes dropped magma cream. Iron Golems were added, which dropped iron ingots and roses. New discs were dropped by creepers, except for "11". Sheep were able to regrow wool. Rare drops were added in Minecraft 1.2.