Bedrock Edition Far Lands



The Far Lands were the area that formed the "edge" of the "infinite" map in versions prior to Beta 1.8. The Far Lands made its first appearance in Infdev (March 27, 2010). The distance from the center of the Minecraft map to the beginning of the Far Lands, is 12,550,820 meters (about a third of the circumference of the Earth at its equator). When players made it to the Far Lands, they would experience an excessive drop in framerate and the terrain would be severely distorted. This was fixed in Beta 1.8, resulting in the disappearance of the distorted land. This fix was an unintended side effect of the large changes in terrain generation for Beta 1.8.

Versions between Alpha 1.2.0 (Halloween Update) and Beta 1.7.3 rendered fake chunks outside of a limit of 32,000,000 meters; attempting to walk onto them would cause the player to die in the Void. From the beginning of Infdev all the way to the Halloween Update, the world abruptly ended at 32,000,000 meters, and leaving the boundary caused you to be trapped rather than die.

Getting to the Far Lands
Getting to the Far Lands without the use of an external program is a very difficult (or at least time consuming) task, as walking to there from the center of the map will take approximately 820 hours or 34 days, (102 hours or 4.25 days if you travel through the nether). Instead, a level.dat editor can be used to teleport the player there.

The boundary between the normal map and the Far Lands (defined by when the map started generating the distorted terrain) occurred at X/Z of ±12,550,821.

The hard limit where chunks are overwritten is at X/Z of ±34,359,738,368, which is about 23% of the distance from the Earth to the Sun. At X/Z of ±2,147,483,648 (crashes at 2,147,483,439), item positions, mob pathfinding and other things using 32-bit integers will overflow and act strangely, usually resulting in Minecraft crashing.

At X/Z of ±1.798×10308, the position of the player, represented by a double-precision floating point number, would overflow to 'infinity', causing a complete breakdown of arithmetic. Even at far smaller coordinates, the limited precision would cause errors in calculations. For example, at 1016, xPosition + 1 is equal to xPosition.

Using Single Player Commands, it is very easy to get to the Far Lands using teleportation. After pressing the chat key (default "T") to open up the console-like input window, using the "teleport" command (or its abbreviation, "tp") followed by X, Y, and Z coordinates will allow the player to go wherever they want. For example:


 * To get to where the Edge Far Lands' wall was, try "/tp 12550820 129 0". Make sure either flying is turned on or damage is turned off, as otherwise you'll fall to your death.
 * To get to where the Corner Far Lands were (the walls' intersection), try "/tp 12550820 129 12550820". Again, make sure you're protected from fall damage.

Unfortunately, there was severe lag, and slower computers used to crash upon this teleportation. Opening a GUI helped the Far Lands render much, much faster. You can do this by pausing (pressing Escape) or opening the Single Player Commands prompt again. When you venture out farther above and into the far lands, the probability increases that a "bad chunk" will appear. A bad chunk is a chunk filled with terribly corrupt data, and is the cause of sudden lag spikes that can easily make Minecraft crash.

Alternately you can use MCEdit to get to the far lands, however you may die a few times before getting it right. Start Minecraft 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 of 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 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 larger quantity of the Far Lands terrain to edit, you can teleport in 100-or so block intervals. This can also be used to lessen the lag problems, as when the world first loads up it usually has a better framerate than when it has loaded. Keep doing this at your chosen interval amount until you have the desired amount of terrain.

Avoiding lag in the Far Lands
If you're using Single Player Commands, you can get rid of the lag by using several commands, which include (but are not limited to):


 * the killall command to remove all mobs, dropped items, and falling gravel/sand which will be about 4000 per 20 seconds. This should be used at least three times per minute to prevent severe lag from occurring.
 * the drops command to stop blocks from dropping items, so gravel and sand that fall will not cause any lag.
 * the light command to make all blocks as bright as possible so you can actually see the layers underneath the top layer. Also helps with hostile mob spawning, which in turn, increases frame rate.

This all will increase your frame rate to a value close to what would be experienced in the "normal" area of the map.

If you don't want to use mods, you can also avoid some of the lag by setting your game difficulty to peaceful via options menu.

Geography of the Far Lands
Both areas of the Far Lands feature extremely strange terrain, although they are significantly different. In both zones, any area beneath sea level, excluding regular caves, will be flooded with water. The Far Lands' structure is dependent on the seed used for generating the map, although the general patterns remain the same. Beyond X/Z of ±32,000,000, chunks are treated as permanently nonexistent, and will not generate, even though they may appear to. This value is hardcoded in the source code of Minecraft. This means it cannot be changed without editing the source files.

The Far Lands will generate biomes but most biomes will be indistinguishable except by the color of the grass. Desert biomes will be covered in sand and snow-covered biomes will be covered with snow, excluding the top of the map (because there's no space for the snow cover up there). Trees will generate somewhat normally, but can only be found in the upper areas of the map due to the need for grass. However, if you open Single Player Commands, the biome will always be Forest.

Ores can be found up to their respective maximum heights just like in the normal world. Unfortunately, due to the flooding, everything except for coal is difficult, if not impossible, to acquire. In the solid areas of the Far Lands, normal caves will generate but will be limited and small. Along with the caves, dungeons (extremely rare) and lakes can be found in solid areas. Water and lava springs can be found out in the open and in caves.

Much of the open space in both areas is shrouded in darkness and thus hostile mobs run rampant, making the Far Lands as a whole incredibly dangerous. This is especially problematic in the Corner Far Lands due to its layered structure. The flooded zones are filled with squid.

In the Sky Dimension, the Far Lands are not half flooded with water and bedrock does not form at lower levels.

Edge Far Lands (The Loop)
The boundary of the Far Lands Edge (that is, where it meets the regular map) looks like a solid wall, all the way to the top of the map (Y-coordinate 127) that is filled with gaping holes perpendicular to the edge. These holes are extremely long, perhaps infinite, and on the whole seem to change very little no matter how deep the player ventures. They can be blocked, either partially or completely, but such blockages are rare and temporary. This "wall of Swiss cheese" pattern continues beneath ground level, all the way to the bottom of the map, and seems to be partially caused by a large one-dimensional distortion in the map generator's output.

The Far Lands spawn hostile mobs at a rate far higher than any natural chunk but lower than Corner Far Lands, due to the sheer amount of space in absolute darkness.

The Edge Far Lands' average block composition: 36% Stone, 25% Air, 23% Water, 10% Dirt/Grass, 2% Bedrock, and 4% others. (Based on a 14x14 chunk selection)

Corner Far Lands (The Stack)
At a corner, when two perpendicular Edge Far Lands sections meet, the Corner Far Lands begin to generate. Unlike the infinite-length holes in the Edge Far Lands, the Corner Far Lands contains more normal terrain. This terrain is "stacked" on top of itself to create a bizarre sandwich with layers of ground and air, which gives it its nickname. Each layer looks like a gigantic floating continent, hovering over the next layer, which is shadowed.

The majority of the generated world is Corner Far Lands, as the "normal" map (before 12,550,821) only makes the center of the world, and the Edge Far Lands only makes its continued sides.

The number of layers isn't always the same, and varies between five to seven. Layers can be grouped into three categories:
 * The top layer. This layer exists at the absolute top of the map. Occasionally there can be a lower area that isn't shadowed (this is technically a dry layer). The lower area is where a majority of the trees and passive mobs can be found, as the top layer receives almost all of the sunlight. Due to the lack of space the area at the absolute top can't have trees or mobs.
 * The top layer tends to light incorrectly in day-night transitions. This is because the sunlight calculation doesn't work when the entire chunk is blocked at Y-coordinate 128.
 * The dry layers. These generate slightly flatter than normal terrain and have grass, despite the darkness. At sea level massive floating beaches can be found, which will collapse if modified. Hostile mobs spawn rate likely approaches the maximum due to being in the shadow of the top layer. Rarely, there are holes in the top layer that allow sunlight to reach these layers. Caves that have one of these layers as their "surface" can occasionally be carved out of dirt instead of stone. These layers have cave-like ceilings made out of stone, gravel and dirt.
 * The flooded layers. Like the dry layers, these generate somewhat flat terrain, but it is comprised primarily of stone. Sand and sandstone will show up down here, even up to 30 meters below sea level. Except for coal, all the ores can only be found in these layers.

Sometimes there are extremely tall pillars of gravel that stretch from the ground to the ceiling of a layer. Likewise, some of the beaches that collapse will create pillars of sand all the way down to the ground, despite there not being that much sand to begin with. The Corner Far Lands is also prone to having near-perfect diagonal lines being carved into the ceilings or floors of layers. If traced, these lines all intersect at the corner (X/Z ±12,550,821). This seems similar to how the Edge Far Lands have a consistent pattern along lines perpendicular to their edge, but is much less pronounced.

The Corner Far Lands' average block composition: 40% Stone, 16% Air, 28% Water, 10% Dirt/Grass, 2% Bedrock, and 4% others. (Based on a 14x14 chunk selection)

In the Nether


The Nether Edge Far Lands look identical to the regular Edge Far Lands, except with Nether blocks. They're constructed out of Netherrack with some Soul Sand mixed in. Glowstone will be found in coral-like structures like the rest of the Nether. Both the floor and ceiling bedrock layers will be present, as well as the lava ocean (at Y-coordinate 31). The Nether Corner Far Lands also look identical in nature to their real-world counterparts (although not necessarily exactly the same). They have a similar stack of layers and contain layers flooded with lava (at levels 31 and below) instead of water.

In the Nether, the terrible lag associated with the regular Far Lands will not occur. This is because there is no sand and very little gravel in the Nether.

If a nether portal is created in the Far Lands of the overworld, entering will cause a teleportation to normal nether, as 32,000,000, the limit at which block physics and lighting cease to function, divided by 8 (as 1 block in the nether corresponds to 8 blocks in the overworld), is 4,000,000, within the limits of 32,000,000. Conversely, a nether portal built in the nether Far Lands will not function, as even at the limit of 12,550,820 blocks as the beginning of the Far Lands would cause the player to come out at 100,406,560, far past 32,000,000, may resulting to crashes or black screen.

Effects of the Far Lands


There are many effects that will be noticed after traveling millions of blocks away from the center of the map. The very first effect that will be noticed is the jumpy or stuttering movement of the map, which isn't directly related to the Far Lands themselves but instead to floating-point precision errors. This jumpy movement is notable even at X/Z of ±500,000. Players will experience extreme framerate drops and very high CPU usage, which will continue until Minecraft freezes completely. The framerate drops do not occur in multiplayer servers, though it will, depending on the server computer's RAM, make the server itself lag. In both Single-Player and multiplayer, the intense lag that is characteristic of the Far Lands is caused by massive numbers of falling sand or gravel entities. This in turn is caused (like most of the rest of the Far Lands' strange effects) by more floating-point precision errors.

As the player journeys even deeper into the Far Lands, the effects worsen to the point where the game is unplayable. At X/Z ±32,000,000, block physics stop functioning correctly. Lighting doesn't work and the blocks, although they appear to be there, aren't solid. If the player tries to walk on these blocks, he or she will fall into the Void. Because of this, it's impossible to get even close to X/Z ±34,359,738,368 or ±2,147,483,648 without the assistance of editors or mods. At excessive X/Z positions, World Renderer no longer works, or takes incredibly long times and uses most, if not all CPU usage. It then becomes almost impossible to close Minecraft without a task manager.

Weather is not affected by the Far Lands directly but is by their terrain. Lightning bolts that hit surfaces at the top of the map (Y-coordinate 127) will be invisible and will not cause fire. The particles created when rain hits these surfaces will be black instead of blue. Snow will not accumulate on these surfaces either (because there's no space). As of Beta 1.6, these effects are unique to the Far Lands as it's impossible to artificially place solid blocks at layer 127.

Map editors
When viewing the Far Lands (Beta 1.7.3 and below) in a 3D Minecraft map editor, you will encounter errors. In MCEdit, the selection cubes start to distort and the map distorts when viewing. In addition when rotating your view around a selected area, blocks will not be lined up right and will change how poorly lined up they are randomly, making the whole world seem to shake like a machine about to rattle itself to pieces.

In previous versions of Minecraft
Very little is known about the Far Lands of older versions of Minecraft for many reasons; they had no official name, and few knew of their existence. Fewer still tried to make them known to the world, and so they remained unknown. When Notch mentioned them on his blog and gave them an official nickname, interest took hold.

In Infdev, although the Far Lands existed, many of the side effects didn't. However, fire particles and doors would act strange. There was no lag or stuttering movement, and beyond X/Z ±32,000,000, the blocks would simply not render. Walking off the edge would cause the player to become stuck in a glitched position, unable to escape.

It has been confirmed that in Alpha v1.1.2, the blocks would not render beyond X/Z ±32,000,000, like older Infdev versions. The fake chunks started appearing in Alpha 1.2.0, the Halloween Update.

In previous versions of the game, if you teleport as high as you possibly can, you are sent to a Y-Axis of 3.4x1038. In this zone, you float without a purpose, and dropped items will slide with what appears to be no friction before suddenly stopping after about 20 blocks. It has been reported that the X and Z-Axis sometimes flicker randomly in this zone. The memory pie chart also sometimes randomly jumps to 100% undefined memory usage, and then disappears upon re-entering the debug menu.

Pocket Edition "Stripe Lands" and Far Lands
In the upcoming 0.9.0 update for Pocket Edition, infinite worlds will be added, however the playable range is smaller than that of PC. Tommaso Checchi posted a screenshot on Twitter of himself at X/Z: 30,000,000 and has called the distorted land the "Stripe Lands"


 * Gaps between chunks first begin to be noticeable at X/Z values above 100,000.
 * At around X/Z: 700,000 "jitteriness" is experienced and the world starts to become glitchy and unplayable. Chunks are seen to vibrate rapidly.
 * Past X/Z: 900,000 the world becomes completely unplayable and crashes are very frequent at this point.
 * In the Minecraft: Pocket Edition 0.9.0 beta series, a Far Lands similar to the PC edition exists about 12,550,745 blocks from spawn. The content of the MCPE Far Lands is slightly different in biomes and structure.

Trivia

 * There is a chance of walking into a "Bad chunk" that has so corrupt and unreadable data that it will cause huge lag spikes and possibily crashing the game.
 * When at the Far Lands, fences either have a thin wall collision box on one side, or no collision with mobs or the player.
 * Even though Beta 1.6 made it impossible to place solid blocks at layer 128, the Far Lands' flat "ceiling" still gets generated there.
 * Because of the debates over renaming Endermen to "Far Landers," Notch jokingly suggested to rename the Far Lands to The End instead. This then became the name for the dimension where the Ender Dragon resides.
 * The Far Lands could cause major decrease in FPS, freezing, and crashing, due to a high amount of internal errors, as well as the client having to deal with immense amounts of entities, both monsters and glitched sand/gravel entities. In addition, there was extra lag caused by the very high X/Z coordinates that the Far Lands existed at. This is also one of the main reasons that the Far Lands after X/Z 32,000,000 would sometimes lag, due to there being an absence of any entities.
 * Minecarts with chests will sometimes appear in phantom chunks, but as entities, they fall into the void shortly after they are generated.
 * One of the random splashes read: "Check out the far lands!".
 * In Beta 1.7.3 and below:
 * At excessive X/Z values, the corner lands are all flat.
 * It is very dangerous to reach X/Z 4,000,000,000 or higher, as the chances of crashing (assuming you have 64-bit Java) are extremely high, and get higher the farther you go.
 * If one makes it to X/Z 34,359,738,368, chunks will start getting overwritten. As a result, this is the end of chunk generation in Minecraft.
 * The highest value for 64-bit machines is X/Z 9,223,372,036,854,775,807. However, despite this being the limit any machine can go, it may not be possible to reach near this point, since the vast majority of people experience instant client freeze, followed by the client crashing.