Entity



Entities encompass all dynamic, moving objects throughout the Minecraft world.

General behavior
All entities have these properties:
 * A position, velocity, and rotation (as according to Newtonian mechanics).
 * A specific volume they occupy, which is a 3-dimensional box with a fixed height and width (square when viewed from the top, and not rotating).
 * Current health.
 * Whether they are on fire. Fire reduces health gradually and displays flames covering the entity.
 * Active effects, caused mainly by potions. Spiders can also spawn with effects when playing on Hard mode.

Most entities can be pushed around by water currents. Some entities can be renamed by a name tag on them.

Entities cannot pass through solid blocks. Most types of entities prevent blocks from being placed in the space they occupy, except for resources (dropped items) and experience orbs, which are automatically pushed out of the block to open air. Also, if an entity does overlap a block, (due to falling sand or a door being swung), then it is free to move out of the solid block but not back in. (For example, if a door is closed on you, you can jump up and stand on top of the bottom-half door block, if there is air above the door.)

Entities are lit according to the light level of the block their position is in. For example, if a minecart runs over a non-straight track directly into a solid block, it will turn black (since solid blocks always have a light level of 0); arrows are also sometimes seen to turn black (especially if fired shallowly into the ceiling).

Further notes
Item frames, paintings, armor stands, ender crystals and lead knots are unique in that, although they are entities, they align to the block grid and are completely immobile.

Arrows, TNT and falling sand (and its variants) are assumed to have infinite health because they are not destroyed by explosions (they can be fired out of TNT cannons), nor by being on fire for long periods. However, they can still be killed with the use of the command.

Boats and minecarts

 * See also: Transportation (contains information about speed)

Boats and minecarts appear to recover health over time. For example, they can be broken by hitting them quickly, but cannot be destroyed by hits with unarmed hand with a pause after each hit. The amount of wobbling displayed by boats and minecarts when struck appears to indicate their current health.

Gravity-affected blocks


Gravity-affected blocks include sand, gravel, anvils, red sand and dragon eggs.

They normally exist as a block, but when their support is removed, they turn into a falling (object) entity and fall down until they hit another object, at which point it places itself as a block in the nearest on-grid position, or turns into an item if that position is occupied by a non-solid block (for instance, a torch). The only exceptions are anvils, which will delete any non-solid block it falls onto.

While these blocks ordinarily fall straight down, their trajectory can be redirected by explosions, and pistons with slime block]s. It is also possible to modify the velocity and direction of falling sand by using [[commands, or third-party programs. Gravity-affected blocks will despawn or drop as an item if they do not land after 30 seconds of falling (decreasing to 5 seconds if it is in the Void). In Pocket Edition, they will despawn after 5 seconds regardless. This means that if a block is dropped from the build height at 128 blocks, it will despawn before hitting bedrock after falling 100 blocks if there are no obstructions.

If, when the world is created, a cave is generated underneath sand, Minecraft will fail to update the sand (which is purposefully coded by the game) and the sand will remain floating until it receives a block update. This latter fact means that a single falling sand block can trigger the collapse of an entire region of sand. In Pocket Edition, any gravity-affected block (sand, gravel, red sand) generated over a cave, dungeon, or under an overhang will remain floating until it receives a block update.

Right-clicking
Entities with interactions (such as boats, minecarts, cats, villagers and tamed wolves) do not stop the  action of a tool you are holding. For example, if you press on a tamed wolf with a water bucket in your hand, the wolf will sit, but you will also empty the bucket near or onto the wolf.

Riding


Entities may be riding on, or attached to, other entities. When this is the case, only the lower/"outer" entity's volume collides with other things, and only that entity can control movement. But there are exceptions: Players riding minecarts/boats/saddled horses; and baby zombies riding chickens. The only current legitimate combinations of riding entities are:


 * A mob or player in a minecart or boat.
 * A player on a saddled pig, horse, donkey, or mule.
 * Any type of skeleton on a spider; also known as a spider jockey.
 * Any type of baby zombie or zombie pigman on a chicken; also known as a chicken jockey.

It is possible to have multiple levels, such as a player on a pig in a minecart.

Entities can also be stacked on top of each other with the use of the and  commands. For example, using {{cmd|summon Spider ~ ~ ~ {Passengers:[{id:Skeleton}]}} will summon a spider jockey.

If an entity is riding another entity, the top entity cannot teleport because as soon as the teleport is made, the entity is teleported back to riding the other entity. Since Minecraft smooths out movements by showing entities at locations between new and old positions, this may result in seeing the entity at several locations between riding the other entity and their teleport location.



Types of entities
The table below lists types of entities that currently exist in Minecraft.

Entities listed as “solid” obstruct the passage of other entities.

The size is in block lengths (measured in meters; note that 1 block is 1m3), and is the size of an axis-aligned bounding box with the specified width in both horizontal dimensions (X and Z) and the specified height in the Y dimension. This box does not rotate when the object rotates visually.

For a list of numeric entity IDs, see Data values.

Motion of entities
Gravity works differently in Minecraft than the real world, as not everything is subject to the same acceleration. Additionally, there is a drag force proportional to velocity, again dependent on the entity.