Terrain features

This page lists generated terrain features that are created in a Minecraft world.

Hill
Hills can contain extreme slopes, cliffs and caves. On an amplified world, hills are extremely common in all biomes except oceans.

Mountain
Mountains are high elevation terrain that has jagged peaks and higher land.

Cliff
Cliffs are steep vertical slopes that can sometimes generate beside an ocean or a big lake.

Fjord
Fjords happen when rivers cut through high-medium elevation terrain. Rivers are deeper here than usual.

Floating island
Floating islands are structures that float in mid-air. Floating islands are normally just small chunks of floating dirt and stone found near cliffs, but on rare occasions they can be large structures that even have springs and trees on them. Floating islands are most frequently found in windswept hills biomes and their variants, as well windswept savannas.

Surface layer
The uppermost layers of the terrain are converted to a biome-dependent material: usually grass blocks and dirt, or sand in deserts and beaches. Podzol is found in giant tree taiga, mycelium in mushroom field biomes, and red sand is found in the badlands biome. Sandstone is generated under the sand.

Erosion
Occasionally, instead of being converted to dirt or sand, the top layer is stripped away, leaving a 'erosion' of bare stone. They occur more often in forests or plains and occasionally contain water. Commonly, minerals can be found in these, generally coal ore and iron ore. If generated in a Badlands biome, gold ore can also be seen.

Strip
Strips are long stretches of blocks in certain biomes that replace the typical surface materials in these biomes. They can occur in stony shore biomes as strips of gravel, in stony peaks biomes as strips of calcite, as well as in grove and snowy slopes biomes as strips of powder snow.

Hoodoo
Hoodoos are tall spike-like structures found in badlands, consisting of six colors of terracotta. While this structure is found exclusively in eroded badlands, all badlands biomes actually have this structure, but set to false except for eroded badlands and can occasionally pass altitude layer 100.

Carvers

 * Carver caves – large tunnels found underground in the Overworld and the Nether.
 * Canyons – deep long cracks

Others

 * Ore vein: A long streak of ore and rock.

Lava sea
Lava seas are found at and below level 31 in the Nether. They make a large portion of the Nether and are extremely common. They can stretch for hundreds of blocks in any direction, and are usually bordered by netherrack, or occasionally soul sand, gravel and/or magma blocks. Striders can spawn in lava seas.

Unlike with Overworld oceans, lava seas are not handled as a biome.

Nether erosions
In the Nether, erosions generate the same size and shape as they do in the Overworld. Unlike their Overworld counterparts, however, Nether erosions replace the ground with netherrack instead of stone. Nether erosions can also expose ores, mainly nether quartz ore and nether gold ore.

Notably, erosions generate independent of the y-coordinate; if a erosion generates in an overhang in the Nether, an identical erosion is guaranteed to generate at the exact same x and z coordinates on the ground below such an overhang.

Carver

 * Carver caves – large tunnels found underground in the Overworld and the Nether.

Central island
The center of the End is a large, asteroid-like island composed entirely of end stone, floating in the void. At a distance of 1000 blocks away, an endless expanse of more islands begins, away from the main island. These consist of large islands, about the size of the main island, and smaller ones, which are usually thin and small.

Outer island
The outer end islands are found 1000 blocks away from the central island. They vary in size from large islands to smaller "mini islands". Generated structures such as end cities and end ships spawn here, along with chorus plants and erosions. The player can be taken to the end islands through the end gateway.

Obsidian platform
The obsidian platform is a square of obsidian that generates when a player enters the End.

End erosions
Erosions generate in the End as they would in the Overworld and the Nether, with the exception being that they never expose any ores. End erosions may generate on both the central island and outer islands, and chorus plants may occasionally take root in them.