Minecraft Wiki:Issues

This page's purpose is to list all the bugs players have come across. Most of the single-player bugs also apply to multi-player.

General

 * A glitch has been observed where, occasionally, a given area of blocks can revert to their original state, partially or completely undoing any construction or mining that had been done in that area. Usually this happens after a long excursion into one of the natural cave systems.
 * Seemingly related to the above glitch is one where a specific chunk will constantly revert. In chunks that constantly revert, water will not duplicate if it is flowing, and water tends to linger much like lava when the source is removed.
 * You are unable to directly swap items in your inventory when the two items are same. This is important if you would like to swap similar items with different durabilities.
 * Sometimes you can see through everything and it happens on all your games. Toggle the fog distance and everything will change back to normal (Default key is F).
 * Iron bars and saplings may not appear in the inventory when collected.
 * If you wait a lot of time after map chunks are generated and then continue forward causing the game to generate new map chunks, it will cause weird structures which do not connect properly with the map. Sometimes even causing mountains which are, in a sense, cut in half. Furthermore, if one chunk ends in an ocean, and the other starts off with land with an underground cave in it, the water will not enter the cave.
 * When destroying a Furnace, unlike Chests, anything inside the Furnace will be permanently destroyed.
 * When sand is generated above a cave (or any opening), it will float until a space by it is modified in any way.
 * Sneaking does not prevent the player from falling off of Steps or Slow Sand.
 * Sneaking prevents movement onto Slow Sand from any other block
 * Since the November 10th update, there have been several performance issues in SSP. Save/load times have increased, sudden random FPS drops, and random crashing/freezing. It is unknown if it's just the patch and/or updated mods that cause it.

Armour

 * When sneaking, armor does not bend down. So your armor is standing normally while you are sneaking.
 * Pressing F5 whilst in a boat will show your leg/foot armour protruding from the bottom of the boat, even though your character is sitting.

Arrows

 * Arrows that hit doors can float if the door changes its open or closed state.
 * Arrows seem to float when hitting fences.
 * When arrows hit a portal they float.

Boats

 * When entering a boat on ground it will show a splash effect similar than on water.
 * When falling on a boat there is no fall damage.
 * If you manage to stand on your boat while it is under water the boat won't move to any direction.
 * If you go under a water stream your boat will accelerate and rise towards the sky.

Chests

 * If you open a chest at the same time as pressing a movement key, your character will continuously move in that direction until you click on the chest again. This is also fixed by pushing the same movement key after leaving the chest menu.
 * Chests sometimes revert contents to previous configuration. Opening a chest, modifying the content, exiting the game, then going back in displays the items the chest had when it was first accessed. This causes newly placed items to be lost and removed items to be duplicated.
 * If you place an item in a chest, step into a portal, then open the chest while teleporting, when you arrive at the other end you can remove the items to your inventory. Going back through the portal reveals the items are also still in the chest (doubling the items). Video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j36xL-Xo11w

Doors

 * If doors are placed next to two stapled cactus-blocks, the door will immediately get destroyed and will drop two doors instead of one. One door can not be collected. If a door is placed next to two stapled and newly planted(small) cactuses, an uncollectable door will be dropped, and a door window frame will remain, which drops nothing.

Fences

 * Fences on top of blocks will have all faces on its underside's black.
 * Stepping on a fence is counted as an illegal operation.
 * Occasionally placed fences will become invisible. They will become visible again if you place normal blocks near to them though.

Jukebox

 * Inserting a record and removing it before the song ends will cause the jukebox to eject a duplicate. Only one of the records will be retrievable, but the second will remain stuck in world and eventually disappear after a certain amount of time. It is possible to abuse this bug to spawn hundreds of records.

Minecart

 * When spawning mine carts on a small track, they will gain momentum from colliding with one another.
 * Having too many minecarts will cause the game to crash.
 * It is possible to gain neverending speed for a mine cart from abusing the bug by spawning many carts on a small track.
 * Riding in a minecart on above track may cause your player's image to disappear until you die or reopen Minecraft.
 * Sometimes moving minecarts disappear completely.
 * If you open your inventory while in a minecart, your player hand model will not function as expected.
 * Riding a minecart into a Nether portal causes you to become stuck.
 * (November 10th update) Removing a minecart while riding in it will cause you to go through the ground, but only if the track is sitting on a block and air is all around it.
 * (November 10th update) If a minecart enters lava, the client will freeze. If the player is in the minecart when it enters lava, the client will crash.

Mobs

 * If a mob is riding a mine cart and 2 (or more) mine carts get stuck in each other, after destroying or moving the carts away from the other carts the mobs will be invisible.
 * When up close to a Zombie Pig, the inventory GUI will become much brighter. It is unknown if this applies to any other mobs, or varies in the mac/linux versions, or if it's present in SMP.
 * If you stand still, ghast will shoot the fireballs over your head, without damaging you, unless they are directly in front of you or if you can get to their height.

Paintings

 * If a painting is placed and immediately removed, there is a chance that the picture frame will get duplicated.

Portals

 * Placing a boat in the portal and entering it will cause the game to skip the "safe area" finding algorithm. This means that you will appear in the Nether world exactly where you are meant to regardless of blocks in the way. Example video.
 * Being killed in the Nether will cause a portal to be generated near your relative location on Earth, as though you had teleported back from your "final resting place" normally.
 * Riding a minecart into a Nether portal causes you to become stuck.

Reeds

 * Reeds can be placed on blocks that are not grass if placed on a water block. Example: http://imgur.com/AWW9b.png

Signs

 * Placing a sign on top of a block that is placed at the maximum allowed building height in the world will cause the client to crash.

Snow

 * Snow currently does not fall, meaning that once it's destroyed it will not come back.
 * Utilizing snow, one can place saplings and cacti on any block. The sapling will grow, still; however, the cacti will break when they first grow.

Stairs

 * Placing steps and then destroying them doesn't give you the stairs back, only a Cobblestone or Wood block.
 * Attempting to destroy stairs will sometimes destroy the block behind them instead.
 * Stairs let light pass through.
 * Double-steps will only drop one single step when broken

Trees

 * As of the Halloween 'Boo' Update, leaves no longer decay.

Water
(To clarify this a bit, on the surface, you are blocked from placing a block on yourself, underwater, this blocking does not exist).
 * While underwater, you are able to place blocks at the location of the player.
 * It is possible for multiple water currents to crash against each other and create an inescapable rip-tide. Not only will this rip tide hold you in one place, it will also throw you from a boat if you are sailing it.

World Select

 * On Mac OS X Systems, the World Select screen will not appear at all, making the game unplayable on Mac systems.
 * Once the player has entered The Nether, the save file will appear as 0.0 MB (or something similar).
 * Relating to the above glitch, some worlds will have negative file sizes (such as -0.02 MB).

General

 * Sometimes blocks cannot be reliably removed. Attempting to remove them will cause them to temporarily disappear, then reappear. Note that this is a feature in some cases: it's always true in the 32x32 zone surrounding the spawn point, and on modded servers where visitors can look but not touch. Otherwise, this situation is normally due to either holding down the mouse button and moving the mouse when mining (you have to let go after the cube is mined), or due to a poor or lost connection (quit and reconnect). (Seem to be worst after the 1.2.2 update)
 * Crouching is not visible to other players.
 * Full server world saves do not reliably save the entire world. This can be proven on a single person private server with whitelisting enabled when attempting to do a full server save via:
 * 1) Disabling incremental level saving with 'save-off' on on minecraft console.
 * 2) Forcing a full save to disk with 'save-all' on on minecraft console.
 * 3) Archiving and saving the archived world with 'tar -xvzf save.tg world' on shell in secondary system console.
 * 4) Turning back on incremental level saving by doing a 'save-on' on minecraft console.

Armor

 * Armor cannot be seen by other players.

Arrows

 * Arrows can only be seen by the player who shoots them.
 * You cannot see any arrows that a skeleton shoots.

Boats

 * Boats cannot be destroyed. Exiting a boat that is on the ground will cause the player to be trapped on top of it.
 * New chunks wont load while player is sailing. Attempting to sail off the "edge of the world" will cause server glitches and player will be trapped in boat. Coming to full stop, exiting the boat, waiting a few seconds for the chunk to load and then re-entering the boat is a work around.

Chests

 * Destroying a chest will spill its contents, and every item in the chest will be duplicated. Only half of the items visible to the player can be picked up, so no items are gained nor lost in the process.
 * Also, quickly clicking on items and moving them around can cause them to disappear from your inventory, and in some cases to be duplicated.
 * The duplication seems to be cause by a server/client sync error. When holding the item place it and then quickly pick it up. Notice that the item with flash again in the bin location where you just put it. It seems the server is sending back that the item is still there after you have picked it up. While the 'ghost' item is shown in the bin placing the item in your hand will cause the item to be duplicated. In the case of stacks it will double the stack and in the case of un-stackable items it will remain in your hand (mouse) and also in the bin.
 * The disappearing seems to be caused by the same bug just in the opposite way. Instead of the server lagging behind the client and telling it that the item is still there the server will erroneously delete.

Fishing

 * Fish can be picked up, but the rod seemingly only works if the hook is floating inside a fountain.
 * The line cannot be seen anymore.

Furnaces and Coal

 * Coal can smelt 8 items per lump. However, in some cases, smelting a multiple of 8 items will use up all the coal, but leave one item without smelting. When cooking Pork, the furnace will not take any more coal after having burnt the first lump. The player has to close the furnace window and reopen it to continue cooking. The furnace will continue to show the fire animation after this, even when empty. Also, the animations in the furnace window (arrow showing progress, fire icon when consuming the fuel) seem to be broken as well.

Inventory

 * The last inventory slot (bottom right) is overwritten by the active hand slot on logout/login; this is caused by an array-length error in the server code.

Fences

 * An player who walks ON an fence will get stuck on it by loop re-spawning on it. (Same glitch than the boat)

Minecarts

 * Minecarts are unable to be destroyed (except by fire or lava).
 * Inventory placed in Storage Carts will not persists past logout/login. (unknown if other players can see inventory)
 * Engines consume coal but do not move under their own power, making them useless.
 * Loading of new terrain does not work while riding a cart.
 * Disconnecting while in a Minecart will create a duplicate of your character upon logging back in.
 * Minecarts that pass over wooden pressure plates will sometimes not activate a redstone current, even though a "click" noise is heard.
 * Minecarts with a passenger that pass over stone pressure plates will sometimes not activate a redstone current, even though a "click" noise is heard.
 * A player will pass through the minecart, but when the player is passing through it counts as "pushing" the minecart.

Mobs, Hostile

 * The Ghasts' fireballs are not visible, make no sound, and occasionally do not explode, only lighting a small area on fire.
 * Ghasts do not make noise when firing, and do not open their eyes and mouth when firing. They also will not consistently follow the player.
 * Ghasts rarely spawn underwater when in Nether (Hell) mode.
 * Zombie Pigmen do not attack when hit. This is most likely due to the invincibility glitch.
 * Skeletons will never be riding spiders when spawned.
 * Sometimes spiders freeze in animation and can not be hit. They disappear after about 2 minutes.
 * Some mobs are invisible. A scenario would be that a Creeper explodes next to you, making no sound and dealing you no damage but damaging the ground.

Mobs, Neutral

 * Since the boo update, chickens and pigs frequently glitch in the ground, making noises and blinking. You can try burning them to stop this problem.
 * Sheep can be sheared, but the cloth blocks dropped cannot be picked up. Notch has acknowledged this bug, and said it is a result of non-existing server-side health. Other players will not see that the sheep has been sheared.

Paintings

 * Paintings might disappear some time after being placed.
 * If they are destroyed after being placed, they cannot be picked back up.
 * You cannot see other people's paintings.
 * When copying an SSP world onto an SMP server, paintings are removed in the transition.

Portals

 * Will appear to activate, but does not transport player to the Nether.

Reeds

 * Reeds will sometimes (but very rarely) grow to be four blocks high. The normal maximum height is three blocks.

Sand and Snow

 * Sand will not fall down if Snow is underneath it.
 * Shovelling Snow does not create a Snowball.

Stone Buttons

 * In addition to not triggering doors, stone buttons may jump from the wall they are actually placed on to the one opposite upon being pressed the first time if there is just one block of air in between. They can then not be removed reliably without also removing the block to which they are attached.

TNT

 * TNT disappears when ignited by a redstone circuit.
 * TNT lit by one user cannot be seen by another.

Tools

 * Dropping them (i.e., by pressing Q while holding them) and picking them back up will revert their damage to zero. This probably is related to the player and mob server-side health issue. Applies to all items that take damage (e.g.: Armor).

Trees

 * Planting a sapling and waiting a bit will yield tree trunks with weird distributions of leaves, and in some cases, no leaves at all. Trees can also grow but be invisible, making it impossible to traverse a tree farm after a while. Rejoining the server appears to make invisible trees visible again and fire will swiftly cause phantom foliage to be made manifest. Trees with "weird leaves" cannot be cut down, as they regenerate instead of yielding wood blocks.
 * Foliage from trees will overwrite some blocks(such as a nearby fence)

Wheat Seeds

 * To a player, it will appear that some seeds cannot be picked up. But to the other players, these seeds will be invisible. Hoeing the ground directly beneath you improves the chances of harvesting the seeds. Disconnecting and reconnecting will leave visible only those seeds which are actually able to be picked up.