Health

The health gauge and monitor in Minecraft is based on a single row of 10 heart icons. Each full heart contains two halves, one hit point each (full health is 20 hit points).

Hearts
Hearts make up the health meter for the player and mobs in the Survival, Hardcore, and Adventure modes. Each heart represents two hit points, for a total of 20 hit points. Hit points are lost as a percentage of those hit points. As it appears on the health bar, you lose 1 point (half heart) at a time.

Hit points can be lost by: starving; taking fall damage; being attacked by a hostile mob (or another player if PvP is on); being shot with an arrow; being on fire; touching lava, fire, or a cactus; drowning underwater; suffocating inside a block; falling into the void; having certain status effects, or getting caught in an explosion. When the health meter shows two hearts or less (20% or less health), it will begin to shake violently, warning that the player's demise is imminent if health is not restored.

Health can be recovered through several means, both "naturally" and through status effects such as potions provide.
 * The "instant health" potion effect will restore health immediately, the amount depending on the source and effect level.
 * On Peaceful difficulty, the health meter will continuously refill over time.
 * On other difficulties, health regenerates slowly when the player's hunger is at or above
 * The player will lose health when the hunger is
 * The "regeneration" effect makes health regenerate fairly quickly. Aside from potions of regeneration, this is also provided by beacons and golden apples.  The "basic" golden apple provides it (level II) only for 5 seconds, restoring a total of .  The "enchanted" golden apple provides it for much longer (30 seconds) and at much higher level (level V, over eight times the healing speed of the basic golden apple)and in total restoring about .  (These numbers are as of version 1.6, when both their effects and the speed of regeneration were adjusted.)
 * The "health boost" effect adds per effect level to the players total health, which is removed when the effect expires.  After the effect expires, the player's health may remain above the normal maximum, but the extra health will not be recovered once lost to damage.  This effect can only be gained through "cheat" commands, prepared command blocks, or mods. At the maximum level of 255, the player has 522 hearts.
 * The "absorption" effect likewise adds for each effect level.   This special health cannot be healed or regenerated by normal means. Naturally, it will be removed when the effect expires.  Absorption can be gained by eating either type of golden apple.

Damage is split between the health and Armor bars. Each full armor point takes 8% of damage, to a maximum of 80%, rounded up.

On Hardcore mode, hearts have a different texture

In Creative mode the player still has health, but it is hidden from the interface, and the player is invulnerable to everything except falling into the Void or the /kill command. In Pocket Edition, health can be restored eating food.

Death


Death occurs when all of a player's hit points are depleted. A "You died!" screen will appear with the player's score displayed (before Beta 1.9pre2, it had &e0 as the score), and the player has the option to respawn at the spawn point (either the last bed the player slept in, their default spawn point (their first spawn point in the game), or a spawn point created by commands) or return to the title Menu. In Hardcore Mode, the player cannot respawn and the world will be deleted. Any items and/or blocks that were in the player's inventory are dropped from their head and scattered around the spot where the player died. If they come in contact with dangerous blocks - like lava, fire or cactus blocks - they will be destroyed. Otherwise, according to Notch, "they decay after five minutes, except if the chunk is unloaded, in which case they last forever". The player will also lose any experience accumulated reverting the level back to 0. (xp can also be picked up where the player died.)

Mobs fall sideways to the ground when killed, as shown in the image. The player also falls sideways when killed. In Pocket Edition, when you die, your screen is tilted simulating a broken neck and it infinitely zooms in.