Comparison of land before and after X/Z value 12,550,821.
The Far Lands "corner" at X/Z value 12,550,821/12,550,821.
The Far Lands as seen inside the Nether realm.
The Far Lands is the area extending off of the "edges" of the infinite map. The distance from the center of the Minecraft map to the beginning of the Far Lands is about 31% of the circumference of the Earth at its equator. When players make it to the Far Lands, they will experience an excessive amount of lag and the map will be severely distorted. According to Notch, this distortion can be fixed, but since no one is likely to make it to the Far Lands without some form of cheating, he says that he will likely not fix it since he likes the idea of a mysterious world beyond a certain distance.[1]
Getting to the Far Lands
Getting to the Far Lands without the use of an external program would be a very difficult task, taking an estimated 800-900 hours of walking in one direction from the center of the map (x=0, y=0, z=0). Instead, a level.dat editor can be used to teleport the player there. Note: Theoretically, it could be possible for the game to spawn you somewhat close to the Far Lands (within several thousand meters), however, this has not been confirmed or reported.
The boundary between the normal map and the Far Lands (defined by when the map starts generating the distorted terrain) occurs at X/Z of ±12,550,821.
The hard limit where chunks get overwritten is at X/Z of ±34,359,738,368, which is about 25% of the distance from the Earth to the Sun. At X/Z of ±2,147,483,648, (1/16th of the former distance), item positions, mob pathfinding and other things using 32-bit integers will overflow and act weird, usually resulting in Minecraft crashing. Far before those two points however, many things still act strange, such as the map generation, block physics, and the map updating according to where the player is.
Geography of the Far Lands
The Far Lands generates extremely strange terrain that is unlike anything else in Minecraft (even the Nether). On the "sides" it 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 in some cases, and on the whole seem to vary very little no matter how deep the player ventures into the Far Lands. 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. At the "corners" of the Far Lands the terrain is somewhat closer to normal as the horizontal distortions at the sides, being perpendicular, appear to largely cancel one another out. However, it still features the same very deep, hole-ridden terrain as the rest of the Far Lands, as well as many areas where land is generated all the way up to the top of the map, forming large columns or plateaus.
All of the holes beneath Y-coordinate 64 are flooded with water, which resembles sea level in the normal world and occurs at the same level. 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.
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 very 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.
Because the open space is primarily holes that receive no sunlight, hostile mobs are rampant, making the Far Lands very dangerous. Passive mobs can be found, but only in the uppermost areas. The flooded areas are populated with squid.
Effects of the Far Lands
The most noticeable side effect of the Far Lands, where the map takes longer to update according to the player's location.
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 takes effect far before the Far Lands' signature terrain starts. Additionally, players will experience extreme framerate drops and very high CPU usage, which will continue until Minecraft freezes completely.
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[2], the land cannot be modified and ceases to be solid. Thus, if players walk on it, they 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. Of course, even with an editor or mod, you would probably fall in anyway without a fly-hack, but otherwise your game would freeze in nearly 22 seconds.
Gallery
- Farlands1.png
Bedrock
- Farlands2.png
Flying water
- Farlands4.png
Sea above
- Farlands5.png
Up and still under
- Farlands6.png
Strange valleys
- Farlandsdungeon.png
Rare dungeon in Far Lands
- Farlands7.png
Lonely tree
- Farlands8.png
Really strange
- Farlands9.png
Tiered place
- Farlands10.png
Snowy valley
- Farlands11.png
Coal is everywhere!
- Farlands12.png
Broken bridge
- Farlands13.png
Strange formations
- Farlands14.png
The iron tunnel
- Farlands15.png
Strange view
- Farlands16.png
Beginning of Far Lands
- FarLands corner.jpg
The Far Lands seen beyond one of the "corner" boundaries
- Flnether1.png
Nether Far Lands
- Flnether2.png
Looks like regular Nether
- Flnether3.png
Bedrock is everywhere!
- Flnether4.png
Black wall
- Flnether5.png
Lava and Ghasts
- Flnether6.png
Glowstone
- Flnether7.png
Beginning of Nether Far Lands
External Links
A video of the effects of the Far Lands at X/Z 32,000,000.