Template:Technical Block
Fire is a neutral non-solid block that can spread to nearby flammable blocks.
Soul fire is a turquoise variation of fire that is created when soul sand or soul soil is ignited.
Natural generation
Fire naturally generates across the terrain of the Nether. Soul fire generates exclusively in soul sand valley biomes in the Nether. However, it exclusively generates on soul soil; it does not generate on soul sand within either the same biome[1] nor in the Nether wastes biome.[2]
Post-generation
Lava generated next to flammable blocks can naturally ignite fires.
Fire spreads quickly across flammable blocks, and can spontaneously ignite when flammable blocks are near lava, even though many blocks that should be flammable cannot catch fire from nearby lava.
Lightning strikes can also set fires.
The explosion from sleeping in a bed in the Nether or the End creates fire, as does the explosion of a ghast fireball or the impact of a blaze fireball. Using a charged respawn anchor in the Overworld or the End also creates fire from the explosion.
Obtaining
Fire cannot be obtained as an item under any circumstances in Java Edition, though in Bedrock Edition both fire and soul fire may be obtained as an item via inventory editing.
Usage
Placement
Before a fire.
During the fire.
After a fire.
Fire can be placed using flint and steel or a fire charge. Fire ignited on soul sand or soul soil becomes soul fire.
When placed, a fire burns for a short and randomly determined amount of time. If nothing flammable is adjacent to it, the flames die out. Water that touches fire extinguishes it.
It cannot be placed suspended in midair, even with commands.[3]
Burning entities
Players and many mobs burn when exposed to fire. Burning obstructs the player's view slightly and, unless the player or mob has Fire Resistance, inflicts damage at a rate of 1
per second. This is the same rate that the player gains health in Peaceful difficulty, so burning alone cannot kill the player in this mode. Soul fire deals damage at a rate of 2
, making it more dangerous than normal fire. After leaving a fire source, the player or mob continues burning for some time depending on how long it was exposed to the fire (stored in a Fire tag shared by all entities).[more information needed] Players and mobs that are burning can be extinguished by rain, water or a cauldron.
Dropped items except netherite axe, netherite sword, netherite shovel, netherite pickaxe, netherite helmet, netherite chestplate, netherite leggings, netherite boots, blocks of netherite, netherite scrap, netherite ingots and ancient debris[Java Edition only] falling into fire briefly catch fire and disappear.
If a mob that can drop meat dies while on fire, it drops the cooked version of it, with the exception of fish that is dropped by polar bears or guardians and potatoes that are dropped by zombies.
Nether mobs are invulnerable to fire and cannot burn. Exceptions include skeletons, as well as piglins and hoglins.
Burning is not considered a status effect and therefore cannot be cured by milk.
Spread
Safe building area around a fire
Fire spreads over flammable surfaces and can climb up walls, across floors and ceilings, and over small gaps. More precisely, a fire block can turn any air block that is adjacent to a flammable block into a fire block. This can happen at a distance of up to one block downward, one block sideways (including diagonals), and four blocks upward of the original fire block (not the block the fire is on/next to). Therefore, if the player is using fire to build a fireplace, caution is needed. Blocks in the way do not prevent fire from igniting blocks above it—so even if the player protects a wooden roof with cobblestone between it and the fire, the fire ignores that cobblestone.
Fire spreads from a still lava block similarly: any air block one above and up to one block sideways (including diagonals) or two above and two blocks sideways (including diagonals) that is adjacent to a flammable block may be turned into a fire block.
Unlike normal fire, soul fire cannot spread and does not burn any flammable blocks nearby.
Fire that naturally spreads into a valid nether portal frame will activate the portal.
Flammable blocks
Fire can spread onto and burn away any flammable block (or in the case of TNT, ignite it). On the other hand, a fire that is not adjacent to any flammable block does not spread, even to another flammable block within the normal range.
In the following table, the higher the encouragement, the more quickly a block catches fire if the fire is available to spread there. The higher the flammability, the more quickly a block on fire burns away. These are relative values; actual flammability and burn time depends not only on these values, but on difficulty, rain, the age of the fire, and a certain amount of randomness due to block ticks, among other things.[more information needed] Fire spread is also reduced significantly if the flammable blocks are located in a rather humid biome. Humid biomes are swamp, mushroom island and jungle with all of their respective variants excluding jungle edge.
| Block | Encouragement | Flammability | Can catch fire from lava | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Logs Stripped Logs Wood Stripped Wood |
5 | 5 | Yes | |
| Block of Coal | No | |||
| Overworld Planks Wooden Slabs Fence Gates Fences Signs [Bedrock Edition only] Wooden Stairs Composter Beehive |
5 | 20 | Yes | |
| Target | 15 | 20 | No | |
| TNT (ignites instead of vanishing) Vines |
15 | 100 | Yes | |
| Bookshelf Lectern Bee Nest |
30 | 20 | Yes | |
| Leaves Wool |
30 | 60 | Yes | |
| Dried Kelp Block | No | |||
| Carpets | JE | 60 | 20 | Yes |
| BE | 30 | 60 | ||
| Hay Bale | 60 | 20 | No | |
| Bamboo | 60 | 60 | Yes | |
| Scaffolding | No | |||
| Flowers, 1-block Sweet Berry Bush | JE | 60 | 100 | No |
| BE | 30 | |||
| Flowers, 2-block Grass, ferns, both 1-block and 2-block |
60 | 100 | Yes | |
| Dead Bush[Java Edition only] | ||||
Non-flammable blocks
Non-flammable blocks can be lit but do not burn away, and such fire does not spread. Non-flammable blocks other than netherrack or magma blocks extinguish themselves after a few seconds. In the end, bedrock also does not extinguish itself.
If a block is a part of a flammable material, it catches fire from lava. However, certain blocks do not burn away:
| Block | Can catch fire from lava |
Can burn away | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bamboo Sapling Banners Barrel Campfire Cartography Table Chest Crafting Table Crimson Roots Daylight Detector Fletching Table Jukebox Loom Mushroom Blocks Nether Sprouts Note Block Smithing Table Trapped Chest Warped Roots Wooden Doors of all types Wooden Pressure Plates of all types Wooden Trapdoors of all types |
Yes | No | ||
| Wooden Signs of all types | Yes | BE | Yes | |
| JE | No | |||
| Dead Bush | Yes | JE | Yes | |
| BE | No | |||
| Bed | JE | Yes | No | |
| BE | No | |||
| Wood-derived blocks such as: Grindstone Ladder Lever Piston Rails of all types Redstone Torch Saplings Smoker Torch Tripwire Hook Wooden Buttons of all types ... and all other non-flammable blocks |
No | No | ||
Extinguishing
Fire burns out after a while when on a non-flammable block other than Netherrack or Magma Block; however, punching or hitting the side of a burning block extinguishes the fire on that side, making the Fire extinguished sound (see below). Hitting fire while holding a tool does not reduce the tool's durability. Placing blocks on the fire also extinguishes it. Water and lava extinguish fires that they flow into, and thrown splash and lingering water bottles extinguish fires in the block hit and the four blocks horizontally surrounding it.
Mobs on fire are extinguished when in water or in a cauldron containing it. In the latter case, one layer of water disappears.
Fire extinguishes more quickly if nothing flammable is present, and soon after it consumes a flammable block immediately beneath it.
- Fire has an age property that determines how it extinguishes, ranging from age 0 when the fire is set, and growing to age 15.[more information needed] For fire older than age 3, if nothing flammable is adjacent to the fire, or if the block below doesn't have a solid top surface, the fire is extinguished by the next block tick. At age 15, as long as there isn't a flammable block below the fire, a block tick has a 1⁄4 chance to extinguish the fire.
If a fire is exposed to rain, it extinguishes quickly.
- Rain affects fire if it falls directly onto the fire, or into the four adjacent blocks. Specifically, no matter the age, any block tick has a 20–65% chance of rain extinguishing the fire, depending on the fire's age: 3 percentage points per age of the fire.
Fire burning on netherrack creates a perpetually burning fire.
Soul fire never extinguishes unless punched or when it receives a block update and finds there is no soul soil or soul sand below it.
Eternal fire
When lit, netherrack and magma blocks maintain fire forever, unless extinguished by any method except rain. Bedrock in the End also burns eternally. Soul fire will burn eternally regardless. Eternal fire cannot exist on the sides of these blocks.
Which blocks can support eternal fire is defined per-dimension, in the #infiniburn_overworld, #infiniburn_nether, and #infiniburn_end block tags.
If /gamerule doFireTick is false, fire lasts forever until it is put out by the player, and does not spread or affect flammable blocks.
Bees
Lighting fire to a beehive or bee nest causes the contained bees to be ejected from the block.
Piglins
Soul fire repels piglins. Like hoglins, they are not fire-resistant, which is unique among Nether mobs.
Sounds
| Sound | Subtitles | Source | Description | Resource location | Translation key | Volume | Pitch | Attenuation distance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fire crackles | Blocks | Random | block | subtitles | ? | ? | 16 | |
| Fire extinguished | Blocks | Fire gets put out by hitting | block | subtitles | ? | ? | 16 | |
| Fireball whooshes | Blocks | Creating with fire charge | item | subtitles | ? | ? | 16 | |
| Flint and Steel click | Blocks | Creating with flint and steel | item | subtitles | ? | ? | 16 |
Data values
ID
| Name | Identifier | Translation key |
|---|---|---|
| Fire | fire | block.minecraft.fire |
| Soul Fire | soul_fire | block.minecraft.soul_fire |
| Name | Identifier | Numeric ID | Translation key |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fire | fire | 51 | tile.fire.name |
| Soul Fire | soul_fire | 492 | tile.soul_fire.name |
Block states
Java Edition:
Fire:
| Name | Default value | Allowed values | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| age | 0 | 0123456789101112131415 | Newly placed fire has an age of 0, and has a 1⁄3 chance of incrementing with each block tick. This factor affects how the fire extinguishes. |
| east | false | falsetrue | When true, fire texture shows on that face of the block to the east; false if there's a block below this fire. |
| north | false | falsetrue | When true, fire texture shows on that face of the block to the north; false if there's a block below this fire. |
| south | false | falsetrue | When true, fire texture shows on that face of the block to the south; false if there's a block below this fire. |
| up | false | falsetrue | When true, fire texture shows on that face of the block above; false if there's a block below this fire. |
| west | false | falsetrue | When true, fire texture shows on that face of the block to the west; false if there's a block below this fire. |
Bedrock Edition:
Fire and Soul Fire:
| Name | Metadata Bits | Default value | Allowed values | Values for Metadata Bits |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| age | 0x10x20x40x8 | 0 | 0123456789101112131415 | 0123456789101112131415 | Newly placed fire has an age of 0. This factor affects how the fire extinguishes. |
History
| indev | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0.31 | 20100109 | ||||
| The model of fire currently does not render the back faces; faces have to be seen from the front to be rendered. | |||||
| Fire is placed directly like a block. It is not known if its texture was any different. | |||||
| 20100111-1 | Lava now sets fire to flammable materials. | ||||
| All items and mobs can now catch fire. | |||||
| Fire is now placed by flint and steel. | |||||
| 20100125-2 | Fire now has particle effects. | ||||
| 20100129 | Ores can now be smelted by using fire on dropped items. It is not known when this was removed. | ||||
| infdev | |||||
| ? | |||||
| alpha | |||||
| v1.2.0 | preview | Fire now generates in the Nether. | |||
| v1.2.6 | Lava can now cause surrounding flammable blocks to burn. Forest fires may start spontaneously if an above-ground lava pool is generated among trees during a biome's creation. | ||||
| beta | |||||
| 1.2_02 | The ability for blocks to burn forever has been removed. Previously, a non-netherrack flammable block, like wood, may burn continuously when its sides are surrounded by nonflammable blocks, like stone or dirt. | ||||
| 1.6 | ? | Fire spreading has been severely nerfed — infinite fire spread has been disabled.[4] | |||
| Java Edition | |||||
| 1.2.1 | 12w06a | When the player hits fire in creative, the block under the fire is no longer removed. | |||
| 1.4.2 | 12w34a | Fire now spreads differently based on difficulty. | |||
| 12w40a | Firespread has been slightly nerfed again to prevent infinitely spreading fires. | ||||
| 1.5 | 13w02a | The texture of fire is now accessible. Before, the texture was hidden in the code and not accessible by any normal bases. | |||
| Following texture storage reforms, the usually-unobtainable fire block now appears completely invisible as an item. | |||||
| 13w02b | Fire is now visible as an item again. | ||||
| ? | Mobs such as zombie pigmen no longer appear to be on fire in cases where mobs susceptible to fire would be. | ||||
| 1.8 | 14w25a | The model of fire has been changed slightly (the sides are no longer rotated). | |||
| The block form of fire (ID 51) has been removed. It can no longer exist in inventories, only as a block in the world. | |||||
| With the removal of the block form of fire, chain armor is no longer craftable. | |||||
| 1.9 | 15w31a | The block states alt and flip of fire have been removed, and the state upper has been changed to the byte state up. However, the behavior of fire has remained unchanged. | |||
| 15w38a | Fire's chance of extinguishing in the rain on its block tick has been decreased from 100% to a chance from 0–45% depending on its age state. | ||||
| 15w49a | Fire's chance of extinguishing in the rain on its block tick has been increased to 20–65% depending on its age state. | ||||
| 1.12 | 17w06a | Fire now burns infinitely on magma blocks. | |||
| 1.13 | 17w47a | Prior to The Flattening, this block's numeral ID was 51. | |||
| September 28, 2019 | Soul fire is showcased at Minecon Live 2019. | ||||
| December 3, 2019 | Maria Lemón confirms that fire set on soul sand is not soul fire. | ||||
| 1.16 | 20w06a | ||||
| Fire no longer burns items.[5] | |||||
| 20w07a | The texture of soul fire has been changed. The color channel of transparent pixels is now filled to black. | ||||
| Normal fire burns items again, and soul fire now burns items. | |||||
| 20w10a | Fire now has a proper hitbox like all other blocks. | ||||
| Fire now produces fire particles when destroyed. | |||||
| Fire can no longer be put out with swords or tridents in Creative mode. | |||||
| The blockstates and info of fire can now be properly read via F3. | |||||
| Fire can now be modified using debug sticks. | |||||
| 20w11a | Loot tables have been added for fire. | ||||
| Fire no longer produces particles when destroyed. | |||||
| Soul sand is now capable of supporting fire on its top surface,[6] however this is regular fire, not soul fire.[7] | |||||
| 20w12a | Fire lit on top of soul sand is now soul fire. | ||||
| A dedicated block tag is now used to determine what blocks support soul fire. | |||||
| Pocket Edition Alpha | |||||
| 0.1.0 | |||||
| 0.3.3 | File:.name.png Fire has been replaced by reserved6 due to a bug in fire spreading mechanics that causes fire to spread to any block. | ||||
| 0.7.0 | reserved6 has been replaced with fire, which now has better spreading mechanics. | ||||
| Added reserved6 as ID 255. | |||||
| 0.7.1 | |||||
| Fire now burns infinitely on netherrack. | |||||
| 0.8.0 | build 2 | Burning mobs now turn orange and emit large fire particles. | |||
| build 4 | Fire now ignites TNT more aggressively. | ||||
| ? | Undead mobs now actually catch fire in sunlight, rather than just taking damage. | ||||
| 0.9.0 | build 2 | Fire now burns out faster in jungle and roofed forest biomes. | |||
| 0.11.0 | build 9 | Attacks from burning mobs can now catch fire to the victim. | |||
| build 14 | The burning animation has been removed from creative mode completely. | ||||
| 0.12.1 | build 1 | Burning mobs now have a sizzling particle effect once extinguished. | |||
| 0.15.0 | ? | reserved6 texture has been removed, causing it to have an info_update block texture. | |||
| Bedrock Edition | |||||
| 1.2.0 | beta 1.2.0.2 | The unique fire animation has been removed from burning mobs (excluding blazes), and replaced with a stretched burning animation like that on Java Edition. | |||
| 1.16.0 | beta 1.16.0.51 | ||||
| beta 1.16.0.59 | Fire lit on top of soul sand is now soul fire. | ||||
| beta 1.16.0.63 | Soul fire is now created when randomTickSpeed is set to 0.
| ||||
Soul fire is now created when dofiretick is set to false. | |||||
| Legacy Console Edition | |||||
| TU1 | CU1 | 1.0 | Patch 1 | 1.0.1 | |
| New Nintendo 3DS Edition | |||||
| 0.1.0 | |||||
Issues
Issues relating to "Fire" are maintained on the bug tracker. Report issues there.
Trivia
- Sometimes, in survival, when the player walks into a fire briefly and walk out quickly enough, the player takes minor damage, but does not stay on fire.
- Fire uses two texture files, one for the inner fire and one for the outer fire.
- Each end crystal continuously generates a block of fire at its location, if the crystal is placed or generated in The End. This fire is incapable of spreading.
- While soul fire was not announced until MINECON Live 2019, a similar-looking blue fire was seen in the spin-off game Minecraft: Story Mode, several years earlier.
- Minecraft Dungeons also has a similar feature whenever a wraith attacks.
- There is also a purple fire seen in Minecraft Dungeons.
- Minecraft Dungeons also has a similar feature whenever a wraith attacks.
- Soul fire can not be placed on any other block other than soul sand or soul soil, even if it's placed with
/setblock.[Java Edition only] - Soul fire (or at least a blue fire) really exists and is caused by the burning of sulfur. Soul soil and soul sand, blocks on which soul fire is created, probably contain quantities of this element, as they are similar to volcanic ash.
Bedrock Edition
- Burning mobs have the same animation as Java, yet differently scaled.
- The fire spreading mechanic is based on how it would be prior to Java Edition Beta 1.6.
- The sides of the fire model in this edition are rotated like in versions before Java Edition 1.8
- When the player is on fire, there is a different burning animation on the screen than in Java Edition (it partially obstructs view when looking downward).
- Players with fire resistance do not visibly burn when in fire sources.
- Soul Fire can be placed on other blocks with
/setblock, but eventually extinguish.[Bedrock Edition only] - With experimental Gameplay off in [Bedrock edition], soul fire seems to look like the Update Game Block.
Gallery
Screenshots
A burning zombie in Bedrock Edition emitting unique fire particles.
References





