Comparison of land before and after X/Z value 12,550,821.
The "corner" of the Far Lands, at X/Z value 12,550,821/12,550,821.
The Far Lands as seen inside the Nether.
The Far Lands were the area that formed the "edge" of the "infinite" map in versions prior to Beta 1.8. The distance from the center of the Minecraft map to the beginning of the Far Lands, 12,550,820 meters, 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 terrain will be severely distorted. According to Notch, the distortion could be fixed, and it was in 1.8, resulting in the disappearance of the Far Lands. A post on Notch's blog[1] indicates that this fix was accidental, and was probably an unintended side effect of the large changes in terrain generation for 1.8. In 1.8, instead of there being Far Lands starting at 12,550,820 meters from the center of the map, the world abruptly ends at 30,000,000 meters. When the player flies (the blocks are not solid) about 34 blocks past this perimeter the game freezes and begins to gitter, and the player cannot be seen in 3rd person mode, there is no way to escape this and the player has to start a new world. Versions between Alpha 1.2.0 (Halloween Update) and Beta 1.7.3 rendered fake chunks outside of a limit of 32,000,000 meters; attempting to walk onto them would cause the player to die in The Void. From the beginning of Infdev all the way to the Halloween Update, the world abruptly ended at 32,000,000 meters, and leaving the boundary caused you to be stuck rather than die.
Getting to the Far Lands
Getting to the Far Lands without the use of an external program would be a very difficult (or at least time consuming) task, taking about 820 hours to walk there from the center of the map. Instead, a level.dat editor can be used to teleport the player there.
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.
At X/Z of ±1.798∙10308, the position of the player, represented by a double-precision floating point number, will overflow.
Using Single Player Commands, it is very easy to get to the Far Lands using teleportation. After pressing the chat key (default "T") to open up the console-like input window, using the "teleport" command (or its abbreviation, "t") followed by X, Y, and Z coordinates will allow the player to go wherever they want. For example:
- To get to the Edge Far Lands' wall, try "t 12550820 129 0". Make sure either flying is turned on or damage is turned off, as otherwise you'll fall to your death.
- To get to the Corner Far Lands (the walls' intersection), try "t 12550820 129 12550820". Again, make sure you're protected from fall damage.
Unfortunately there will be severe lag, and slower computers may crash upon this teleportation. Opening a GUI will make the Far Lands render much, much faster. You can do this by pausing (pressing Escape) or opening the Single Player Commands prompt again.
If you're using singleplayer commands, you can also get rid of the lag by using the command to kill all mobs which will be about 4000 per 20 seconds. Also you can use the lighting command to make all blocks as bright as possible so you can actually see the layers underneath the top layer. You could also use it to stop blocks from dropping drops, so all gravel and sand that falls wont give any drops. This all will increase you framerate to about 40 or 50 fps.
Geography of the Far Lands
A slice of the Far Lands shows that all large caves below sea-level are flooded.
A map created near the Far Lands.
Edge map.
Both areas of the Far Lands feature extremely strange terrain, although they are significantly different. In both zones, any area beneath sea level, excluding regular caves, will be flooded with water. The Far Lands' structure is dependent on the seed used for generating the map, although the general patterns remain the same. Beyond X/Z of ±32,000,000, chunks are treated as permanently nonexistent, and will not generate, even though they may appear to. This value is hardcoded in the source code of Minecraft.
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 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.
Much of the open space in both areas is shrouded in darkness and thus hostile mobs run rampant, making the Far Lands as a whole incredibly dangerous. This is especially problematic in the Corner Far Lands due to its layered structure. The flooded zones are filled with squid.
In the Sky Dimension, the Far Lands are not half flooded with water.
Edge Far Lands (The Loop)
The boundary of the Far Lands Edge (that is, where it meets the regular map) 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, and on the whole seem to change very little no matter how deep the player ventures. 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.
Corner Far Lands (The Stack)
At a corner, when two perpendicular Edge Far Lands sections meet, the Corner Far Lands begin to generate. Unlike the infinite-length holes in the Edge Far Lands, the Corner Far Lands contains more normal terrain. This terrain is "stacked" on top of itself to create a bizarre sandwich with layers of ground and air, which gives it its nickname. Each layer looks like a gigantic floating continent, hovering over the next layer, which is shadowed.
The majority of the generated world is Corner Far Lands, as the "normal" world (before 12,550,821) only makes the center of the world, and the Edge Far Lands only makes its continued sides.
The number of layers isn't always the same, and varies between three to five. Layers can be grouped into three categories:
- The top layer. This layer exists at the absolute top of the map. Occasionally there can be a lower area that isn't shadowed (this is technically a dry layer). The lower area is where a majority of the trees and passive mobs can be found, as the top layer receives almost all of the sunlight. Due to the lack of space the area at the absolute top can't have trees or mobs.
- The dry layers. These generate slightly flatter than normal terrain and have grass, despite the darkness. At sea level massive floating beaches can be found, which will collapse if modified. Hostile mobs are very common here due to being in the shadow of the top layer. Rarely, there are holes in the top layer that allow sunlight to reach these layers. Caves that have one of these layers as their "surface" can occasionally be carved out of dirt instead of stone. These layers have cave-like ceilings made out of stone, gravel and dirt.
- The flooded layers. Like the dry layers, these generate somewhat flat terrain, but it is comprised primarily of stone. Sand and sandstone will show up down here, even up to 30 meters below sea level. Except for coal, all the ores can only be found in these layers.
Sometimes there are extremely tall pillars of gravel that stretch from the ground to the ceiling of a layer. Likewise, some of the beaches that collapse will create pillars of sand all the way down to the ground, despite there not being that much sand to begin with. The Corner Far Lands is also prone to having near-perfect diagonal lines being carved into the ceilings or floors of layers. If traced, these lines all intersect at the corner (X/Z ±12,550,821). This seems similar to how the Edge Far Lands have a consistent pattern along lines perpendicular to their edge, but is much less pronounced.
In The Nether
The Nether Edge Far Lands look identical to the regular Edge Far Lands. They're constructed out of Netherrack with some Soul Sand mixed in. Glowstone will be found in coral-like structures like the rest of the Nether. Both the floor and ceiling bedrock layers will be present, as well as the lava ocean (at Y-coordinate 31). The Nether Corner Far Lands also look identical in nature to their real-world counterparts (although not necessarily exactly the same). They have a similar stack of layers and contain layers flooded with lava (at levels 31 and below) instead of water.
In the Nether, the terrible lag associated with the regular Far Lands will not occur. This is because there is no sand and very little gravel in the Nether.
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 is notable even at X/Z of 500,000. Players will experience extreme framerate drops and very high CPU usage, which will continue until Minecraft freezes completely. The framerate drops do not occur in multiplayer servers, though it will, depending on the server computer's RAM, make the server itself lag. In both singleplayer and multiplayer, the intense lag that is characteristic of the Far Lands is caused by massive numbers of falling sand or gravel entities. This in turn is caused (like most of the rest of the Far Lands' strange effects) by more floating-point precision errors.
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], block physics stop functioning correctly. Lighting doesn't work and the blocks, although they appear to be there, aren't solid. If the player tries to walk on these blocks, he or she 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. At excessive X/Z positions, World Renderer no longer works, or takes incredibly long times and uses most, if not all CPU usage. It then becomes almost impossible to close Minecraft without the Task manager.
Weather is not affected by the Far Lands directly but is by their terrain. Lightning bolts that hit surfaces at the top of the map (Y-coordinate 127) will be invisible and will not cause fire. The particles created when rain hits these surfaces will be black instead of blue. Snow will not accumulate on these surfaces either (because there's no space). As of Beta 1.6, these effects are unique to the Far Lands as it's impossible to artificially place solid blocks at layer 127.
In beta 1.8
In beta 1.8 the strange terrain may be gone, but some of the effects aren't. After about X/Z ±30,000,000 the world will start generate fake chunks. Going into the fake chunks will result in falling to the void which will cause you to die, if a fly mod is used however, the game will (partially) freeze after a certain point, you can use your inventory and can look around, but you can't move. Also the clouds will act strangely. Reloading the save will fix the clouds, but you still can't move. Also the particles in the water will be in straight lines instead of spread like normally but this happens way earlier than X/Z ±30,000,000. There is no lag if you are far from spawn in beta 1.8.
Map Editors
When Viewing the Far Lands in a Minecraft 3D map editor, you will encounter errors. In MCEdit, the selection cubes start to distort and the map distorts when viewing.
The selection box being distorted in MCedit
Twisting world and move player tool in MCedit
In previous versions of Minecraft
Very little is known about the Far Lands of older versions of Minecraft for many reasons; they had no official name, and few knew of their existence. Fewer still tried to make them known to the world, and so they remained unknown. When Notch mentioned them on his blog[1] and gave them an official nickname, interest took hold.
In Infdev, although the Far Lands existed, many of the side effects didn't. There was no lag or stuttering movement, and beyond X/Z ±32,000,000, the blocks would simply not render. Walking off the edge would cause the player to become stuck in a glitched position, unable to escape.[3][4]
It has been confirmed that in Alpha v1.1.2, the blocks would not render beyond X/Z ±32,000,000, like older Infdev versions.[2] The fake chunks started appearing in Alpha 1.2.0, the Halloween Update.
Trivia
- The Far Lands spawn hostile mobs at a rate far higher than any natural chunk, due to the sheer amount of space in absolute darkness. In the Corner Far Lands, the spawn rate likely approaches the maximum possible because the stacked terrain works like a mob tower.
- The flat plane at the very top of the Corner Far Lands tends to light incorrectly in day-night transitions. This is because the sunlight calculation doesn't work when the entire chunk is blocked at Y-coordinate 127.
- Even traveling through the Nether, it would take 102 hours of walking in a straight line to get to the Far Lands.
- Entering a Portal which would take you to either world's Far Lands will cause Minecraft to crash.
- The Edge Far Lands' average block composition: 36% Stone, 25% Air, 23% Water, 10% Dirt/Grass, 2% Bedrock, and 4% others. (Based off of a 14x14 chunk selection)
- The Corner Far Lands' average block composition: 40% Stone, 16% Air, 28% Water, 10% Dirt/Grass, 2% Bedrock, and 4% others. (Based off of a 14x14 chunk selection)
- With Single Player Commands, you can alleviate the excessive lag encountered in the Far Lands by killing all entities with the command "killall".
- Even though Beta 1.6 made it impossible to place solid blocks at layer 127, the Far Lands' flat "ceiling" still gets generated there.
- Because of the debates over renaming Endermen to "Far Landers", Notch jokingly suggested to rename the Far Lands to The End instead.[5]
- Notch still hasn't confirmed if he will re-add the Far Lands to the game, since it's almost impossible to get there without hacks or Single Player Commands.
Gallery
A bird's eye view of the top layer of the corner far lands, or "The Stack".
The middle layer of the corner far lands, or "The Stack", using mods for visibility.
The bottom layer of the corner far lands, or "The Stack", using mods for visibility.
An overhead view of the edge far lands, or "The Loop".
Inside the edge far lands beyond 32,000,000, where there are no trees, mobs, or lighting.
"The ocean" within the edge far lands.
- Farlandswaterfall.png
A stretched waterfall.
- Farlandslavafall.png
A stretched lavafall.
An amazing view within the Far Lands.
A desert biome in the Far Lands.
A bisection of the corner Far Lands, showing the 3 different layers.
A bird's eye view of the Far Lands' corner.
- 20110608124514.png
The end of the world as seen from the third camera mode
- 2011-08-21 08.19.20.png
The edge Far Lands
