Cave

For other uses, see Cave (disambiguation).

It has been suggested that this page be split into Noise cave, Carver cave, and Underwater cave.

^[discuss]

If this split affects many pages, or may potentially be controversial, do not split until a consensus has been reached.
Reason: Many technical differences that should be noted separately, like how canyons have their own page now. This page is quite long. (16 February 2025)

Cave

Biomes	Overworld The Nether
Generates in existing chunks	Yes
Consists of	Air Cave Air‌[Java Edition only]

A cave (also known as a cavern) is a common terrain feature that generates in the Overworld and the Nether. Caves are usually found underground. They are open spaces of various sizes and shapes that often intersect with each other or with different generated structures, creating vast cave systems. They feature an abundance of ores, as well as hostile mobs that spawn in the darkness.

Generation

Caves are a part of Minecraft's terrain consisting of randomly generated cavities of air, water or lava, creating a hollow area and exposing other blocks generated with the terrain (such as stones and ores).

Caves generate at any altitude up to Y-level 256, and may span from the surface all the way to Y-level -59. Because of low light levels, hostile mobs and certain animals like bats and glow squids (only in water) often spawn in caves.

Caves come in two distinct types; noise caves and carver caves. Noise caves are generated along with the base terrain, while carver caves are added later on as generated features.

Noise caves

Noise caves are generated using a noise. They come in the form of cheese caves, spaghetti caves, and noodle caves.^[2] By adjusting noise frequency, hollowness (for cheese caves), and thickness (for spaghetti caves, noodle caves, and noise pillars), noise caves can vary in extremely diverse ways. When generating noise caves, the game firstly generates a random noise field, and "smudges" it using a mathematical trick called Perlin noise. These processes then result in a 3D noise image. Noise pillars also generate inside cave blobs.

Noise caves are a part of the base terrain generation, and so do not intersect generated structures or mineral deposits. They are typically decorated with biome-specific features and decoration such as grass, sand, snow, or trees at higher y-levels, or dripstone pillars or clay deltas at lower y-levels. This is important, as cave noise is dually used to generate important Overworld terrain features such as overhangs or floating islands on the surface.^[3]

Cheese cave

Not to be confused with Cheese.

Cheese caves are pocket areas of the underground that come in various sizes. Cheese caves offer large and open spaces, being the largest cave type in the game. They frequently generate noise pillars and expose many ores. When generating, the black part of noise image becomes stone or deepslate, and white part becomes air, making it resemble cheese with many holes.

Spaghetti cave

Spaghetti caves are long, narrow, winding caves and are a bit similar to small or medium carver caves, but longer. When generating, the edge of black and white part of noise image becomes air, making it look like long and wide spaghetti.

Noodle cave

Noodle caves are a thinner and squigglier variant of spaghetti caves. They consist of tunnels usually 1 to 5 blocks in width. When generating, the edge of black and white part of noise image becomes air, making it look like long and thin noodles.

Noise pillar

Noise pillars look like large dripstones or speleothems, but consist usually of stone. They can be found in any type of noise cave, making caves more realistic.

Aquifer

Aquifers are the part of terrain generation that decides what fills every non-solid block: water, lava, air or, near the boundary between two bodies of fluid, stone. They produce the underground lakes, the lava lakes below Y=-10, the water and lava falls in caves, and the stone "rims" that keep neighboring bodies of fluid apart. Rivers and oceans are not produced by aquifers: they are filled by the global fluid rule below, which applies whether aquifers are enabled or not. Note that lava lakes are also generated underground, but are not aquifers.

The following describes Java Edition. Aquifers were added in and the algorithm has been the same since.

Global fluid rule

Every dimension has a fluid rule that depends only on the Y coordinate:

• Below Y = min(−54, sea level): lava, whose surface is at Y=-54.
• Otherwise: the dimension's default fluid (water in the Overworld) up to sea level.

Without aquifers this rule alone fills every cave: water below sea level and lava below Y=-54. This is why the Nether has its lava ocean at Y=32 and why the Caves world preset has water below Y=32 and lava below Y=-54. In a dimension whose sea level is below −54 (the Floating Islands preset, sea level −64) there is no lava layer at all.

Aquifer cells

When aquifers are enabled, the world is divided into cells of 16×12×16 blocks. The cell grid is shifted by 5 blocks on X and Z and by 1 block on Y relative to chunk boundaries. Each cell contains one randomly placed center (offset 0–9 on X and Z and 0–8 on Y inside the cell, chosen from the world seed and the cell coordinates). Each center carries a fluid status: a fluid level and a fluid type, or "dry" for no fluid.

For a given block, the game looks at the 12 cells around it (2×3×2: the block's own cell and the next one on X and Z, and the rows above and below on Y) and finds the four centers nearest to the block by squared Euclidean distance. If the nearest center is clearly closer than the second one (the squared distances differ by 25 or more), the block simply takes the nearest center's status: its fluid type if the block is below that center's fluid level, air otherwise. Because of this, aquifers form a three-dimensional Voronoi pattern, and fluid levels change in abrupt steps at cell boundaries rather than smoothly.

Fluid status of a cell

The status of a center is computed from the preliminary surface level (a density function, usually slightly below the actual terrain) sampled at 13 chunk offsets around the center: the center's own chunk, and 12 more chunks reaching 3 chunks west, 1 chunk east, and 1 chunk north and south. Each sampled surface is raised by 8 blocks before comparison.

1. If the bottom of the cell (center Y − 12) is above the raised surface of its own chunk, the cell uses the global fluid rule. Cells high above ground therefore contain only air.
2. If the top of the cell (center Y + 12) pokes above any sampled surface that lies below sea level, the cell is part of the sea: its level is sea level and its type is the default fluid.
3. Otherwise the cell is underground and its flooding is decided by noise, unless it lies in the exclusion region (see below), in which case it is dry.

For an underground cell, the fluid_level_floodedness noise (clamped to [−1, 1]) is compared against two thresholds. The thresholds depend on how far the cell is below the lowest sampled surface, but only if the center's own surface is below sea level; on land the depth does not matter.

Between those two depths the thresholds are interpolated linearly. In practice this means that cells under the sea floor are almost always flooded to sea level, while inland cells are mostly dry, with occasional partially flooded ones.

• A fully flooded cell has its level at the global fluid level (sea level, or −54 for lava).
• A partially flooded cell gets a level from the fluid_level_spread noise, sampled once per 16×40×16 region: 40 × floor(Y / 40) + 20 + spread, where spread is in the range −10 to 10 in steps of 3. The level is additionally capped at the lowest sampled surface. Aquifer levels therefore cluster around Y = −20, 20, 60, 100, … (for example 11, 14, 17, 20, 23, 26 or 29 within the 0–40 band), and a partially flooded cell may lie above sea level, which is how lakes appear inside mountain caves.
• Otherwise the cell is dry.

Fluid type. A flooded cell contains the default fluid, except that it becomes lava when its level is at or below Y=-10 and the absolute value of the lava noise, sampled once per 64×40×64 region, exceeds 0.3. Because of the coarse sampling, lava aquifers come in large contiguous patches. Aquifers in the Overworld above Y=-10 are therefore always water, and the lava layer below Y=-54 exists regardless of aquifers.

Exclusion. Aquifers do not generate where erosion < −0.225 and depth > 0.9, that is, deep below terrain with the lowest erosion values. This is the same region used to place the Deep Dark biome and extends somewhat beyond it, which is why deep dark caves are dry.

Barriers

When the two (or three) nearest centers are almost equally close to a block (their squared distances differ by less than 25) and their statuses differ, the game computes a pressure between them and adds it to the terrain density at that block. If the sum becomes positive, the block is generated as stone instead of fluid or air. This is what separates bodies of fluid with different levels or types and what produces the stone "rims" around underground lakes.

The pressure depends on the block's height relative to the two fluid levels:

• Between the two levels it is positive and highest in the middle.
• Above the higher level it drops off quickly, so the stone "lid" over a lake is only a few blocks thick (up to about 5 blocks).
• Below the lower level it drops off slowly, so the stone floor and walls under a lake can be up to about 23 blocks thick.
• A water cell next to a lava cell always receives a strong fixed pressure, so water and lava are nearly always separated by stone.

The barrier noise adds a random component to the pressure in a narrow band around the fluid levels, which makes the barriers irregular rather than flat. Two cells with the same status have zero pressure between them, so a body of fluid spanning several cells has no internal walls.

Stone placed by a barrier is ordinary stone: it is affected by surface rules like any other terrain, which is why lake shores near the surface are covered in the biome's surface blocks.

Flowing fluids

Fluid blocks generated near the boundary between cells with different statuses receive a scheduled tick after the chunk is generated. When such a block is next to air, the fluid starts flowing, which produces the waterfalls and lavafalls found in caves. Water generated directly above the lava layer (at Y=-54, when sea level is above it) is always scheduled. Fluid inside a single cell, or between cells with identical statuses, is never scheduled and stays still.

Configuration

In custom world generation, aquifers are controlled by the optional aquifers object, which holds the density functions barrier, fluid_level_floodedness, fluid_level_spread, lava, exclusion and surface_level; omitting the object disables aquifers. The sea_level and default_fluid fields of the noise settings define the global fluid rule.

Carver caves

"Carver" redirects here. For carver canyons, see Canyon. For how carvers are generated, see World generation § Carvers. For the definition of carvers in data packs, see Carver definition.

Carver caves' structure typically consists of a series of irregular tunnels branching off and winding in other directions, which may cut through to the surface, creating natural entrances to the cave.

A carver cave may have a main room (aka circular void) connecting 1 to 4 trunks, each trunk with zero or two branches. It may also have no main room, only one trunk and zero or two branches on it, that is, an I-shaped or T-shaped cave. There is a one-in-four probability of generating a cave with the main room, and another three-quarters probability of generating an I-shaped or T-shaped cave.

The main room is an ellipsoidal void of various size. It sometimes may be too small to be found, making the cave looks I-shaped or T-shaped. But as long as the cave is not I-shaped or T-shaped, it must have a main room.

For each trunk or branch, it is usually thin at both ends and thick in the middle. However, the thickness does not vary so evenly. It sometimes flickers thick and thin as it advances. Sometimes it becomes so thin that there are some interruptions. Multiple interruptions make it look like a series of continuous bubbles. The length from the root of the trunk to the top of a branch varies from 85 to 112 blocks. The trunk and branches are curved, and they are often intertwined with each other to make complex caves. Multiple caves sometimes merge with each other making them more messy and spacious.

The ceiling of the main room, trunks, and branches is usually round, while the floor is usually flat.

In contrast with noise caves' gradual and natural openings, carver caves frequently cut straight through surface blocks and generated features, either destroying them or inhibiting their generation. Sand often falls into caves generated near the surface of a desert or beach; craters in the sand can alert the player to caves below the surface. Caves cannot cut through red sand nor snow blocks, despite these generating as a surface block in several biomes.^[4] They frequently intersect and expose other natural structures such as other caves, monster rooms, carver canyons, and mineshafts.

Overworld carver cave

The carver cave generation in the Overworld starts from Y=-56 to Y=180. The probability of cave generation is higher at Y=-56 to Y=47.

Their main rooms vary from roughly 1 to 14 blocks in height, and from roughly 5 to 15 blocks in diameter. The horizon thickness of trunks varies from roughly 2 to 38, while the vertical thickness of trunks varies from roughly 1 to 36. The horizon thickness of branches varies from roughly 2 to 7, while the vertical thickness of trunks varies from roughly 1 to 7.

A cave may connect to the surface of the terrain, creating natural entrances to the cave. They sometimes connect to the sea. Caves and mineshafts also regularly contain at least minor water or lava flows as well as caves being made up of a number of aquifers of water and lava.

Some biome decoration might appear as well. For example, in jungle biomes, vines generate in carver caves near the surface, while sculk and related blocks may appear in the deep dark.

Nether carver cave

The carver cave generation in the Nether starts from Y=0 to Y=126.

Their main rooms vary from roughly 2 to 8 blocks in height, and from roughly 5 to 15 blocks in diameter. Compared to caves in the Overworld, the vertical thickness of the caves in the Nether is higher. The horizontal thickness of trunks varies from roughly 3 to 15, while the vertical thickness of trunks varies from roughly 12 to 64. The horizontal thickness of branches varies from roughly 3 to 5, while the vertical thickness of trunks varies from roughly 12 to 22.

Gallery

• 
  Several carver caves.
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  Cave with main room and a trunk.
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  Cave with main room and two trunks.
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  An I-shaped cave.
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  A T-shaped cave.
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  Cave with bubbles.
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  A T-shaped cave with a wide trunk.
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  A small cave with a zombie inside.
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  A medium cave with a skeleton.
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  A sizable cave connected to several others.
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  A large cave with gold ore, iron ore and coal ore.
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  A big cave with many types of ores and monsters.
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  An above-ground circular void.
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  An example of a cave connected with the sea.
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  A Nether carver exposing bedrock

Underwater carver caves

Underwater caves are completely flooded caves that may have underwater magma.

Being completely underwater, only the magma blocks provide any air for entities to breathe, since they generate bubble columns. They sometimes have seagrass, but kelp cannot generate due to being exposed to the sky, unlike sea-access caves.

Structures and features

Monster room

Monster rooms, formerly called dungeons, are structure-like features that appear in the underground that contain monster spawners. They are small rooms made of cobblestone and mossy cobblestone and contain a monster spawner that produces either zombies, skeletons, or spiders and up to 2 chests. Finding a monster room without a chest is unlikely but possible.

Ancient city

An ancient city is a palatial structure found in the deep dark, harboring chests containing items that cannot be found anywhere else or that help a player avoid a warden. An ancient city features a large palace that stretches throughout a deep dark biome. The palace is made up of long corridors with gray wool floors to prevent vibrations as well as some smaller ruins off to the side of the main corridors, which contain between one or two loot chests. The city center features a frame resembling a warden's head, where there are reinforced deepslate blocks, which is an unobtainable material in Survival mode. Other unique blocks such as soul lanterns and candles as well as different forms of deepslate can be found here.

Mineshaft

A mineshaft is a generated structure found underground or underwater, having 3×3 mazes of tunnels with cave spiders and ores exposed on the walls or floor regularly. Mineshafts also generate pillars of oak logs if a part of the mineshaft floats over a cave in the air, along with iron chains that hang from the ceiling.

Lava lake

Lava lakes may generate underground with an air pocket, which makes them look like small caves with lava aquifers.

Amethyst geode

An amethyst geode is a feature found in the underground of the Overworld. Amethyst geodes contain smooth basalt, calcite, and are the only source, apart from Ancient City and Trial Chambers chests, of amethyst items and blocks.

Cave biomes

There are some biomes generated only in caves in the Overworld.

Dripstone caves

A dripstone cave is an underground biome often found far away from oceans, in areas with high continentalness values. It features a landscape covered by speleothems, taking the form of patches of pointed dripstone and large dripstone block pillars. Small sources of water can be found on the floor. Drowned can spawn here in aquifers.

Lush caves

A lush cave is an underground biome that is usually found below biomes with high humidity values, such as dark forests and old growth taigas. It is filled with unique flora, cave vines covering the roof, and clay pools of water on the bottom. This biome can be found underground below azalea trees. Axolotls and tropical fish can spawn here.

Deep dark

The deep dark mainly generates deep underground in the deepslate layer, usually in mountainous areas with low erosion values, and never below an ocean. The floor in this biome often has patches of sculk blocks surrounded by sculk veins, which include sculk-related blocks such as sculk shriekers, sculk sensors, and sculk catalysts. No mobs spawn naturally in this biome, but if a player triggers the sculk shriekers a certain amount of times, the warden, a powerful hostile mob, may appear, giving the player the Darkness effect. This biome may contain one or more ancient cities.

Sulfur caves

The sulfur caves are a cave biome that consist of sulfur, sulfur spike and cinnabar blocks, where sulfur cubes and cave spiders naturally spawn. Sulfur pools generate in this biome, which include a block of potent sulfur. Sulfur springs can spawn above a sulfur cave, indicating the presence of one nearby.

Ice caves

The ice caves are an upcoming cave biome that consists of packed ice, calcite, and icicles, where frostbites naturally spawn. Crevasses also generate here, with brittle ice covering a hole filled with water.

History

Announcement

Java Edition

Bedrock Edition

Legacy Console Edition

New Nintendo 3DS Edition

Issues

Issues relating to "Cave" are maintained on the bug tracker. Issues should be reported and viewed there.

Trivia

• Before they were added to Minecraft, large underground lakes were already present in Minicraft.

Gallery

Carvers

• 
  A cave in early Classic.
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  A cave in Classic 0.30.
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  A wormhole entrance.
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  A dead bush in a badlands cave.
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  A cave entrance found in a Birch Forest biome.
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  A cave with all seven types of Overworld ore.
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  An entrance generated in a badlands biome.
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  A cave generated near the surface of a jungle biome, causing vines to grow on its wall.
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  Various ores.
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  A water cave, with water flowing inside.
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  The inside of a cave near the surface of badlands.
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  A cave that generated underneath an ocean.
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  Unusually repetitive cave generation seen in Spectator mode.
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  A deep cave entrance.
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  Natural sandstone blocking sand from entering a cave system.
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  Dark cave entrance.
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  Mobs that spawned in a unlit cave.
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  Cave entrance in a desert biome.
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  A circular cave entrance generated in snowy plains biome.
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  Huge cave generated inside a hillside.
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  Pitch-black cave.
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  In the desert, players have to be careful about mining in the ceiling, as this can cause a cave-in and easily kill the player.
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  Another example of a mega cave with a mineshaft.
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  Cave entrance in a desert.

Mojang screenshots

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  Carvers didn't generate below Y=0 in early caves & cliffs snapshots.
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  Cave entrance in a badlands biome.
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  Cave entrance in a desert biome.
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  A cave full of monsters in Bedrock Edition.
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  A cave in 1.17.
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  A cave entrance with dripstone.

Noise caves

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  Alpha's characteristic terrain quirks were generated just like modern cheese caves, though limited to higher y-axes.
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  The start of a spaghetti cave.
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  A spaghetti cave winding through the underground.
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  An X-ray view of a spaghetti cave.
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  Stone speleothems in a cave.
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  A noise cave with varying sizes of speleothems.
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  A noise cave with thick, clustered pillars.
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  A more open cave with narrower pillars.
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  Tall pillars in a cave.
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  A noise cave below Y=0.
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  A deepslate pillar in a noise cave.
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  Multiple ores, found in the new big cave.
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  A large cave underground, with ferns growing in it.
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  A large cave.
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  Another cave.

Mojang screenshots

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  A world full of cheese caves.
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  Ores in a cave.
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  Ores in a cave.
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  A huge cave full of lava from Caves & Cliffs development.
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  An even huger cave full of lava from Cave & Cliffs development.
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  A waterfall in a cave.
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  A big cave with a hanging mineshaft.
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  A cave exit.
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  A dark cave full of monsters.
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  A dark cave with monsters.
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  A dark cave with lava.
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  A comparison of a lava lake between Java Edition (left) and Bedrock Edition (right).
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  Lots of monsters in a cave.
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  A tall cave full of lava.
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  A large cave entrance.
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  A cave that opens to a mountainside.
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  A player in a mountain cave.
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  Big lavafalls in a big cave.
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  A big cave.

Aquifers

• 
  An entrance to an aquifer from land.
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  An aquifer boundary, creating an underground lake.
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  An aquifer meets an ocean.
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  Magma blocks on the floor of an aquifer, creating bubble columns.
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  A tiny aquifer, made up of six water sources.
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  A large aquifer with narrow pillars.
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  The differing water levels of several aquifers.
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  An aquifer below Y=0.
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  A water and a lava aquifer that generated next to each other. Note the lush caves in the back.
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  Partially-flooded canyon cave.
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  A flooded cave.

Mojang screenshots

• 
  A dark flooded cave.
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  A cross section showing caves and aquifers.
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  A lava aquifer and water aquifer.
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  A water aquifer and lava aquifer. There is a mine in the background.
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  The result of aquifers being too big.
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  Aquifers in development.
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  Aquifers in development.
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  Aquifers in development.
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  Aquifers in development.
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  An underwater cave.
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  An underwater cave.
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  An underwater cave.
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  Boating in a cave.
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  A cave with water and pillars.

Hollows

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  A hollow formed by the terrain generator.
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  A larger hollow with a lake inside.

Cracks

• 
  Crack carvers from the caves & cliffs snapshots.

Mojang screenshots

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  Light shining through cracks in a cave ceiling.
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  A cave lit by light from cracks.

Biomes

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  Lush Caves.
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  Dripstone Caves.
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  The lush caves and dripstone caves meet.

In other media

• 
  Artwork of Steve in a cave
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  A cave as it appears in Minecraft Dungeons
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  A cave as it appears in Minecraft Mini-Series
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  A cave as it appears in A Minecraft Movie
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  21113 The Cave
• 

See also

• Ambience, sounds that can be heard around and within dark caves.
• A guide to exploring caves

References