Overworld

Overworld is the dimension a world starts in, and the only one with a day cycle and weather.

Reaching it

A new world begins in the Overworld, at a spawn point the game places on sand. A portal built here leads to the Nether, and the same portal brings a player back. Dying in the Nether also returns the player to the Overworld.

The Overworld is the only dimension a player can sleep or set a spawn point in.

Terrain

The world is 128 blocks tall. Sea level is y=64, and y=0 is bedrock everywhere. The world ends 32,000,000 blocks from the origin in x and z: past that every block reads as air, and nothing can be placed.

Ten of the thirteen biomes generate here. Ice Desert is defined but never chosen, and Hell and Sky belong to the other two dimensions.

Light and weather

A day is 24000 ticks — 20 minutes. Sky light is reduced by up to 11 as the sun goes down, so a block under open sky reads light 15 at noon and light 4 at midnight. Sleeping in a bed sets the clock to the start of the next day.

The colour of the sky by day follows the temperature where the player stands, so it shifts gradually rather than at biome borders.

The Overworld has weather. Most biomes get rain and lightning, Taiga and Tundra get snow, and Desert gets neither.

Mobs

Every mob but the ghast, the pig zombie and the giant spawns in the Overworld. All ten biomes share one set of spawn lists. Only the wolf is restricted to particular biomes: it is added to the Forest and Taiga lists.

Data values

• Dimension: 0

Overworld chunks are saved in the world folder itself. A player's current dimension is stored in the Dimension tag of their entity data.