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Minecraft Natural Landmarks

There are many natural landmarks in minecraft, ranging from lava falls to beaches and from simple hills to frozen oceans. Each landmark gives every biome a different look and can help you make your town look unique.

Some landmarks are exclusive to certain biomes, while others appear in every one of them. Below is a list of all landmarks to help you find the perfect area for your perfect house or town.

Basins

A basin is a large field made out of stone, which often makes it look like somebody dug up all the grass and dirt in the area. Besides their aesthetic aspect and the fact friendly mobs cant spawn here, they don’t serve any purpose.

Beaches


Beaches can occur at all shores. The original content of that shore is simply replaced with sand. Beaches are often quite steep due to the steep edges of most biomes at their water borders.

Caverns and Cave Systems

When mining your way down to bedrock, you’ll most likely cross at least 1 of these cave systems. These enormous systems are the perfect place for hostile mobs to spawn and for players to get lost in, but they also offer an easy way to spot minerals and to descend lower and lower with having to mine.

If you don’t want to get lost in these caverns, you can either ignore them and mine another way or use some sort of system to tell you where you came from. Using signs for example, or redstone torches to mark the exit.

Players often get lost when they only use normal torches, as there are many dead ends an other pathways, which make it difficult to find your way back when everything is lit up with torches.

Desert Wells

Desert wells are, of course, exclusive to desert biomes. They’re small structures made out of sandstone and contain some water.

They currently don’t really serve a purpose, as they’re not part of villages and with the already high amount of ponds in the desert, they don’t give you or hostile mobs more survivability.

Dungeons, Strongholds and Abandoned Mineshafts

Dungeons are small, underground rooms made out of mossy cobblestone and cobblestone, containing a monster spawner and up to 2 chest.

Strongholds are large, underground fortresses which contain the end portal.

Abandoned mineshafts are enormous systems of mineshafts with many chests, cobwebs, cave spider spawners and danger around every corner.

Floating Blocks

Due to the way the world is generated, you’ll often find floating blocks in the air, which can often look very odd. Floating groups of blocks can be quite large, even with trees growing on them, but most of the time they’re just a few blocks big, sometimes it’s just 1 block.

Frozen Oceans

When a part of a tundra or taiga biome is water and connects with an ocean, the water inside those biomes will freeze, making it look like the ocean is frozen.
Sometimes these parts can be quite big, making it look like the ocean biome itself froze over.

Hills

Hills are pretty much part of every biome, except for mountain and tundra biomes, which spawn mountains.

Lava Pools

Lava pools are randomly generated and can occur in every biome. They can cause forest fires if they’re on the surface and close enough to trees. Lava pools are more widely spread underground, where they can form huge lava lakes.

Lava pools can sometimes be hidden from view, if they’re behind a small hill for example, which sometimes causes people to fall into them while looking at a map or simply while not paying attention.

Lava pools do have a big advantage though. They’re an easily accessible source of obsidian when water is poured over it. Do be careful though, these pools can be deep, so avoid mining the obsidian while standing on top of it.

NPC Villages

NPC villages offer a huge amount of resources, from wood and stone of their houses to possibly diamonds and obsidian in the blacksmith’s chests.

These villages usually spawn in desert and plains biomes, though they’re also found in other biomes.

Pumpkin Fields

Pumpkin fields are quite uncommon, but can be found in all biomes, except for mushroom biomes. They’re more commonly found in forests and plains, however. These pumpkin fields often offer the safest way to find pumpkin seeds, as the only other way is to find them in chests in abandoned mineshafts.

Pumkins can be worn on your head, which offers protection from endermen.

Ravines

Ravines can occur in every biome and are simply huge cracks in the surface, which can be over 30 blocks deep. These ravines make it easy to spot minerals in the walls and can often serve as a great way to find diamonds or at least get to diamond level.

Abandoned mineshafts, dungeons and other landmarks often collide with ravines, making it easy to spot them.

The top of ravines can sometimes be covered slightly, making it hard to spot and thus becomes a death trap for the unsuspecting player.

Rivers

Rivers cut large, curvy paths through one or several biomes and make a great aesthetic aspect in any map, whether it’s for towns connected by bridges or a waterway to a harbour.

Rivers are also a great way to gather clay, as you won’t need to dive very deep like you would in oceans.

Rivers don’t have any currents, which makes it perfectly safe to use rivers as traveling paths for boats.

Waterfalls and Lava Falls

Water and lava source blocks can occur in every biome, both above ground as underground. These source blocks will flow down and can create good looking falls.

The waterfalls can be used for farming by controlling the flow of water, though simply using a bucket to pick up the water source block is often a lot easier.

Placing a block on a water source block will stop the water flow and get rid of all water. Placing a block on the lava source block will stop it from flowing, but the lava that has already been generated will remain and could still spread when blocks are placed under the lava flow. Getting rid of this usually requires placing a block on almost every part covered in lava and then removing those blocks again.