Minecraft:Far Lands (Java Edition)/After Beta 1.8

The Far Lands were a terrain bug that occurred in versions of Template:MC up to Beta 1.7.3. They were caused by errors in the math that governs terrain generation, resulting in abnormal structures resembling excessively stretched-out terrain.

The X/Z Far Lands were fixed in Beta 1.8 Pre-release, so they do not exist without modifications to Minecraft. In addition, most of the distance effects were fixed. The Y Far Lands (aka the Sky and Ground Far Lands) were overlooked, but were fixed in 1.13 with the world generation rewrite.

It is possible to force the X/Z Far Lands to generate in a Custom World when setting the Coordinate Scale to extreme high values.

Technical

The Far Lands were a terrain generation bug that occurred at ±12,550,824 along the X and Z-axes prior to Beta 1.8, as well as the Y-axis (technically) before Java 1.13.

The Far Lands generate because of an integer overflow error within Minecraft. The Minecraft:noise generator that draws Minecraft's height map increases by 171.103 for every block, causing an integer overflow at approximately ±12,550,824 (sometimes ±12,550,821.) Multiplying the aforementioned numbers results in the 32-bit signed integer max value, which when overflowed, results in an extreme noise seed.

Location

File:Far Lands in 1.8.1.png

Far Lands generating in 1.8.1

With On the X and Z axis, the Far Lands and Farther Lands initiate as they did in Beta 1.7 and below (±12,550,824), with an identical chance of offset at positive positions. However, due to the new height limits and new world generation, they are actually 256 blocks tall, instead of 128, and the Far Lands look more rounded. There is a world border at the 32-bit integer limit (2,147,483,647), which crashes the game upon approaching (likely due to an integer overflow when casting the player's position to a 32-bit integer).

Any attempt to quit the game near the 32-bit integer limit also results in crashing.

On the Y-axis, the Far Lands initiate at around twice the former number, which is therefore ±25,101,648.

The Farther Lands also generate at ±2,008,131,840 on the Y-axis, however, they cannot be generated without lowering the selector noise period.

The location of the 64-bit variant of the Far Lands depends of the game version. In versions between Beta 1.8 to 1.13.2, they start at 53.9 quadrillion blocks due to a small change in the coordinate scale, that is not noticeable for 32-bit overflowing. The Far Lands in positive coordinates don't begin exactly after Template:Frac blocks due to the remainder of the overflow. The Far lands in negative coordinates have a remainder of 2³², as a result, they begin exactly after Template:Frac blocks. In versions 1.14 and later they start at 1.8 septillion blocks, due to a change in that version that takes the noise coordinate and divides it by 2²⁵.

Structure

The edge Far Lands and corner Far Lands, as well as their Farther variations, generate relatively identically to their pre-Beta 1.8 counterparts, but utilizing the entire height limit, causing them to generate all the way up to y=256 until they reach the sky Far Lands at y=+25,101,648 (and equivalently the ground Far Lands at y=-25,101,648). Since the 21w06a snapshot and until 1.18.1, however, The Far Lands are thinner and more geometrical, with a cross-section made of perpendicular lines and rectangles.

As of 1.18.2, they appear as a giant wall of stone with caves in them.

Far Lands

Sky Far Lands

File:Far lands on Y.png

The Far Lands generating on an unmodded modern custom world, before 1.13. A high coordinate scale was also used to generate this, resulting in repetitive terrain.

The Far Lands generate at positive values of the Y-axis past y=25,101,648. Minecraft:Monoliths generate up to this point if the player can get them to generate.

Setting the Height Scale extremely high can generate the Far Lands in the sky up to the height limit.

This is possible in Vanilla.

Vertex Far Lands

When the Sky or Ground Far Lands meet with the vanilla Corner Far Lands, many interesting terrain features can be sighted. The content of these intersections appears to vary throughout worlds, with some being completely blank, some completely solid, and some generating like regular Far Lands material. In some cases, diagonal patterns with large absent chunks generate.<ref>Template:Ytl</ref>

• The Sky Far Lands.
  The Sky Far Lands.
• The Ground Far Lands.
  The Ground Far Lands.
• The Ground Far Lands.
  The Ground Far Lands.
• An intersection of all 3 sets of Far Lands, where the Y-axis is positive.
  An intersection of all 3 sets of Far Lands, where the Y-axis is positive.
• A more extensive view of the previous scenario.
  A more extensive view of the previous scenario.
• File:Vertex Far Lands (positive) (1).png
• An intersection of all 3 sets of Far Lands, where the Y-axis is negative.
  An intersection of all 3 sets of Far Lands, where the Y-axis is negative.
• File:Vertex Far Lands (negative) (1).png
• Inside the Sky Vertex Far Lands, with crazy terrain.
  Inside the Sky Vertex Far Lands, with crazy terrain.
• Inside the Ground Vertex Far Lands, with a diagonal pattern.
  Inside the Ground Vertex Far Lands, with a diagonal pattern.
• The Ground Farther Lands inside the Ground Corner Far Lands.
  The Ground Farther Lands inside the Ground Corner Far Lands.
• The Sky Corner Far Lands.
  The Sky Corner Far Lands.
• Inside the Sky Corner Far Lands.
  Inside the Sky Corner Far Lands.
• The Ground Corner Far Lands.
  The Ground Corner Far Lands.
• Inside the Ground Corner Far Lands.
  Inside the Ground Corner Far Lands.
• The Farther Lands inside the Sky Corner Far Lands.
  The Farther Lands inside the Sky Corner Far Lands.
• The Farther Lands inside the Sky Vertex Far Lands.
  The Farther Lands inside the Sky Vertex Far Lands.
• The Farther Lands inside the Ground Corner Far Lands.
  The Farther Lands inside the Ground Corner Far Lands.
• The Farther Lands inside the Ground Vertex Far Lands.
  The Farther Lands inside the Ground Vertex Far Lands.

Depth noise Far Lands

Like low/high and selector noise which respectively control the Far and Farther Lands, depth noise can be made to overflow at a given position. By default, it overflows at 42,949,672.96 blocks. Due to the Far Lands initiating before it, the overflow in depth noise is effectively impossible to see. However, if depth noise is made to overflow before tradition far lands, achievable by pushing the far lands farther out than this distance or moving the depth noise far lands closer, the effects can be seen immediately as it overflows, the terrain jumps up a few blocks. Terrain after this point is slightly more boring than before due to depth noise controlling subtle variation, which no longer exists after the overflow due to it almost always being at the max possible value. Every so often, very long "rifts" characteristic of depth noise far lands can be seen, which extend for extremely long. These rifts end once they hit the point twice the distance of the first overflow, and rifts as a whole past this point do not seem to be able to come into existence. Rifts have also only been noted on the positive X axis and are yet to be found on the Z axis.

File:First Stage of Degrading.png

The start of the edge fringelands in an early version of Minecraft

The Fringe Lands

The Fringe Lands are a stage of terrain breakdown where the Far Lands begin to break down at extremely high distances. Unlike Bedrock Edition and pre-b1.8, in modern versions they do not generate with any skygrid artifacts without additional modification to the game's code. The X axis breaks down at about 8.6 quindecillion blocks, earlier than the Z axis at about 9.17 quindecillion blocks for a currently unknown reason, resulting in one 2D stripe of worldgen surrounding by an infinite ocean if X&Z noise scale is set high enough.

Corner Fringe Lands

The Corner Fringe Lands appear much earlier than the regular Fringe Lands, at around 40.5 septillion blocks on both axes.

Fringe Farther Lands

The Fringe Farther Lands appear between 2.5 duodecillion and 10 duodecillion blocks out. Also after the Z Fringe Farther Lands completely broke down, a skygrid can generate.

Vertex Fringe Lands

This type of fringe lands only appears if you set the noise multiplier of all three axis to 1 quadrillion. The vertex fringe lands degrade into skygrid at the much earlier coordinate of 100 quadrillion blocks, and this coordinate does indeed vary.

Summary

The Far Lands were never actually removed from the game in Beta 1.8. Rather, what was fixed was integers and noise values overflowing at the 32-bit limit, by simply making them 64-bit instead, way beyond the boundaries of a normal Minecraft world. As such, by patching the game to reverse this change, or by using a BigInteger mod, the Far Lands can be brought back. However, their location, makeup and progression depends entirely on the version and/or method used. Below are tables to simplify what happens:

Undoing the fix

Template:See also If the game is patched to simply undo the fix that patched the original Far Lands, then they will generate at their original starting point of X/Z: ±12,550,821. More recent versions will have the very early Infdev-like generation of the Far Lands rather than the classic structure.

The limit to how much of the Far Lands will generate is dependent on what mods and/or version is being used. If only the patch is reversed, then it will vary due to various features throughout different versions that affected the edge of the world.

• Theoretically, even though there is no known mods reversing the fix for such versions, from Minecraft:Beta 1.8 until 1.2.5, the Far Lands will generate until X/Z: ±30,000,064, due to the bug causing players to get stuck after 32 blocks past the limit existing in these versions.
• From 1.3.1 until 1.7.10, and again from 1.9 until 1.13.2, they will generate beyond X/Z: ±32,000,000, although they cannot be accessed due to the player being kicked for being in an "Illegal position" after 32 million blocks in the former versions.
• From 1.8 until 1.8.9, the Far Lands will simply stop genersting at the Minecraft:world boundary of 30 million blocks, identical to pre-Minecraft:Alpha v1.2.0 and Infdev versions ending at 32 million.
• From 1.14 onwards, because of the switch to a packed coordinate system, the Far Lands will either turn completely black due to lighting breaking (in 1.14) or stop rendering (in modern versions at least later then 1.20.4) at X/Z: ±33,554,432, both due to packed coordinates overflowing at this limit. Attempting to go further is impossible as the game will crash if a chunk is rendered beyond this point.

200 Blocks from the 32-bit integer limit where world rendering glitches out. At 2,147,483,520, the game crashes.

The Far Lands at the 32-bit integer limit with terrain flickering in and out.

In versions after 1.8, if the above is combined with a mod that removes the Minecraft:world boundary, and patches the packed coordinate overflow (in 1.14 and later versions) then the Far Lands can generate out to the 32-bit limit of X/Z: ±2,147,483,647. In some earlier versions, sometimes dependent on the exact mod, the same glitches and progression from pre-Beta 1.8 will occur, such as terrain flickering at high distances until the game crashes shortly before the 32-bit limit and world rendering stops completely. More modern versions will end up generating without rendering issues straight up until the 32-bit integer limit.

64-bit & BigInteger mod

Using either a mod that patches integers to 64-bit or a BigInt mod, the new location of the Far Lands after Beta 1.8 can be reached. However, it has been changed once due to the terrain generator receiving changes in 1.14.

Beta 1.8 to 1.14

Coordinates	Effects	Image (if avaliable)
X/Z: ±53,905,378,846,979,747	The Far Lands begin generating due to the noise value overflowing at this point. Because of the four-block offset that sometimes happened in the vanilla Far Lands, this offset is measured in tens of millions of blocks instead, so the actual start will vary between worlds.<ref>breaking Minecraft's FINAL Distance Limit…, YouTube, April 1, 2021</ref> As such, it can start as late as X/Z: ±53,905,378,859,432,448. If a Stripe Lands fix is not enabled, the Far Lands will appear two-dimensional due to occuring past the 64-bit equivalent where movement precision begins breaking down.	File:MC-distance13.png Without the fix File:MC-distance12.png With the Stripe Lands fix
X/Z: ± 4,312,430,307,758,379,833	Selector Noise overflows at this point, causing the Farther Lands to generate.
X/Z: ±576,460,752,303,423,488 (±259)	World renderer begins to break down, causing terrain to flicker in and out, like at the 32-bit.
X/Z: ±4,312,430,307,758,379,833	Selector Noise overflows at this point, causing the Farther Lands to generate.
X/Z: ±9,223,372,036,854,775,807 (±263)	The 64-bit limit and the maximum the Far Lands will generate using a 64-bit mod, since world renderer breaks completely at this distance in this case, giving way to an endless void like in the 32-bit cases. The game will always crash when approaching this limit. Due to the effects mentioned above however, it will be almost completely invisible, if a Stripe Lands fix is not enabled.	File:64-bit limit Far Lands end.png Empty void after rendering breaks at the 64-bit limit at X: 9,223,372,036,854,776,000.

Beyond this point, a 128-bit or BigInteger mod is required to go even further. Because such mods are currently only known to exist are for 1.3.1 and later, all chunks rendered this far out in these versions, in conjecture with the previous distances will be treated as fake chunks, having been so since 30 million blocks out. Additionally, terrain flickering doesn't happen as these patches usually fix them.

Coordinates	Effects	Image (if avaliable)
X/Z: ±147,573,952,589,676,412,928 (267)	Biome fill noise overflows, causing repeating stone layers to be exposed within the Far Lands.	File:1.2.5 biome fill Edge Far Lands.png
X: ±Template:Abbr Z: ±Template:Abbr	The Fringe Lands begin generating as a result of the Far Lands progressively beginning to break down. These are are the same occurance that happens on Template:BE, but it happens at the 64-bit equivalent. They progressively break down into thinner and thinner slices, before becoming scattered cubes increasingly seperated. On the Z Axis, it starts slightly later, and seem to break down much more slowly.	File:The True Fringe Lands.png
X/Z: ±Template:Abbr–Template:Abbr	The Fringe Lands, and by definition, the Far Lands, end completely around this point, having been reduced to spaced out dirt blocks or very few long lines of grass blocks. The only thing that generates after this is an endless bedrock ocean.<ref name="Beyond 10e308">Beyond 2^1024 blocks in Minecraft 1.3.2 BigInt mod, YouTube, May 14, 2026</ref> This marks the end of Minecraft terrain generation, unless extensive modding on top of this patches the noise overflow and Far Lands. Because of the very high distances and, the exaxt breakdown will vary from map to map and direction and is impossible to pinpoint. In most cases the Fringe Lands will end at X/Z: ±Template:Abbr, although some cases have observed them persisting until X/Z: ±1059	File:Fringe Lands end.png

Beyond this point, it remains the same, and what happens after is entirely dependent on how the game is patched, due to BigInt having the ability to change how numbers are stored. This means that, if configured, bedrock and ocean can generate beyond X/Z ±~1.7977×10³⁰⁸ (±2¹⁰²⁴) without the coordinates rolling over to "Infinity" and crashing the game,<ref name="Beyond 10e308"/> if set to be stored in 128-bit (quadruple) and even 256-bit (octuple). As Java’s own BigInteger class maxes out at ~8.8081×10^646456992 (2²³¹⁻¹), this is theoretically the absolute farthest one could possibly even reach as both BigInt and the coordinates would overflow, the latter rolling over to "Infinity" and crashing the game, making this the absolute maximum Minecraft can generate, even with extensive modding. However, this is an exceptionally gigantic number that any attempts using this method would almost certainly crash the game long before then.

1.14 to present

Due to changes within the way the terrain generator works internally in 1.14, the Far Lands were patched to be even further away then the 64-bit equivalent listed above. Additionally, the structure changed dramatically several times in the Minecraft:Caves & Cliffs updates, first being a thin maze-like construct before becoming a mostly giant wall identical to Minecraft:Infdev 20100227. The only way to reach them in modern versions is with a BigInteger mod.

Coordinates	Effects	Image (if avaliable)
X/Z: ±Template:Abbr	The Far Lands begin generating at this distance due to the overflowing of the modified noise value. This is due to a change in the Far Lands patch, which now takes the double Noise Coordinate, converts it to a 64-bit integer, and then divides it by 33,554,432. Groups of infinite tunnels like in prior iterations still generate but only on certain occassions, with most results being a solid wall with very few tunnels As before, the offset for the start may be measured in millions of blocks, but the Far Lands generally begin around this distance.	File:Modern Far Lands start.png The Far Lands generating in a modern version of Minecraft
?	At an unknown distance past the above, the Far Lands abruptly stop completely and give way to an endless ocean of Minecraft:water and/or Minecraft:lava. This, as well as the lack of bedrock floor is due to the changes in cave generation but still causing Minecraft:aquifers to generate. As such, this is the end of modern Minecraft terrain generation.	File:Endless ocean at extreme large distances.png Endless ocean mixed with lava at extreme disfances.

Effects

While completely unrelated to terrain, these effects occur coincidentally with Far Lands due to their shared extreme distances and are worth noting as a result.

Floating-point precision errors with entities and particles

Even in modern versions of Minecraft, the floating-point precision errors still exist, but only with translucent block rendering, natural snow generation and snowfall at extreme heights.

Darkness

Template:Main In vanilla Minecraft 1.14, the lighting system breaks beyond 2²⁵ (X/Z ±33,554,432)<ref>Template:Bug</ref> (though this distance is available only via editing source codes), however, it isn't like what would happen beyond X/Z=32,000,000 in older versions. Instead, everything abruptly becomes absolutely dark and ignores light sources. By pressing F3, it shows that the sky light level is 0, thus undead mobs do not burn when exposed to the sky. The chunks, however, are still solid and block physics still function. Night Vision can help to counteract the visual darkness; it is currently unknown whether the Minecraft:Conduit Power effect works or not.

Explanation

Template:Main The Far Lands happen for much the same reason as they used to. As 64-bit overflowing has not been patched, its breaking can be calculated by replacing 2³¹ in calculations with 2⁶³. A table of useful values are as follows.

Noise generator/Tables/Terrain

Vanilla

In Custom World Type worlds, by setting the coordinate scale very high it is possible to generate Far Lands-like formations in Vanilla Minecraft. The only form of recognizable farlands however is a form of selector noise failure resembling a wider form of the farther lands.

History

• Post-1.2 Java Edition Far Lands loaded in Bedrock Edition.
  Post-1.2 Java Edition Far Lands loaded in Bedrock Edition.
• Another angle.
  Another angle.

Trivia

In Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

In Minecraft:Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, the "Classic Mode" route for Steve and Alex is titled "Journey to the Far Lands", in which the player faces off against other Super Smash Bros. fighters, all resembling mobs that appear in Minecraft.

The End

The End was implemented after the Far Lands were removed, meaning that the End Far Lands never generated naturally.

• The edge Far Lands on Java Edition.
  The edge Far Lands on Java Edition.
• The corner Far Lands on Java Edition.
  The corner Far Lands on Java Edition.
• A map created in the corner Far Lands on Java Edition.
  A map created in the corner Far Lands on Java Edition.
• The edge Far Lands on Java Edition before 1.9.
  The edge Far Lands on Java Edition before 1.9.
• The corner Far Lands on Java Edition before 1.9.
  The corner Far Lands on Java Edition before 1.9.
• A map created in the corner Far Lands on Java Edition before 1.9.
  A map created in the corner Far Lands on Java Edition before 1.9.
• An end city in the Far Lands.
  An end city in the Far Lands.
• The Farther Lands in the End.
  The Farther Lands in the End.
• The Corner Farther Lands in the End.
  The Corner Farther Lands in the End.