Minecraft:Item (entity)

Template:Distinguish Template:Infobox entity Items are "dropped" Minecraft:blocks or Minecraft:items (non-block resources) that appear in the world, rather than being in the Minecraft:inventory of a Minecraft:player or Minecraft:block entity; they are a type of Minecraft:entity.

Appearance

File:Item entities.png

3D dropped items, both blocks and strict items.

Items have two possible appearances, generally corresponding to whether the item appears as a 3D or 2D shape in a player's inventory screens. 3D items appear as their 3D shape, miniaturized to about Template:Frac scale, while 2D items appear as Template:Frac scale with all the pixels extruded into a cube. Both types slowly rotate and bob up and down; this is merely a visual effect, the item itself does not actually rotate or bob up and down.

Item entities that represent a stack of more than one item appear as several items stuck together. Stacks of 1 appear as one item, 2-16 as two items, 17–32 as three, 33-48 as four, and 49+ as five.

The rotation rate of the item is approximately 2.9 degrees per tick, or 57.6 degrees per second.

Behavior

Item entities come from many sources. Some common ones are:

• The death of a Minecraft:mob or Minecraft:player.
• A Minecraft:block that is mined by a player, destroyed by an Minecraft:explosion, or washed away by Minecraft:water.
• An inventory item tossed by pressing the drop item key (default Template:Key on PC, Template:Xbtn on Xbox, Template:Nsbtn/Template:Nsbtn on Nintendo Switch, Template:Psbtn on PlayStation) or dragging a stack outside of an inventory window.
  • In the mobile versions of Template:BE, items in the hotbar can be dropped by pressing on the item's slot. The entire stack is dropped.
• A container (other than an Template:BlockLink or a Template:BlockLink) that is destroyed while holding items inside.

The player may be thought of as having an "item pickup" box that surrounds their hitbox. This pickup box extends 1 additional block to the horizontal sides, and 0.5 additional blocks up and down. Any item whose hitbox intersects with the pickup box can be picked up. The pickup box is inclusive on the horizontal sides (for distance less than or equal to 1), and exclusive on the vertical sides (distance less than 0.5). When the player's hitbox size changes, such as when crouching or sleeping, the pickup box size changes with it.

Once an item entity's hitbox overlaps with the player's pickup box, it can transfer its items. As many items as can fit in the player inventory, excluding the armor slots and the off-hand slot, are transferred. If any item is transferred, a "plopping" sound is played. If all items are transferred, the items appear to move into the center of the player. The item entity never physically moves, however, which means it can appear to go through lava and blocks in its path. This can happen through blocks that are thinner than a full block, but also through the shared edge of two full blocks. Unlike Minecraft:experience orbs, multiple item entities can be picked up simultaneously. Dropped items have a delay of 10 Minecraft:ticks (half a second) between appearing and being able to be picked up, or 40 ticks (2 seconds) if thrown by a player, Minecraft:dolphin, or Minecraft:fox.

Items do not collide with other entities (except Minecraft:boats and Minecraft:shulkers) and are only moved or stopped by blocks.

Like other entities, items can be pushed by flowing water and Minecraft:bubble columns, pushed by a Minecraft:piston, launched by a moving Minecraft:slime block, stuck to a Minecraft:honey block, or caught in a Minecraft:cobweb. Items move at faster speeds if Minecraft:ice is placed under the flowing water. When in still water, items float slowly up to the surface.

Template:IN, items can be reeled by Minecraft:fishing rods, costing 3 Minecraft:durability.

If an item is within a Minecraft:solid block, it then flies out one of the unobstructed sides, or out of the top of the block if surrounded by solid blocks on all sides. It does this even if the space below is unoccupied; therefore, it is possible to recover an item dropped in a small pit by blocking up the pit.

Items visually disappear when the player is about 16 blocks away from them, and reappear when they get closer. Template:IN, this distance can be adjusted by the "Entity Distance" slider in video settings.

Unlike most entities, items cannot be spectated in Minecraft:Spectator mode without use of the Template:Cmd command.

When an item entity drops within the pickup box of two separate players simultaneously on a multiplayer server, the player who joined first automatically gets the item. If the item is tossed by one of said players, the other player is prioritized.Template:Verify

Mob pickup

Template:Main Some mobs, such as Minecraft:zombies and Minecraft:skeletons, have a chance to spawn being able to pick up weapons and armor depending on Minecraft:difficulty.

Merging

Two stackable items of the same type can merge together into a single item entity if the resulting stack size does not exceed that item's maximum stack size and if one is within a 0.5×0.25×0.5 square bounding box around the other item. The item with the greater stack gets its item count increased while the smaller or equal that is processed first is despawned.

Items usually attempt to merge every Template:Convert but items moving across block boundaries can be processed every Template:Convert.

Damage

Items cannot be attacked by players or mobs; attempting to do so simply hits through them. However, they take damage and disappear from environmental or block-based damage such as Minecraft:explosions, Minecraft:fire, Minecraft:lava, and contact with Minecraft:cacti. Items have essentially no health, so they are destroyed by the slightest damage, though if set on fire they may remain for a few seconds before disappearing. Minecraft:Nether stars are immune to explosions, and Minecraft:netherite-based items and tools are immune to fire and float on top of lava. Also, some blocks that regularly damage mobs, such as Minecraft:magma blocks, Minecraft:campfires, Minecraft:sweet berry bushes, Minecraft:wither roses, and Minecraft:powder snow, do not damage items.

Despawning

Items despawn after 6000 game Minecraft:ticks (5 minutes) of being in a loaded, entity-ticking Minecraft:chunk; this is affected by the player's Minecraft:simulation distance. If two item stacks merge, the timer is set to the item that has more time remaining. The 5-minute timer is paused when the chunk is unloaded or no longer processing entities. Template:IN, Minecraft:nether stars do not despawn. Template:IN, nether stars dropped by a dying Minecraft:wither despawn after 10 minutes, but they despawn after 5 minutes if dropped by any other means.

Items that fall into the Minecraft:void immediately despawn when they fall below world minumum build height - 64 (Y=-128 in the Minecraft:Overworld, Y=-64 in Minecraft:the Nether and Minecraft:the End).

Sounds

Template:Edition:
Item Entities use the Ambient/Environment sound category for entity-dependent sound events. Template:SoundTable

Template:Edition: Template:SoundTable

Data values

ID

Template:Editions: Template:ID table

Template:Editions: Template:ID table

Entity data

Template:See also Dropped items have entity data associated with them that contain various properties of the entity.

Template:El: Template:Main

<section begin="entity data"/>

• Template:Nbt Entity data
  • Template:Nbt inherit/entity
  • Template:Nbt: The number of ticks the item has been "untouched". After 6000 ticks (5 minutes) the item is destroyed. If set to -32768, the Age does not increase, preventing the item from despawning automatically.
  • Template:Nbt: The health of the item, which starts at 5. Items take damage from fire, lava, cacti and explosions. The item is destroyed when its health reaches 0.
  • Template:Nbt: The inventory item, without the Slot tag.
    • Template:Nbt inherit/itemnoslot
  • Template:Nbt: If present, only the player with this Minecraft:UUID can pick up the item. Used by the give command (and can be set in a summon command) to prevent the wrong player from picking up the spawned item entity. Is not preserved when removed.
  • Template:Nbt: The number of ticks the item cannot be picked up. Decreases by 1 per tick. If set to 32767, the PickupDelay does not decrease, preventing the item from being picked up.
  • Template:Nbt: The Minecraft:UUID of the entity who dropped the item. Is not preserved when removed.

<section end="entity data"/>

Template:El:

See Minecraft:Bedrock Edition level format/Entity format.

History

Trivia

• Template:Bug, the oldest standing bug in the Minecraft Minecraft:bug tracker, involves item entity positioning being incorrectly handled.

Gallery

Mojang images

• First image of 3D dropped items.
  First image of 3D dropped items.

See also

• Minecraft:Drops — items dropped by Minecraft:mobs when killed.
• Chunk format for more information about the attributes of items.