Spawn chunk

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This page describes content that has been removed and was only present in earlier versions of Minecraft.

This feature was removed in Java Edition 1.21.9.

Spawn chunks were chunks found around the world spawn in Java Edition, prior to 1.21.9. Spawn chunks were always loaded, unlike normal chunks, which unload when no players are nearby.

Usage

Normally, old chunks beyond the player's chunk loading distance unload. This means the game stops processing those chunks and they are frozen in time. This prevents redstone mechanisms and farms in unloaded chunks from running in the background. Since spawn chunks remained loaded, events occurring in them continued to process, even if no players were nearby. This mechanic could have been a detriment to the game's performance if sources of lag (e.g. lots of entities or large redstone contraptions) were present in the spawn chunks, as they would always be processing and lagging the game.

Behavior

The spawn chunks behavior arose from a dedicated chunk ticket that was created for the chunk that contained the world spawn. This ticket had a level of 30 with the spawnChunkRadius game rule set to the default value of 2, which propagated to neighboring chunks. Each time the level propagated, it increased its level by 1 until the maximum of 44 was reached.

Different levels of propagation had different behaviors. These levels were divided into 4 load types.

	Level	Properties
Entity Ticking	31 and below	All game aspects were available.
Block Ticking	32	All game aspects were available except that entities were not naturally spawned and were not processed (but were still accessible) and chunk ticks weren't processed either. These were sometimes referred to as "lazy chunks".
Border	33	No game aspect was available, but entities and blocks were still accessible (could be detected or modified).
Inaccessible	34 and above	No game aspect was available or accessible, but world generation occurred here.

Default spawn chunk load level map
IN	IN	IN	IN	IN	IN	IN	IN	IN
IN	BO	BO	BO	BO	BO	BO	BO	IN
IN	BO	BT	BT	BT	BT	BT	BO	IN
IN	BO	BT	ET	ET	ET	BT	BO	IN
IN	BO	BT	ET	ET	ET	BT	BO	IN
IN	BO	BT	ET	ET	ET	BT	BO	IN
IN	BO	BT	BT	BT	BT	BT	BO	IN
IN	BO	BO	BO	BO	BO	BO	BO	IN
IN	IN	IN	IN	IN	IN	IN	IN	IN

Limitations

There were some limitations which could affect the behavior of spawn chunks.

Idle timeout

Each dimension had a 300 game tick idle timeout on entity processing. When a player was present in the dimension, a forceloaded chunk was present in the dimension, or an entity travelled to the dimension through a portal, the idle timeout was reset. When the timeout expired, entities and block entities would stop processing for spawn chunks and the rest of the dimension. This mechanic was removed in the same version that removed spawn chunks.

Entities

Hostile mobs more than 128 blocks from a player would still despawn in spawn chunks.
Mob spawning only occurred around players.
Passive mobs present in the spawn chunks counted towards the mob cap. This often prevented passive mobs from naturally spawning elsewhere in the world as the passive mob cap is very low.

Changing location

A new world spawn point could be set using /setworldspawn. If no coordinates were provided, the block position that the player was currently standing on became the spawn point. The chunk where the world spawn was located would then be given a start ticket, and the ticket for the old world spawn would be cleared.

History

This section is missing information about: information on spawn chunks on legacy console edition

Please expand the section to include this information. Further details may exist on the talk page.

Java Edition Alpha
v1.0.15							Added spawn chunks to dedicated multiplayer servers.
Java Edition Beta
1.8			Pre-release				Added spawn chunks to singleplayer.
Java Edition
1.20.5			24w03a				Added gamerule `spawnChunkRadius` to control the size of the spawn chunks.
1.20.5			24w03a				The default spawn chunk propagation is now 3×3 instead of 19×19.
1.21.5			25w06a				All block ticking chunks now receive random ticks, regardless of if a player is within an 8-chunk distance or not. This includes the spawn chunks.
1.21.5			25w09a				Random ticks now only occur in entity processing chunks.
1.21.9			25w31a				Removed spawn chunks and the `spawnChunkRadius` gamerule.
Legacy Console Edition
Xbox 360	Xbox One	PS3	PS4	PS Vita	Wii U	Switch
?	?	?	?	?	?	?	Added spawn chunks.

Navigation

This article is linked to on an official Minecraft page.

IN	IN	IN	IN	IN	IN	IN	IN	IN
IN	BO	BO	BO	BO	BO	BO	BO	IN
IN	BO	BT	BT	BT	BT	BT	BO	IN
IN	BO	BT	ET	ET	ET	BT	BO	IN
IN	BO	BT	ET	ET	ET	BT	BO	IN
IN	BO	BT	ET	ET	ET	BT	BO	IN
IN	BO	BT	BT	BT	BT	BT	BO	IN
IN	BO	BO	BO	BO	BO	BO	BO	IN
IN	IN	IN	IN	IN	IN	IN	IN	IN

IN	IN	IN	IN	IN	IN	IN	IN	IN
IN	BO	BO	BO	BO	BO	BO	BO	IN
IN	BO	BT	BT	BT	BT	BT	BO	IN
IN	BO	BT	ET	ET	ET	BT	BO	IN
IN	BO	BT	ET	ET	ET	BT	BO	IN
IN	BO	BT	ET	ET	ET	BT	BO	IN
IN	BO	BT	BT	BT	BT	BT	BO	IN
IN	BO	BO	BO	BO	BO	BO	BO	IN
IN	IN	IN	IN	IN	IN	IN	IN	IN

IN	IN	IN	IN	IN	IN	IN	IN	IN
IN	BO	BO	BO	BO	BO	BO	BO	IN
IN	BO	BT	BT	BT	BT	BT	BO	IN
IN	BO	BT	ET	ET	ET	BT	BO	IN
IN	BO	BT	ET	ET	ET	BT	BO	IN
IN	BO	BT	ET	ET	ET	BT	BO	IN
IN	BO	BT	BT	BT	BT	BT	BO	IN
IN	BO	BO	BO	BO	BO	BO	BO	IN
IN	IN	IN	IN	IN	IN	IN	IN	IN