Badlands biome — Minecraft

Overview

Badlands is the red-and-orange canyon biome, and the one place in the Overworld where gold stops being a deep-mining problem. Terracotta generates here in natural horizontal bands — white, orange, yellow, brown, light grey and red — stacked into mesas and buttes that rise out of red sand, with dead bushes and the occasional cactus and nothing else growing. There is no grass on the plain badlands floor, which means no passive animals spawn and no sheep to shear, and it never rains here, so fire spreads freely and farmland has to be watered by hand. What makes the trip worth it is the gold: badlands run a completely separate gold distribution that generates ore from roughly Y 32 all the way up to Y 256, so veins sit exposed in the cliff faces where you can mine them with an iron pickaxe and no tunnel at all. Abandoned mineshafts also generate near the surface here instead of underground, their rails and chest minecarts hanging in open air between the buttes. Badlands almost always border desert, savanna or their own wooded and eroded variants, and the transition is abrupt: green grass simply stops and red sand begins.

Come here for gold you can mine on the surface, for the 6 natural terracotta colours as a building palette, for red sand — it replaces ordinary sand across the whole biome and crafts into red sandstone, even though it smelts into plain glass — and for the exposed mineshafts and their chest minecarts.

Badlands is a hot biome that generates in the Overworld. Its base temperature of 2 places it in the hot band, which controls whether water freezes, whether it rains or snows, and which passive mobs are allowed to spawn there.

No precipitation falls in Badlands. It never rains or snows here, so cauldrons stay empty and lightning does not strike.

2 generated structures can appear here, among them Trail Ruins and Fossil.

One mob names Badlands specifically among its spawn biomes: Armadillo.

Badlands are the only biome where gold ore generates near the surface rather than at depth, which makes them worth a trip on their own. Terracotta in a dozen natural colours and no grass to speak of make them unmistakable from a distance.

How to get it

Badlands is a rare warm biome that usually generates well inland, most often bordering desert or savanna. Watch for orange banding on the horizon; a spyglass identifies one from around 100 blocks away.

Tips

Mine the exposed gold veins in the cliff faces before digging: badlands gold generates up to Y 256, so the surface is the mine.
Bring a water bucket and a boat is useless here — but ladders and scaffolding are not, because the buttes are 40 blocks tall and unclimbable.
Smelt red sand into glass and it comes out ordinary; the red is only in the sand, so do not haul it home expecting tinted panes.
Terracotta is picked up with any pickaxe and never needs smelting, unlike the clay-and-furnace route — see best Y level for every ore for the rest of the trip.

Climate and generation

Badlands has a base temperature of 2, which puts it in the hot band. Temperature is not a thermometer reading — it is the single number that decides snow versus rain, whether water freezes over, and what colour the grass renders.

Above 0.15 water stays liquid and any precipitation falls as rain.

Property	Value	What it changes
Temperature	2	Decides whether rain falls as snow, whether water freezes, and the grass and foliage tint.
Precipitation	No	Nothing falls here, so a cauldron has to be filled by hand.
Dimension	Overworld	Sets which mobs, structures and ores can generate at all.
Grass and water tint	#6EB1FF	The colour the game applies to grass, leaves and water in this biome.

Properties

Grass and water tint: #6EB1FF
Structures generating here: 2

Mobs in Badlands

Armadillo name Badlands specifically as a spawn biome, so this is where you go to find them.

On top of those, the mobs that spawn in open terrain anywhere in the Overworld can appear here too, given the right light level. Mobs that only come from a structure or a spawner — breezes from trial chambers, blazes from fortresses, evokers from mansions — are deliberately not in this list.

Armadillo

Also spawns throughout Overworld

Structures found here

2 structures can generate in Badlands: Trail Ruins and Fossil.

Trail Ruins — A buried settlement of terracotta, mud bricks and stripped logs, almost entirely underground, so it is easy to walk over one without noticing.
Fossil — A buried skeleton of bone blocks shaped like a spine, rib cage or skull, occasionally with coal ore mixed in.

Guides and tools that cover this

Frequently asked questions

Where do I find Badlands?

Badlands generates in the Overworld. A locate command finds the nearest one instantly; without cheats, exploring in one direction and watching the F3 screen's biome line is the reliable method.

What spawns in Badlands?

Armadillo spawn here specifically, and the usual Overworld mobs can appear given the right light level.

Does it rain in Badlands?

No. Precipitation does not occur here at all.

Badlands