Overview
Lush caves are the green underground biome, and they are unusual in advertising themselves from the surface: an azalea tree growing out of a grass block is a guaranteed sign that a lush cave sits directly below it, usually within 30 or 40 blocks straight down. Inside, moss carpets the floor and walls, azalea and flowering azalea bushes grow out of the moss, cave vines hang from the ceiling carrying glow berries that emit light level 14, spore blossoms hang overhead dripping green particles, and big and small dripleaf grow out of shallow clay pools. Axolotls spawn in those water pools and nowhere else in the world — they attack drowned and guardians, and a player near a fighting axolotl gets Regeneration when it kills something. Glow berries are the standout resource: they are food, they are a light source, and they are the only food that can be planted on a ceiling, which makes fully automatic hanging farms possible. Moss blocks bone-mealed on stone spread and convert it, which is the cheapest way to turn a cave into a build. Lush caves generate anywhere below the surface, most often under mountains and forests.
Glow berries for food and light, moss blocks for spreading greenery, azalea for decorative trees, dripleaf for redstone-free trapdoors, and axolotls, which fight for you underwater.
Lush Caves sits in the temperate band of Minecraft's biome table, generating in the Overworld at a base temperature of 0.5.
Lush Caves is a cave biome: it generates underground, has no sky above it, and no weather reaches it. Rain, snow and thunder all happen in the surface biome overhead, so crops here never water themselves and cauldrons never fill.
One mob names Lush Caves specifically among its spawn biomes: Axolotl.
Cave biomes generate below the surface and have no sky. Weather never reaches them, the light level is whatever you bring, and their generation is driven by depth and noise rather than by the surface biome overhead.
How to get it
Look for azalea trees on the surface and dig straight down beside one — a lush cave is directly underneath, typically within 40 blocks. They also generate at any depth from about Y 0 to Y 60.
Tips
- Bone meal on a moss block converts the surrounding stone and dirt into more moss, which is the fastest way to green a build.
- Glow berries planted on a hanging vine keep growing downward and a dispenser under them harvests automatically.
- Catch an axolotl in a bucket, not on a lead: bucketed axolotls keep their colour, and the blue one is a 1 in 1,200 breeding result.
- Big dripleaf tips tilt and drop anything standing on them after a moment, which makes them a free mob trap floor.
Climate and generation
Lush Caves has a base temperature of 0.5, which puts it in the temperate 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 | 0.5 | 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 | #7BA4FF | The colour the game applies to grass, leaves and water in this biome. |
Properties
- Grass and water tint
- #7BA4FF
- Structures generating here
- 0
Mobs in Lush Caves
Axolotl name Lush Caves 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.
Also spawns throughout Overworld
Guides and tools that cover this
Frequently asked questions
Where do I find Lush Caves?
Lush Caves generates in the Overworld, underground rather than on the surface. 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 Lush Caves?
Axolotl spawn here specifically, and the usual Overworld mobs can appear given the right light level.
Does it rain in Lush Caves?
No. It is a cave biome with no sky, so weather never reaches it.
Related pages
Biomes that generate in the same dimension and, where there are any, in the same climate family as Lush Caves.
