Minecraft has remained the ultimate sandbox for many years. With its poised infinite world generation system stretching millions of meters in each direction, you’ll be hard-stuck on ever reaching the border through fair means.
With that said, though, this begs the question, in such a vast and expansive world, how many total blocks are there in Minecraft? The answer is quite simple; each world has an estimated 49,047,599,999,999,991,808 blocks. This includes the End and Nether dimensions too.
However, the real beauty is in finding out how we got to that estimate in the first place. We’ve derived a fairly accurate estimate using a bit of math and our know-how of how worlds are generated in the game.
Laying The Groundwork
Before we get started, we need to factor in some important pointers. Yes, Minecraft’s world generation is random. However, it follows a set pattern commonly referred to as an algorithm. While this pattern changes with every consequent update, especially with the introduction of new biomes, it is still possible to get an idea of what you can expect from each world.
For example, while the number of biomes present in a Minecraft world may differ, it’ll still consist of all the biomes that can be generated. So, there might exist a random seed with an overwhelming majority of Snow biomes, but it’ll still have a reasonable sum of other biomes.
Nothing Is Truly Infinite
Now that we’ve gotten the hang of how biomes work, it is also integral to understand that the world of Minecraft, while quite large, is not infinite. The commonly referred to World Border occurs at the same point (on the x, y, and z-axis) for all Minecraft worlds regardless of their seed.
Therefore, with that point in mind, we’ll get an estimate of the total square area a world of Minecraft takes.
How Big Is A Minecraft World?
If we want to estimate the number of blocks in a Minecraft world, knowing how big the world really is should be our first natural step. Minecraft has gone through various changes in its world size from its inception.
However, to keep things simple, Infdev was when worlds truly became Infinite, or so we thought. The world was about 12.5 million meters from the center in earlier versions. After which, you’d be greeted with the Farlands, where Minecraft’s world generation would start acting up.
The Minecraft we play today is even bigger; it’ll take about 30 million blocks to get to the World Border. Therefore, the world of Minecraft in all its entirety is a whopping square with an area of:
60,000,000 x 60,000,000 = 366,000,000,000,000,000 m2Since we’ll be using this number as we move on, further along, we’ll be referring to this area as A. Just to put things in perspective, to travel to the World Border by foot, you’ll need to spend 3000 actual hours to get to it to the end!
Not Every Biome Is The Same
Now that we’ve gotten an idea of the area of a Minecraft world, shouldn’t our answer simply be to multiply A by the typical depth of a world? Well, no. We still need to account for the inconsistencies typically found in a world.
Look at the two biomes above; while they consist of blocks, the number of blocks that inhibit each cube is drastically different. For example, a mountainous biome, consisting of the same number of blocks underground, has more blocks above ground than any other biome.
As of the Caves and Cliffs update, the tallest Minecraft biome can reach the maximum y-limit of 256 blocks. On the other hand, the least populated biome, the Sea, does not have any blocks over the ground.
With that said, we can then assume:
Overground Depth: ((256 - 0) / 2) - 60) = ~70 blocksCalculating Underground Depth
If you’ve ever dug down in Minecraft, you’ll quickly realize that the ground is not as empty as it seems. Mainly consisting of dirt, stone, and a few minerals here and there, the game also features an extensive cave system and numerous biomes deep underneath.
While these can certainly interfere with our calculation, accounting for every cave and stronghold that may generate underground is simply impossible. Therefore, for simplicity’s sake, we will assume that the underground depth of a Minecraft world clocks out at -64.
The Overworld Is Not Where It Ends
If you’ve gone to the Nether or End, they consist of blocks too. Therefore, for an accurate assessment, calculating the areas for each of these dimensions is also important.
The Nether
The Nether is eight times smaller than a typical world in Minecraft. Therefore, it has the following area:
7,500,000
x 7,500,000 = 56,250,000,000,000 m2Unlike the Overworld, though, the Nether has an overall of exactly half that of the base dimension. Therefore, the Nether has an overall depth (underground + overground) of 128 blocks.
But, because most of the Nether, too, is devoid of actual blocks and is primarily space above a certain area, we can assume that the Nether has an average of 64 blocks per cubic meter.
The End
While the End is considerably large (almost the same size as the Overworld), for our particular estimation of how many Minecraft blocks there are in a world, the End doesn’t serve many purposes.
Why’s that? This is because The End is primarily devoid of blocks. Due to the entire dimension being quite sparse, it is extremely tough to estimate the number of actual blocks present in the dimension.
So, to account for this disparity, we’re going to go with the assumption that the End dimension has about 1/100000000 of the blocks as compared to the Overworld.
Crunching In The Numbers
Now that we’ve set everything up, it’s time to finally answer the question, how many blocks are there in a Minecraft world? Since we don’t want to bore you with all the math involved, we’ll try to keep things as simple as possible.
The Overworld
Let’s start with the Overworld; it has an area A and an underground depth of -64 with an overground depth of 70 blocks atoning for all the biomes. Therefore:
Underground Depth + Overground Depth = Total Depth
64 + 70 = 134 blocksTotal Blocks = Area * Depth
134 * 366,000,000,000,000,000 = 49,044,000,000,000,000,000 blocks (4.9044e+19)The Nether
For the Nether, we use the same aforementioned formula. However, the area of the Nether is 8 times lesser than A, with an actual depth of about 64 blocks per cubic meter. Therefore:
Total Blocks = Area * Depth
64 * (366,000,000,000,000,000 / 8) = 3,600,000,000,000,000 blocks (3.6e+15)The End
Since it is not possible to estimate the number of actual blocks there are in the End, we’re going to assume that the End has about 1/100000000 blocks as compared to the Overworld. So, we can derive the following result:
49,044,000,000,000,000,000 / 100000000 = 490,440,000,000 blocks
Total Blocks In Minecraft
With all that mount of the way, we’re finally inching toward the actual answer. That can be derived by the following:
Total Blocks In Overworld + Total Blocks In End + Total Blocks In End
49,044,000,000,000,000,000 + 3,600,000,000,000,000 + 490,440,000,000 =
49,047,599,999,999,991,808 (4.90476e+19) blocksSo, we’ve finally reached our conclusion. The total number of blocks in Minecraft is 49,047,599,999,999,991,808! This can also be written down as 4.90476e+19 for simplicity’s sake.
Some Pointers
Before you take this calculation as the Gospel, there are a few pointers you should be aware of:
- Each world in Minecraft has a different number of biomes. Therefore, your world might have a drastically different number of blocks.
- Minecraft keeps updating its World generation algorithm. For example, a change in the height limit can lead to a major difference in the number of blocks in your world.
That concludes our estimation of the number of blocks there are in Minecraft! We’ll be updating this post if changes are made to the world generation algorithm, which severely impacts our calculations!