Badlands

Badlands are dry canyons of red sand and colourful terracotta. They are hot, rainless and full of gold. This badlands biome finder checks your seed and shows the closest badlands on the map above. That way you can go straight to the terracotta and the high mineshafts instead of crossing desert after desert.

Where badlands generate

Badlands form in the hottest parts of the world. They usually border deserts. Wooded badlands and eroded badlands often sit right next to them. Toward cooler areas you reach savannas, forests and plains.

The terrain can be flat or extremely high. Some badlands rise to Y=256 and touch stony peaks. Rivers often cut deep, narrow canyons through them.

Underground, dripstone caves and the deep dark are common. Badlands are uncommon, so it is worth checking the map before a long trip.

What you find in the badlands

The surface is red sand at low levels and terracotta mounds higher up. The terracotta comes in stripes of orange, red, yellow, white, brown and light gray. Each world has its own band pattern, so all badlands in one world look alike.

• Plants: cactus, cactus flowers, dead bushes and short and tall dry grass.
• Gold: extra gold ore generates all the way up to the surface, not just deep underground.
• Mineshafts: badlands mineshafts sit much higher and are often open to the air. They use dark oak instead of oak.
• Mobs: armadillos spawn here, plus normal hostile mobs at night.

Farm animals can spawn too, but only on grass blocks that players place.

How to use the badlands biome finder

With cheats on, type /locate biome minecraft:badlands. Without them, you would normally travel through deserts and hope.

Our map makes it simpler. Enter the seed, choose Java or Bedrock, and the map centres on the nearest badlands with a biome icon on it. Look at the list on the left for more options. Clicking one moves the map there and shows the coordinates.

Then teleport with /tp @s X ~ Z, or walk using the F3 coordinates. Bring water, since the biome has no rain and few lakes.

Badlands tips for mining and building

Gold hunters should look at exposed terracotta cliffs. Gold ore often sits in plain sight. Exposed mineshafts are another quick source of rails, chests and cave spider spawners, so go in carefully.

Collect armadillo scutes by brushing armadillos. You need them to craft wolf armor.

For builders, terracotta is the main prize. You get several colours without any dye. Red sand smelts into glass and crafts into red sandstone, which is handy for warm-toned walls.

Reading the terracotta bands

The stripes are one of the best parts of this biome. Each world seed has its own pattern of terracotta layers. The bands shift up or down a little with the terrain, but the colours stay nearly the same across every badlands in that world.

At low levels, red sand covers the ground with orange terracotta underneath. Higher up, the full colour bands appear in the mounds and cliffs. The top stained layer often weathers into plain terracotta.

For builders, this means one trip can give you many colours. Mine a cliff face from top to bottom to collect a full set.

Badlands version history

Badlands were added in Java 1.7.2 under the name mesa. They were renamed to badlands in 1.13. The 1.18 update let them generate on high peaks and gave each seed more terracotta layers.

Armadillos arrived in 1.20.5. In 1.21.5, dry grass and cactus flowers were added, and farm animals started spawning here.

Badlands FAQ