Updated 25 October 2026. Facts on this page come from minecraft.wiki, minecraft.net and the live Artemis PvP server; sources are listed at the bottom.
Minecraft Difficulty: Peaceful, Easy, Normal, Hard
Minecraft has four difficulties. Peaceful removes hostile mobs and refills health and hunger; Easy halves mob damage and starvation stops at 5 hearts; Normal is standard and starvation stops at half a heart; Hard makes mobs hit about 1.5 times harder, lets zombies break doors, and starvation can kill. A hidden regional difficulty also rises the longer you stay in an area.
What changes on each difficulty?
| Peaceful | Easy | Normal | Hard | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hostile mobs | None spawn | Spawn | Spawn | Spawn |
| Mob damage | - | About half of Normal | Standard | About 1.5 times |
| Starvation stops at | No hunger loss | 10 HP (5 hearts) | 1 HP | Can kill you |
| Raid waves (Raid Omen I) | - | 3 | 5 | 7 |
| Zombies break doors | - | No | No | Yes |
On Normal, villagers killed by zombies have a 50% chance to become zombie villagers; on Hard it is every time. See zombie villagers.
What is regional difficulty?
A hidden value from 0 to 6.75 shown on Java's F3 screen as Local Difficulty. It grows with your world difficulty, how long players have spent in that chunk, how many days the world has run, and the moon phase. Higher values give mobs more armor and enchanted gear and make skeleton traps and spawn reinforcements more likely. See the F3 screen and moon phases.
How do you change difficulty?
In Options during play (singleplayer or LAN host), when creating a world, or with /difficulty hard with cheats on. Hardcore forces Hard and cannot be changed; see Hardcore.
Is anything dangerous on Peaceful?
Very little: only the ender dragon still attacks, and shulkers and some other mobs can exist but do no damage. Falling, lava and drowning still hurt. Peaceful is great for building. All modes: game modes and difficulty.
Do ArtemisPvP mobs get harder?
Frequently asked questions
Can you starve to death in Minecraft?
Only on Hard. Easy stops at 5 hearts and Normal at half a heart.
What is local difficulty on the F3 screen?
Regional difficulty: it rises with time spent in an area, world age and the moon phase.
Sources
Every fact on this page was checked against these pages; the wording is ours.