Entity

Entities include all dynamic, moving objects throughout the Minecraft world.

The size of six entities (a chicken, a player, an evoker, a camel, a warden, and an oak boat) relative to four blocks

General behavior

Properties all entities have are:

• A position, rotation, and velocity
• A volume consisting of one or more non-rotating, three-dimensional boxes with a fixed height and width
• The ability to be on fire, displayed as flames on or around the entity
• The ability to have a status effect, such as from potions
• A view point, even if it has no eyes

Most entities can be pushed around by water currents, and some can have their trajectory altered by explosions if already traveling at speed. Some entities can be renamed by using a name tag on them. Entity tiles, items, shot or thrown projectiles, area effect clouds, and experience orbs do not have health. Entities that do have a health status include mobs, players, armor stands, boats, boat with chests and minecarts.

Entities cannot pass through solid blocks, excluding vexes and ender dragons. Most types of entities prevent blocks from being placed in the space they occupy, except for dropped items and experience orbs, which are automatically pushed out of the block to open air. If a solid block enters an entity's space, such as falling sand or a swinging door, then it is free to move out of the solid block but not back in. For example, if a door is closed on the player, player can jump up and stand on top of the bottom-half door block, if there is air above the door.

Entities are lit according to the light level of the block their position is in. For example, if a minecart runs over a non-straight track directly into a solid block, it turns black because solid blocks always have a light level of 0; arrows are also sometimes seen to turn black, especially if fired shallowly into the ceiling.

Further notes

Item frames, glow item frames, paintings, and lead knots, unlike most entities, align to the block grid, and are completely immobile.

Arrows, TNT and falling blocks are assumed to have infinite health, because they are neither destroyed by explosions (although they can be moved by explosions, and they can also be fired out of TNT cannons), nor by being on fire for long periods. However, they can still be "killed" with the use of the /kill command.

Boats, boat with chests and minecarts

Boats, boats with chests and minecarts appear to recover health over time. For example, they can be broken by hitting them quickly, but cannot be destroyed by hits with unarmed hand with a pause after each hit. The amount of wobbling displayed by boats and minecarts when struck appears to indicate their current health. All minecart, boat and boat with chest variants have 6HP.

Gravity-affected blocks

Sand that collapsed into a monster room. Before landing, each sand block would have been an entity.

Gravity-affected blocks include sand, gravel, anvils, red sand, dragon eggs, concrete powder, scaffolding, and pointed dripstone, along with snow layers in Bedrock Edition.

A gravity-affected block normally exists as a block, but when its support is removed, it becomes a falling block entity and falls down until hitting the top surface of another block. If there is valid space, it places itself as a block at the nearest on-grid position, or drops as an item if that position is occupied by a block without a solid top surface, such as a torch or a bottom slab.

While a falling block ordinarily falls straight down, its trajectory can be affected by explosions, bubble columns, pistons, reeling it in, and moving slime blocks, and can slide down the side of honey blocks. It is also possible to modify the velocity and direction of a falling block by using commands such as /data‌ or third-party programs. A falling block despawns and drops as an item if it does not land after existing for 600 ticks (30 seconds), or 100 ticks (5 seconds) if falling into the void.

If a cave generates underneath sand, gravel, or red sand, the blocks remain stationary until they receive a block update. If a single block is updated and falls down, neighboring blocks are updated in a chain reaction that can cause the collapse of an entire region of gravity-affected blocks.

Interactions with "use" control

Entities with use interactions (such as boats, boat with chests, minecarts, cats, villagers, tamed parrots, and tamed wolves) do not stop the use action of a tool the player is holding. For example, using a water bucket on a tamed wolf causes the wolf to sit, but also empties the bucket near or onto the wolf.

Riding

A spider jockey.

Entities may be riding on, or attached to, other entities. When this is the case, only the lower/"outer" entity's volume collides with other things, and only that entity can control movement.‌ However, there are exceptions: players riding minecarts, boats, boats with chests, or saddled horses, baby zombies riding chickens, and skeletons riding horses or boats.

The only current legitimate combinations of riding entities are:

• A mob or player in a minecart, boat or boat with chests.
• A boat or boat with chest in a minecart‌.
• A player on a saddled pig, horse, donkey, mule, skeleton horse, llama, strider, or camel.
• Any type of skeleton on a spider or cave spider‌; also known as a spider jockey.
• Any type of baby zombie or zombified piglin‌ on a chicken or other mobs‌; also known as a chicken jockey.
• Skeletons riding skeleton horses.
• Pillager, vindicator, or evoker riding a ravager.
• Baby piglin, riding a baby hoglin.
• Baby piglin, riding a baby piglin on a baby hoglin.
• Baby piglin, riding a baby piglin, riding a baby piglin on a baby hoglin.
• A strider, riding another strider.
• Zombified piglin riding a strider.

A parrot perched on player's shoulder isn't considered as riding.

It is possible to have even more levels, such as a baby piglin on another baby piglin who is riding a hoglin in a minecart in a boat.

Entities can also be stacked on top of each other with the use of the /summon and /data commands in Java Edition. For example, using /summon spider ~ ~ ~ {Passengers:[{id:skeleton}]} summons a spider jockey, or using /ride in Bedrock Edition.

If an entity is riding another entity, the top entity cannot teleport because as soon as the teleport is made, the entity is teleported back to riding the other entity.‌

Starting from the Nether Update, entities that are riders or passengers of other entities cannot despawn.‌

Types of entities

The table below lists types of entities that currently exist in Minecraft.

Entities listed as "solid" obstruct the passage of other entities.

Type	Solid	Health	Resource location	Living entity
Player	Yes	20HP × 10 (Varies with attributes)	player	Yes
Mob	Yes	Varies	see Java Edition data values § Entities	Yes
Armor Stand	No	20HP × 10	armor_stand	Yes
Arrow	Yes (to boats, boat with chests and minecarts)	∞	arrow, spectral_arrow‌	No
Balloon‌	Yes	∞	balloon	No
Block display‌	No	∞	block_display	No
Boat	Yes	6HP Recovers health quickly over time.	boat	No
Boat with Chest	Yes	6HP Recovers health quickly over time.	chest_boat	No
Egg	Yes	∞	egg	No
End Crystal	No	5HP	end_crystal‌, ender_crystal‌	No
Ender Pearl	Yes	∞	ender_pearl	No
Evoker Fangs	No	∞	evoker_fangs‌, evocation_fang‌	No
Eye of Ender	No	∞	eye_of_ender‌, eye_of_ender_signal‌	No
Experience Orb	No	5HP	experience_orb‌, xp_orb‌	No
Falling Block	No	∞	falling_block	No
Fishing Bobber	Yes (to boats, boat with chests and minecarts)	∞	fishing_bobber‌, fishing_hook‌	No
Fireball Small Fireball Wither skull Dragon Fireball	Yes	∞	fireball, small_fireball, wither_skull, wither_skull_dangerous‌, dragon_fireball	No
Firework Rocket	No	∞	fireworks_rocket	No
Ice Bomb‌	Yes	∞	ice_bomb	No
Interaction‌	No	∞	interaction	No
Item	Yes (to boats, boat with chests and minecarts)	5HP	item	No
Item display‌	No	∞	item_display	No
Item frame‌	No	∞	item_frame, glow_item_frame	No
Lightning Bolt	No	∞	lightning_bolt	No
Leash Knot	No	∞	leash_knot	No
Llama Spit	Yes	∞	llama_spit	No
Marker‌	No	∞	marker	No
Minecart	Yes (to other entities)	6HP Recovers health quickly over time.	minecart	No
Minecart with chest	Yes (to other entities)	6HP Recovers health quickly over time.	chest_minecart	No
Minecart with command block	Yes (to other entities)	6HP Recovers health quickly over time.	command_block_minecart	No
Minecart with furnace‌	Yes (to other entities)	6HP Recovers health quickly over time.	furnace_minecart	No
Minecart with hopper	Yes (to other entities)	6HP Recovers health quickly over time.	hopper_minecart	No
Minecart with monster spawner‌	Yes (to other entities)	6HP Recovers health quickly over time.	spawner_minecart	No
Minecart with TNT	Yes (to other entities)	6HP Recovers health quickly over time.	tnt_minecart	No
Painting	No	∞	painting	No
Primed TNT	No	∞	tnt	No
Text display‌	No	∞	text_display	No
Shulker Bullet	Yes	∞	shulker_bullet	No
Snowball	Yes	∞	snowball	No
Trident	Yes	∞	trident‌, thrown_trident‌	No
Wind Charge	Yes	∞	wind_charge‌, breeze_wind_charge‌, wind_charge_projectile‌	No

Motion of entities

Gravity works differently in Minecraft than the real world, as not everything is subject to the same acceleration. Additionally, there is a drag force proportional to velocity, again dependent on the entity.

This is a GitHub repository with some in-depth explanation about the topic.

Kind	Acceleration	Drag (vertical)	Drag (horizontal)	Terminal velocity m/tick	Terminal velocity m/s	Applies drag:
Players and other living entities	0.08	0.02	0.09	3.92	78.4	After
Players/mobs with Slow Falling	0.01	0.02	0.09	0.49	9.8	After
Items, falling blocks, and TNT	0.04	0.02	0.02	1.96	39.2	After
Minecarts	0.04	0.05	0.05	0.76	16.0	After
Boats and boat with chests	0.04	0.00	0.10	∞	∞	-
Thrown eggs, snowballs, and ender pearls	0.03	0.01	0.01	3.00	60.0	Before
Thrown potions	0.05	0.01	0.01	5.00	100.0	Before
Thrown bottles o' enchanting	0.07	0.01	0.01	7.00	140.0	Before
Experience orbs	0.03	0.02	0.02	1.47	29.4	After
Thrown fishing bobbers	0.03	0.08	0.08	0.345	6.9	After
Llama spit	0.06	0.01	0.01	6.00	120.0	Before
Fired arrows, and thrown tridents	0.05	0.01	0.01	5.00	100.0	Before
Fireballs, small fireballs, wither skulls, and dragon fireballs	0.10	0.05	0.05	1.90	38.0	After
Wind charges	0.10	0.00	0.00	∞	∞	-

Applying an initial upward velocity $\text{initialVelocity}$ on an entity, the entity's vertical velocity after falling for a number of ticks $\text{ticksPassed}$ can be given by the formulas:

Drag applied before acceleration:

• $\text{finalVelocity}=(\text{initialVelocity}\times {(1-\text{drag})}^{\text{ticksPassed}})-(\text{acceleration}\times \frac{1-{(1-\text{drag})}^{\text{ticksPassed}}}{\text{drag}})$

Drag applied after acceleration:

• $\text{finalVelocity}=(\text{initialVelocity}\times {(1-\text{drag})}^{\text{ticksPassed}})-(\text{acceleration}\times \frac{1-{(1-\text{drag})}^{\text{ticksPassed}}}{\text{drag}}\times (1-\text{drag}))$

Data values

Java Edition:

• [NBT Compound / JSON Object]: Root tag.
  • Tags common to all entities see Template:Nbt inherit/entity/template[show]

Bedrock Edition:

See Bedrock Edition level format/Entity format.

History

?							Added entities.
[hide]Java Edition Infdev
20100227-1414							Removed entities.
20100316							Reimplemented entities.
[hide]Java Edition
1.1			?				Players cannot interact with entities from far away in Creative mode.
1.4.2			12w34a				Entities can now use portals.
1.9			15w31a				Projectile motion has now been changed slightly.
			15w36a				Players can now be pushed by other entities (exceptions being items and experience orbs).
			15w45a				Entities bunched up in a 1×1 hole together no longer push away entities touching adjacent corners.
			15w49a				Projectiles now take the thrower's momentum into account when the player is falling, flying with elytra, or taking knockback; but not when the player is walking, riding an entity, or flying in Creative mode.
1.11			16w32a				Entity IDs have now been changed to have underscores and no capital letters. They can also be used by typing minecraft: before the IDs, similar to block IDs.
							The ID for mobs (Mob), and monsters (Monster) have now been removed.
[hide]Pocket Edition Alpha
?							The insides of mobs no longer render.
[hide]Bedrock Edition
?							The insides of mobs now render again.
[hide]Legacy Console Edition
Xbox 360	Xbox One	PS3	PS4	PS Vita	Wii U	Switch
TU1	CU1	1.00	1.00	1.00	Patch 1	1.0.1	Added entities.
TU19	CU7	1.12	1.12	1.12			Entities can now use portals.
TU46	CU36	1.38	1.38	1.38	Patch 15		Projectiles now take the thrower's momentum into account.
TU54	CU44	1.52	1.52	1.52	Patch 24	1.0.4	Players can now be pushed by other entities (exceptions being items, experience orbs and other players).

Issues

Issues relating to "Entity" are maintained on the bug tracker. Issues should be reported and viewed there.

See also

• Block entity – unlike the entities mentioned above, these are simply blocks that store additional data.