What Happens When You Die in Minecraft?

No matter how safe you play, eventually you will die in Minecraft. Maybe a Creeper will sneak up on you and explode, or your character will accidentally tumble into lava; hard to avoid both fates, really. Regardless of how your virtual self met his or her maker, death is inevitable. 

This ultimately begs the question, what happens when you die in Minecraft? We’ll break down the different scenarios and the penalties, if any. 

The Danger of Hardcore Mode 

Hardcore Mode in Minecraft is the most soul crushing way to experience the game, since dying results in a true game over. You only have one life to spare, and when it’s over you lose every item collected and object constructed. Restart from the beginning of the game please! 

Technically you’re able to create a backup save file to return to in the event of an untimely demise, but you’re too hardcore for that, right?

Dying in Minecraft 

Outside of Hardcore Mode, dying isn’t too bad. You lose a sizable chunk of experience, possibly a bunch of stuff collected in your travels and will waste some time walking to your corpse if you choose to do that, but by and large you’re still able to pick up your dropped inventory most of the time. 

You have five minutes to locate your corpse and gather the loot. Thankfully the timer will not begin until you’re in the body’s general area, which means you need to do a decent amount of slacking off to screw this up. Simply enter the region and immediately go to the corpse; remember where you died, by the way. 

Note: After dying, you wake up at the last place you went to sleep. 

Lava and Explosions 

Dying by way of lava or explosion is a whole other matter. Anything that falls into lava becomes crispy and useless.  Your only hope is that something managed to land outside of the lava, but there are no guarantees. 

As for explosions, boom! Stuff gets blown up real good. Things may survive the blast, but you’re bound to lose almost everything.

Now that you know the risks, we’ll tell you how to survive your first night in Minecraft and beat the Ender Dragon.