Windswept Hills

Windswept hills are rugged highlands of grass and exposed stone, with steep cliffs and snowy tops. Players who started before 1.18 know them as extreme hills or mountains. This biome hides emerald ore and silverfish. The windswept hills finder above shows the nearest hills in your seed. Enter the seed and the map flies there and marks them with a biome icon.

Where windswept hills generate

The biome forms where erosion is moderately high and the land rises sharply. The climate is cool and fairly dry. If humidity rises, windswept forest replaces it. With very low humidity, you may find the rarer windswept gravelly hills.

Neighbours vary a lot. Plains, forests, taigas and snowy biomes can all border it. Dripstone caves often generate under inland windswept hills. The biome is common, but each area is usually modest in size.

The terrain is steep and uneven. Cliffs, overhangs and small floating chunks of land are common. Some slopes rise high enough for snow, while valleys stay green. So the biome can look very different from one side to the other.

What you find in windswept hills

The surface mixes grass blocks with bare stone, plus a few spruce and oak trees. Above about Y=120, rain turns to snow, so peaks get snow caps and water freezes.

• Ores: emerald ore, found only here and in mountain biomes.
• Underground: infested stone that releases silverfish.
• Animals: llamas, sheep and cold pigs, cows and chickens.

No special surface structures generate here. However, ruined portals, mineshafts and trial chambers can appear as in most of the Overworld.

How to find windswept hills

Type your seed into the map and select your edition. It zooms to the closest windswept hills and marks the area. The list on the left shows more hills by distance. Click any entry to centre it.

In game, F3 shows minecraft:windswept_hills. Grey cliffs mixed with patches of grass are the clue. To teleport, use /tp @s X 160 Z, because the terrain can be high. Then find solid ground before you look around.

Mining and survival tips for windswept hills

Emeralds are the reason most players come here. Emerald ore appears as single blocks in stone, often high up. Mine it with an iron pickaxe or better. Fortune increases the drop.

Watch out for infested stone, though. It looks like normal stone but breaks faster and releases a silverfish. So if a block breaks oddly fast, step back.

Llamas are useful for carrying items. Also, the cliffs give great views for a mountain base. However, falls are common, so bring water or a feather falling enchantment. Snow on the peaks also makes footing tricky.

Emerald and ore guide for windswept hills

Emerald ore appears as single blocks scattered through the stone. It becomes more common the higher you go in the mountains. So mining the upper slopes is usually more rewarding than digging deep.

Here is what to expect underground:

• Emerald ore: needs an iron pickaxe or better.
• Infested stone: looks normal but hides silverfish.
• Regular ores: coal, iron, copper and others, as in most biomes.

Emeralds are mostly used for villager trades. Therefore, a mountain base near a village can be very profitable.

Also, explore cave openings in the cliffs. Many expose ore without much digging. Just be careful near the edges, because the drops are steep.

Windswept hills version history

Beta 1.8 added the biome as extreme hills. Java 1.13 renamed it mountains. During the 1.18 snapshots it switched names a few times. Then snapshot 21w40a settled on windswept hills. In Java 1.21.5, its farm animals became cold variants.

Windswept Hills FAQ