Deep Frozen Ocean

Deep variant of the frozen ocean. Features large icebergs and blue ice. Ocean Monuments can generate beneath the ice. Polar bears spawn on icebergs.
Overview of Deep Frozen Ocean
Ice on top, monument underneath. The deep frozen ocean is the only water where you may have to mine through the surface to reach a prismarine roof.
Icebergs of packed ice and blue ice stand out of it, polar bears walk them and can stand on more than just ice here, and salmon, squid and drowned swim in the dark below with guardians around the monument. Blue ice cut from those bergs is the fastest travel surface in the game.
It reads 0.5 for both temperature and humidity, a mild temperate climate on paper, but the surface freezes and what falls is snowfall rather than rain. minecraft:deep_frozen_ocean is uncommon, arrived in 1.13, and 26.2 still locks it under ice.
Where to find Deep Frozen Ocean
The coldest deep water the Overworld makes. Frozen Ocean and Deep Cold Ocean are what it opens out of, so you come to it over ice rather than over waves.
It is the deepest frozen water, with icebergs above and an ocean monument sometimes lurking beneath the ice.
Uncommon, and awkward rather than distant: the surface is solid, so bring a pickaxe to open a hole or use the gaps the icebergs leave. Polar bears defend that ice and guardians wait underneath it. Watch the ice rather than the water: an ordinary frozen sea turns this deep nowhere else, and the icebergs reveal the change long before the floor does. Its neighbours above are what it soon opens out of.
Mobs in Deep Frozen Ocean
Salmon fill their slot completely in shoals of up to five, and polar bears fill theirs on the ice above, one or two at a time, passive until you get between a bear and its cubs. Squid hold about a third of the water, one to four at a time, dropping the ink sacs black dye is made from.
Underneath sits the guardian, firing its charging laser beam and inflicting Mining Fatigue on anything that approaches the monument. The drowned is on the list too at roughly 1 in 100, trident and nautilus shells included, and under an ice sheet neither of them is easy to swim away from. Behind it, salmon all and squid a third. A polar bear is passive but defends its cubs aggressively if you stray too close, squid drop ink sacs: black dye on one side, books and quill on the other, and on the peaceful side that is the whole list. The drowned is a swimming zombie that will wield a trident given one, and a meal here is salmon or nothing. Cod give bone meal here as anywhere, and a salmon drops what it gives while the ice holds; a squid, for example, is easier to catch than either. Underwater, everything you meet is used to the cold before you are.
Deep Frozen Ocean blocks & resources
Ice, Packed Ice and Blue Ice on top, Gravel far below. It is the only sea that gives you a solid roof and a deep floor at once, and the icebergs are where the blue ice comes from.
Water freezes over on its own up here, so the hole you cut to get down closes behind you, and the fastest way back out is the one you left open with a torch or a door.
Before you build down here, it is worth knowing that the roof over your head grows back on its own.
IceStructures & features in Deep Frozen Ocean
A monument under an ice sheet is as awkward as this game gets. The prismarine temple generates on this floor, in one of only four biomes anywhere in this list with water deep enough, guarded by Elder Guardians and concealing gold blocks in the middle.
Above it float icebergs and blue ice; below it lie ocean ruins, the sunken stone with its chests and its maps to buried treasure, counted in nine biomes altogether, and shipwrecks, present in eleven, holding supplies, treasure maps and emeralds.
Plan the way out before the way in, because the surface freezes over and the gap you dived through may not be there when you come back up. Mineshaft tunnels, with dungeon rooms opening among them and rarely a stronghold, sit beneath the seabed regardless of the ice. The temple keeps its gold hidden, the vessel whose chests hold supplies sits nearby, and exploring either offers loot and challenges under a ceiling of ice. Each of them is able to appear under the same ice sheet, and these three are thoroughly well hidden.
Deep Frozen Ocean biome colours
The coldest blue on the site, #3938C9, shared only with the frozen ocean and the frozen river. This is also one of two biomes that carry a temperature modifier, which is what freezes the surface rather than the temperature number alone. No music of its own, no fog change, no particles: the ice does all the work.
Deep Frozen Ocean terrain features
- -deep water under ice
- -icebergs
- -blue ice
- -frozen surface patches
Deep Frozen Ocean: what generates per chunk
Two kinds of iceberg, and the numbers are far apart: a packed ice berg lands on one chunk in 16, a blue ice berg on one chunk in 200. Blue ice on the floor gets up to 19 tries. Forty nine passes altogether, which is more than an ordinary ocean gets, and all of the extra is ice.
Deep Frozen Ocean: spawn rules and variants
Polar bears may spawn on more than the usual blocks here, exactly as in the shallow frozen ocean, so they can appear on the ice sheet itself rather than only on land.
Cold farm animals and cold frogs are the other two rules on this biome, and the water is drawn on a map outline. Squid, salmon, drowned and the bears are what you meet.
Deep Frozen Ocean: structure depths and spawns
A monument under the ice is the strangest combination on this site: the deepest cold water in the game with a guardian spawn list inside it and a frozen lid over the top.
Cold ocean ruins, shipwrecks and the ocean portal are the rest, and none of them cares that the surface is solid.
Structures found in Deep Frozen Ocean
Which biomes border Deep Frozen Ocean
2 biomes can run up against Deep Frozen Ocean, between 0 and 0.5 against its own 0.5.
- Frozen Ocean: 0.5 colder at 0, Guardian drops out.
- Deep Cold Ocean: no change in temperature at 0.5, Cod comes in, Polar Bear stays behind.
What the mobs in Deep Frozen Ocean drop
Counting only what the spawn list can give you, Deep Frozen Ocean yields 8 drops: bone meal, salmon, cod, ink sacs, copper ingots, rotten flesh, prismarine crystals and prismarine shards.
The heaviest roll in Deep Frozen Ocean is Salmon at 100 percent of the water ambient draw, which makes bone meal and salmon the easiest thing to gather here.
Guardian also drops here (cod, prismarine crystals and prismarine shards), but it does not roll against a spawn weight in Deep Frozen Ocean, so it arrives by structure, by breeding or by egg.
What Deep Frozen Ocean is good for
The deep frozen ocean is the hardest monument to raid and the best blue ice field in the game at the same time: icebergs above give packed ice and blue ice, and an ocean monument sits in the dark water below.
Polar bears stand on the surface ice, and this is one of only two biomes where they can spawn on blocks other than ice itself. Salmon, squid, drowned and guardians share the water, with ocean ruins and shipwrecks on the gravel floor.
How to find Deep Frozen Ocean
Ice on top and a monument far below make this the hardest sea to read from a boat, so run the /locate biome query, before you start breaking through ice with a monument somewhere below:
Ice over depth, whichever route you use, requires cheats to be enabled before the ice covered depth can be named, or operator permissions on a server, though the icebergs are the only part of the biome the command lets you see.
Deep Frozen Ocean on Java Edition against Deep Frozen Ocean on Bedrock
The deep frozen ocean keeps its id across the editions and, like every ocean, the climate figures 0.5 and 0.5, even though ice forms on the surface.
Its water is #3938C9 on Java and #2570b5 on Bedrock, and this is the only deep ocean with a snow depth on Bedrock: between an eighth and a quarter of a block on the ice above it.
| Deep Frozen Ocean | Java | Bedrock |
|---|---|---|
| Deep Frozen Ocean in /locate biome | minecraft:deep_frozen_ocean | minecraft:deep_frozen_ocean |
| Deep Frozen Ocean temperature | 0.5 | 0.5 |
| Deep Frozen Ocean water colour | #3938C9 | #2570b5 |
| Deep Frozen Ocean snow depth, blocks | n/a | 0.125 to 0.25 |
Deep Frozen Ocean name and version history
Every release since 1.13, 51 in total, has called this biome Deep Frozen Ocean. It goes back to 1.13, and where eleven other biomes were renamed in 1.18, Deep Frozen Ocean was not one of them.
- 1.13Deep Frozen Ocean starts generating
Deep Frozen Ocean: which advancements count
Adventuring Time needs 56 biomes and Deep Frozen Ocean is one of them, counted with the other 8 ocean biomes. The 11 it does not ask for are the five in the Nether, the four outer End biomes, the End itself and the void.




