Forest

Oak and birch growing close together on hilly ground, with grass and flowers between the trunks: lily of the valley, rose bushes, peonies and lilacs. Leaf litter collects under the canopy, which happens in very few biomes.

This is the wood pile of the early game. Both oak and birch cut from the same hillside, wolves at roughly one animal spawn in nine, and cows, pigs, sheep and chickens filling out the rest. Nothing is built here, so the forest gives materials rather than loot.

At temperature 0.7 and humidity 0.8 it is mild, temperate and wet: rainfall, no snow. minecraft:forest is one of the commonest biomes in the Overworld, it shipped with Alpha 1.2.0, and 1.21 has changed nothing about it.

Forest is the Overworld's default woodland. Plains, Birch Forest, Flower Forest, Dark Forest and River all touch it, which is more borders than most biomes get.

Head toward any dense cluster of mixed oak and birch trees at moderate temperature.

Common to the point of being unavoidable: most worlds put one within sight of where you spawn. Oak and birch mixed together with wolves in the shade is all the confirmation needed. It belongs to the Overworld, and no other dimensions appear on its list. Walking in any direction usually finds one, which makes signposts pointless: you rarely have to hunt for a biome with a border on this many others, and it turns up often.

Four farm animals and one wolf pack, which is the whole roster. Sheep run to 27 percent of a spawn attempt and cows to 18, both in fours, while pigs and chickens share 22 percent each. The sheep here are the usual source of wool, which regrows after shearing once the animal eats grass; cows carry beef and leather and are milked with a bucket; pigs drop porkchops, though only after they have stopped following your carrot on a stick; chickens lay eggs and leave feathers behind.

The wolf is the difference between this and a plains. It appears on 11 percent of attempts in packs of four, and a handful of bones turns one into a loyal combat pet that will pick fights on your behalf for the rest of the world. On the peaceful side, sheep give mutton as well as wool and the cow drops leather with its beef; per attempt the cow is about a sixth of the animals, four at a time. The wolf, for example, can be tamed with bones to become a loyal combat pet.

Cow

Pig

Sheep

Chicken

Wolf

Oak Log and Birch Log stand in one wood here, so a single trip gives you both, and the canopy over them drops Oak Leaves and Birch Leaves in the same swing. At ground level the harvest is Lily of the Valley, Rose Bush, Peony and Lilac, and the last three stand two blocks tall.

Leaf Litter settles in only a handful of biomes and this is one of them. It comes down with the birch and the oak rather than being scattered afterwards, so the thickest patches lie exactly where the trees crowd together.

Flowers for dyes and wood from its trees in one place is why the forest is where most worlds get their first chest full of planks.

Of those eight kinds of block, the two logs are worth taking home first, and the flowers do the rest of the work once you are back at the crafting table.

Oak Log and Birch Log, Oak Leaves and Birch Leaves: two logs and two leaves out of a single wood, which no other forest on this site manages.

Oak Log

Birch Log

Oak Leaves

Birch Leaves

Lily of the Valley

Rose Bush

Peony

Lilac

Forest carries no structure of its own. There is no build tied to it, so exploring one rewards you with dense oak and birch, hilly ground and grass underfoot rather than with a roof and a chest.

What you can still find here arrives from below. A mineshaft, a dungeon, once in a while a stronghold: that generation never looks at where one biome ends, so any of it can turn up beneath the trees. Dig into a hillside rather than walking over it and this biome starts giving something back. Nothing generated is tied to the wood, so scenery is the whole reward and any buildings are your own; dungeons and mineshafts dug out below, an occasional stronghold among them, come from placement that ignores where biomes begin. Boundaries between biomes mean nothing at all to it, so such a thing is as likely under oak as under anything else.

Ten trees per chunk, eleven on one chunk in ten, oak and birch from a single pass that also drops leaf litter. Forest flowers land on one chunk in seven with at most one patch. Grass runs two patches of 32 tries. Forty eight passes, and this is the list most other woodland biomes are variations on.

A cow or a chicken that walks out of these trees is the plain kind: the forest sits outside both the warm and the cold lists, so nothing about the wood changes the animal.

Wolves are the exception to how quiet this biome is, and the forest is on the shortlist the game uses when placing a stronghold.

The forest carries the standard underground set and nothing on the surface: mineshafts through the stone, a stronghold if the placement lands here, and the chambers in the -40 to -20 band.

Ruined portals here are the plain version rather than one of the six variants the game keeps for special ground, so what you find is the same rubble a plains gets.