Frozen Ocean

Sea with a roof. The surface of the frozen ocean is ice, icebergs rise out of it in packed ice and blue ice, and the water carries on underneath.

Blue ice out of those icebergs is the fastest block in the game to boat over, which is the main reason to sail up here. Polar bears stand on the floes and can walk on more than just ice in this biome, salmon and squid swim below, and drowned come up out of the dark water. Ocean ruins and shipwrecks lie on the bottom.

The climate reads 0 and freezing, it ices over on its own, and what falls above the ice is snowfall, never rain, and rainfall belongs to warmer water. minecraft:frozen_ocean is uncommon among oceans, came in 1.7.2, and 1.21 still freezes it over.

Overworld water that has gone solid on top. Snowy Plains, Snowy Beach and Deep Frozen Ocean are its edges, so a snowy coast points straight at it.

Sail into cold waters until the surface turns to ice studded with tall icebergs.

Uncommon, and it is the boat that slows you rather than the distance, because ice stops one dead. Walk the surface instead, and keep well clear of polar bears with cubs behind them. It exists in no other dimensions, and you will cross one while travelling north for reasons of your own. Watch the neighbours listed above: all three sit on the same cold coast.

Polar bears fill their spawn slot here completely, one or two at a time, and this is the water where they can stand on more than just ice. A bear ignores you until you are close to its cubs, at which point it stops ignoring you permanently.

Below the surface it is salmon, which also fill their slot, one to five in a shoal, plus squid on about a third of attempts, one to four at a time, dropping the ink sacs that make a book and quill, and black dye. Salmon is the cold-water food fish, and there is more of it here than in most oceans.

Drowned sit at roughly 1 in 100. One is enough: the underwater zombie can be carrying a trident and drops nautilus shells when it goes down, and under an ice sheet you cannot always surface to get away from it. The numbers behind that: polar bear is all of the animals, then salmon all and squid a third. A polar bear is passive but defends its cubs aggressively if you stray too close, the squid, for example, drops the ink sacs that black dye needs, books and quill after that, and on the peaceful side that is the whole list; the drowned is the zombie of the water, and it can wield a trident and keep a meal waiting under the ice. Salmon give bone meal to nobody, but they feed you. Ink sacs are used for dye whether the water is frozen or not.

Squid

Salmon

Drowned

Polar Bear

Ice, Packed Ice and Blue Ice, and that is the whole list. Blue Ice is the prize: it is the fastest block in the game to travel on, it comes from the icebergs rather than the flat sheet, and it takes nine packed ice to make one by hand.

Water freezes over on its own out here, so a hole you cut through the surface will close again behind you, and a boat left overnight ends up in a sheet.

It is worth knowing before you build out here that an iceberg gives you blue ice without a single craft.

A frozen ocean is the only sea in the game you can cross on foot.

Ice

Packed Ice

Blue Ice

Everything worth finding here is under the ice. Ocean ruins, sunken stone that reaches nine biomes in this list, sit on the floor with loot chests and the buried treasure maps that send you back to shore. A shipwreck is the other option, generating in eleven biomes counted here, and its chests can hold emeralds, supplies and the map to a buried chest.

Getting to either is the hard part, because the surface is frozen, the icebergs are in the way and blue ice makes for poor breathing space. Both structures can appear in the same stretch of frozen ocean, so it is worth mapping the ice above before you dive. Under the seabed the world adds what it adds everywhere: mineshaft tunnels, dungeon rooms and a stronghold once in a while. Exploring the two offers loot plus challenges under the ice, and the vessel whose chests you open comes from the same generation the open sea gets. Each of these is able to appear under the same ice, as thoroughly awkward to reach as that sounds, and both are well worth it.

Icebergs are what this biome adds: packed ice on one chunk in 16 and blue ice on one chunk in 200, the same two rates the deep version uses. Blue ice on the seabed gets up to 19 tries. Forty nine passes, so a frozen ocean chunk is busier than an ordinary one despite looking like a sheet of nothing.

Polar bears are allowed to spawn on more than one kind of block here rather than only on the usual ground, which is why they turn up standing on the floes and not just on the shore.

Everything cold applies as well: white rabbits, snow foxes, cold farm animals and cold frogs, and the ocean draws its outline on a map.

Under the ice this sea builds shipwrecks and the cold version of the ocean ruins, and the portal that generates here is the ocean variant with its own drowned blockwork.

There is no monument in the shallow frozen ocean; that is the deep version next door.