Ice Spikes

Packed ice pillars up to fifty blocks tall on a flat white plain. Nothing else in Minecraft looks like this landscape.

The floor is packed ice and snow blocks, the temperature reads 0, which is freezing, and what falls is snowfall rather than rain. Packed ice does not melt whatever you stand next to it, which is why players cut it out by the stack and lay ice roads with it. Rabbits are born white here to match the ground, polar bears take 9% of the animal spawns, and strays fire their slowness arrows out of the dark. World generation gives this biome a 7% chance of placing animals at all, well under the default, so it is emptier than it looks.

Nothing generates on it: no village, no outpost, no temple. Finding one means travelling, because the surrounding climate only draws these edges next to snowy plains, where snowfall replaces rainfall for good. minecraft:ice_spikes is a rare cold biome that arrived in 1.7.2 and is still generated in 1.21.

Overworld only, and it grows out of snowy flatland instead of mountains. Snowy Plains and Snowy Taiga are its two neighbours.

It is rare and only borders snowy plains; the giant packed-ice pillars are visible from far away.

Rare, but the giveaway is enormous: packed ice pillars stand far above everything near them, so a horse across open snow finds one sooner than any careful grid. Strays shoot out of the shadow between the spikes. Expect a long walk unless you have elytra: from over the snow the spikes show at once, and walking commonly gets you there anyway, since you will meet the snowy plains that hold them first.

The same three as the flat snow next door, and the pillars do nothing to change the odds. Rabbits take 91 percent of an animal spawn attempt in twos and threes, all of them white here, and polar bears take the remaining 9 percent in ones and twos. A bear leaves you alone until its cubs are behind you, and then it does not.

Strays turn up on roughly 1 in 6 attempts, four to a group. A stray is a frozen skeleton and its arrows apply Slowness, which is a worse problem on packed ice than it sounds, because you slide and it does not miss.

Ice spikes is one of 5 biomes with its own animal chance at world generation: 7%. Harmless company, mostly: the rabbit, for example, drops a rabbit's foot occasionally, plus hide and raw rabbit, and the polar bear is passive but defends its cubs aggressively if you stray too close. Watch the numbers, though. Per attempt the stray is a sixth of the hostile spawns, four at a time, and the polar bear 1 in 11, and those Slowness-tipped arrows are fired whether or not you are ready. Strays come 4 at a time and each fires from range.

Polar Bear

Rabbit

Stray

Worth breaking: Packed Ice, Ice and Snow Block. Packed Ice is the point. It does not melt, it does not turn back into water when you mine it without silk touch, and here it stands in pillars tall enough to see from the next biome.

The ground is packed ice as well, laid down in flat patches before the spikes go up, so you are walking on the same block the towers are made of. Nowhere else fills its floor this way.

The generator lays a patch of packed ice over this ground before a single spike goes up, which is why the floor is nothing like the neighbouring snowy plains and is filled with the same block as the towers.

Packed Ice

Ice

Snow Block

Massive packed ice pillars and nothing else standing. Not one generated build belongs to ice spikes, so the spikes themselves are the whole reward: pillars rising out of flat packed ice, snow cover between them, and a skyline no other biome produces.

Nothing about that stops the underground. Tunnels of an abandoned mineshaft, a dungeon room or two and once in a while a stronghold get placed with no regard for the ice above, and can be dug out here as readily as under grass. Exploring rewards you with scenery no other biome offers, not buildings, while dungeons, mineshafts and an occasional stronghold were dug beneath the pillars by placement that ignores boundaries and is tied to nothing above. Such a find is still worth digging out under the pillars.

Two passes make this biome and both are unique to it: ice spikes at 3 tries per chunk and ice patches at 2. That is all it takes, because a spike is up to fifty blocks tall. Trees run at 0.1 per chunk, so one chunk in ten gets a single spruce. Forty eight passes in total.

Ice spikes are classed exactly like the snowy plains they grow out of: white rabbits, snow foxes, cold farm animals and cold frogs.

Rabbits and polar bears are the only two that turn up on their own, so the white rabbit is the one rule you will see with your own eyes.

For all its drama the ice spikes biome builds nothing on top: no igloo, no village, no outpost. Everything on its list is underground.

Mineshafts, a stronghold and the chambers in their -40 to -20 band are what the spikes are standing on.