Old Growth Pine Taiga

Spruce trees with trunks two blocks by two, standing over podzol and coarse dirt, with mossy cobblestone boulders scattered through the undergrowth. It used to be called the Giant Tree Taiga and the name fitted.

Those trunks make it the fastest wood in the game to fell, and the mossy cobblestone lying around saves a trip to a dungeon. Trail ruins can be buried in it, one of only six biomes that hold them. Wolves, foxes, rabbits and the usual farm animals live between the trees.

It is uncommon, sits at temperature 0.3 with 0.8 humidity, a cool wet climate that gives rainfall rather than snow. minecraft:old_growth_pine_taiga was added in 1.7.2 and 26.2 generates it under its current name.

Cool Overworld conifer country. Taiga and Old Growth Spruce Taiga are what it grows out of and back into.

Spot the giant 2x2-trunk spruce trees and mossy cobblestone boulders that mark the old-growth taigas.

Uncommon, and the tell is underfoot as much as overhead: podzol and mossy cobblestone boulders lie between trunks that take four saplings to replant. Foxes and wolves both make a living here. Nothing in the other dimensions could appear in its place, and walking an unhelpful direction usually costs little here, because the taiga tends to run a long way. Have a boat first if a river is going your way; rarely is one far off.

The giant spruce holds the full taiga roster: sheep on 20 percent of the spawn attempts in fours, pigs and chickens on 17 percent each, cows on 13, wolves and foxes on 13 percent apiece, and rabbits last on 7 percent.

Foxes suit this biome better than any of them. Two to four turn up at once, they hunt the rabbits and chickens sharing the podzol with them, and they carry off whatever they can hold in their mouth. Wolves come in fours and take bones to tame, after which they fight for you. Rabbits, when the foxes leave any, give rabbit hide, raw rabbit with a rabbit's foot every so often.

The farm animals fill the rest: wool that regrows on a sheared sheep once it eats grass, beef and leather and a bucket of milk from a cow, porkchops from a pig that takes a saddle and a stick with a carrot on the end, and eggs, feathers and raw chicken from the chickens. Harmless company, most of it: a cow, for example, hands over leather and beef and gives milk to a bucket, sheep give mutton, and rabbits give rabbit meat, hide and rabbit's feet. Per attempt the rabbit is 1 in 15, and a wolf tamed with bones becomes a loyal combat pet. A tamed wolf will become the most useful thing you own in a wood this size, at any time of day. A cow drops leather with the beef and is milked with a bucket.

Cow

Pig

Sheep

Chicken

Wolf

Rabbit

Fox

The spruces here grow 2x2 and go up far past the ordinary taiga, so Spruce Log arrives by the hundred rather than by the stack. Under them lies Podzol, and the boulders scattered through the wood are Mossy Cobblestone, which is otherwise a structure block you have to go looking for.

Coarse Dirt fills the gaps between the podzol. Most trips here are for wood from its trees, and the giant trunks are the reason: one pine is a full day of building.

The stand is planted by a rule of its own rather than the one the neighbouring taigas use, which is why the tree line changes the moment you cross the border.

The boulders are placed on the surface rather than dug out of it, so mossy cobblestone here is a walk instead of a mine.

The old growth pine taiga is the one place where these giant trees stand without the low branches of the other old growth wood.

Spruce Log

Podzol

Mossy Cobblestone

Coarse Dirt

Mossy cobblestone gives this camp away. The Abandoned Camp came to the old growth pine taiga in 26.3, and its layouts use more mossy cobblestone than the camp of any other biome, set among spruce fences, sweet berry bushes, large ferns and red and brown mushrooms around the white tent. Straw beds inside, chests and barrels outside, and a map to the next camp in the chest.

Giant 2x2 spruce and mossy cobblestone boulders, and not one older building among them. Nothing generated before 26.3 belongs to this biome, so what it rewards you with is the forest itself: podzol underfoot, trunks four blocks thick, and light coming down in strips.

It does carry Trail Ruins, found on six of these pages and nowhere else here. Apart from that, anything you find comes from further down, where mineshafts run under the podzol, dungeon rooms open off them, and the odd stronghold turns up without a glance at the forest overhead. Timber and scenery are the rewards for exploring, not many buildings; beneath the boulders sit dungeons, mineshafts and the occasional stronghold, generated by placement that ignores where a biome ends. Generation dug it under boundaries that mean nothing to it and tied it to no forest at all. Such a tunnel is as easy to miss here as anywhere, and still worth watching for.

Fifty two passes, the busiest list in the Overworld along with the swamp and the spruce version. Ten giant pines per chunk, mossy boulders at 2 tries, ferns on one chunk in five with 96 tries, and berries on one chunk in 32. The two mushroom rates are far apart: brown on one chunk in four, red on one chunk in 171.

Cold counts under the giant pines too: every cow, pig and chicken that spawns in this wood takes the cold form, which is the same rule the ordinary taiga follows.

Foxes stay red, wolves stay grey, and the stronghold placement can favour this biome when the world is generated.

No village stands under the giant pines, but the trail ruins do: buried at y -15 with the ground pulled back over them, which is why nothing shows on the surface.

Mineshafts and the trial chambers fill the rest of the depth, the chambers between y -40 and y -20 with their own emptied spawn lists.

The mobs of Old Growth Pine Taiga between them leave 9 different items behind: mutton, porkchops, chicken, feathers, beef, leather, rabbit meat, rabbit's feet and rabbit hide.

For mutton you want Sheep, and Old Growth Pine Taiga gives it 20 percent of the animal draw. Behind it in the same draw come Pig on 16.7 percent for porkchops, Chicken on 16.7 percent for chicken and feathers and Cow on 13.3 percent for beef and leather.

The old growth pine taiga is where you go for podzol at scale. The ground under the giant two by two spruces is podzol rather than grass, and mossy cobblestone boulders lie on top of it, so a single trip can fill a chest with both.

The giant spruces themselves are the largest wood source in the overworld: one tree yields several stacks of spruce logs. Wolves, foxes and rabbits all spawn here, and the biome carries no structure at all beyond an abandoned camp, so nothing will interrupt the harvest.

The old growth pine taiga answers to mega_taiga on Bedrock, the id behind the old name Giant Tree Taiga. Its temperature of 0.3 is a touch above the spruce version next door, and both editions agree on that number.

Water is #287082 on Java and #2d6d77 on Bedrock, a slightly greener tone, and Bedrock still generates mega_taiga_hills, the biome Java listed as Giant Tree Taiga Hills until 1.18.

Old Growth Pine Taiga has not always been called that. Java used the name Giant Tree Taiga for 19 releases, from 1.13 through 1.17.1, and switched to Old Growth Pine Taiga in 1.18. Both names describe the same biome, the same blocks and the same spawns, so a guide written before 1.18 still applies here.

The name Old Growth Pine Taiga has stood for 32 releases since then, and the biome itself is older than either name: it dates back to 1.7.2.

A world without Old Growth Pine Taiga visited is a world without Adventuring Time. The advancement wants 56 biomes, 16 of which are temperate like Old Growth Pine Taiga, and it fires only when the last one is ticked.