Old Growth Spruce Taiga

The denser of the two giant taigas. Same two by two spruce trunks, same podzol floor, same mossy boulders, but the leaves close overhead until very little light gets through.

That shade is the practical difference: mobs find more dark corners here than in the pine variant, and the podzol underfoot is easier to cut in quantity. Wolves and foxes patrol it, sweet berries do not, and trail ruins can lie underneath.

Temperature 0.25 with humidity 0.8 keeps the climate cool, wet and temperate, so rainfall and no snow. minecraft:old_growth_spruce_taiga shares its 1.7.2 origin with the pine version, is uncommon, and is generated in 26.2 with the thicker canopy intact.

The same cool Overworld belt, only denser. Taiga and Old Growth Pine Taiga border it, and telling the two old growth variants apart comes down to how much sky is left.

Like the pine variant but with much denser spruce foliage that blocks out the sky.

Uncommon, and darker than its neighbour because the foliage closes over the gaps. That shade spawns mobs in daylight, so torches under the canopy are not optional. Stay in the taiga and walking in almost any direction usually finds it, because it forms in the same place its pine cousin does and rarely anywhere else. The dense variant tends to have the darker floor of the two.

Seven animals again, and the dense leaf cover makes them harder to see than in an ordinary taiga. Per spawn attempt: sheep 20 percent, pigs and chickens 17 percent each, cows 13 percent, wolves 13 percent in groups of four, foxes 13 percent two to four, and rabbits 7 percent.

Bones tame a wolf here as anywhere, and one wolf is worth more in this light than a full inventory of torches. Foxes hold items in their mouth and hunt chickens and rabbits, which is worth knowing before you start a rabbit farm under these trees. Sheep give wool that grows back once they eat grass again after shearing, cows give beef, leather and milk to a bucket, pigs give porkchops and will carry a saddle and a rider and a carrot dangled off a stick, chickens lay eggs and drop feathers, and rabbits leave hide, raw rabbit and the occasional rabbit's foot. The cow, for one, drops leather and beef, and hands over milk to a bucket, and the wolf, tamed with bones, becomes a loyal combat pet in the company of whatever else is out there. Per attempt the rabbit is 1 in 15 of the animals at a time when the fox is already hunting it. Tame one and it will become a permanent shadow. A sheep, for example, is worth more shorn than eaten, and the cow beside it is milked with a bucket.

Cow

Pig

Sheep

Chicken

Wolf

Rabbit

Fox

Same four blocks as the pine version next door, but the order you meet them in is different: Podzol first, because it covers nearly the whole floor here, then Spruce Log from the giant trunks, then Mossy Cobblestone from the boulders and Coarse Dirt from the bare patches.

The leaf cover is the difference. These spruces keep their branches all the way down, so the wood is dark at noon and people come for wood from its trees and leave with a full inventory of podzol as well.

It gets its own planting rule, separate from the pine taiga and separate from the plain taiga, and the thick canopy is what that rule buys you.

This wood is filled more tightly by the generator than the neighbouring pine version, which is what gives it the darker floor.

The old growth spruce taiga is the darker of the two old growth woods, and the spruce cover is the whole reason for it.

The trees keep their branches down to the ground, and that is the difference you can see from the border.

Spruce Log

Podzol

Mossy Cobblestone

Coarse Dirt

Here the Abandoned Camp from 26.3 sits on podzol between mossy boulders. Spruce fences, stripped spruce logs, large ferns and dead bushes make up its surroundings, with mushrooms in the shade, and its layouts hold twice as many barrels as chests. The white tent still has its straw beds, and a chest holds the map that points to another camp.

The dense leaf cover is the point of this one, not architecture. Nothing else is built here by design: not one other structure belongs here, and exploring it pays in giant spruce, boulders of mossy cobblestone and ground that stays podzol brown.

Trail Ruins are the exception, and the count for them stops at six. Everything else down there answers to the world rather than to the forest: mineshaft tunnels first, dungeon rooms off the sides of them, and a stronghold if one happened to land close. Scenery, as ever, is the reward for exploring, since no other buildings are generated here at all, and what lies beneath the boulders, dungeons and mineshafts with an occasional stronghold, ignores biome boundaries entirely. Loot comes from below or from the camp, or not at all. Generation dug them out, and the spruce above rewards you separately, and such a shaft can open right up under a boulder.

The same 52 passes as the pine version, with one swap: the tree pass here plants the denser spruce shape instead. Ten per chunk, eleven on one chunk in ten. Mossy boulders, ferns, berries and both mushrooms run at identical rates to its neighbour, which is why these two biomes are so hard to tell apart from the ground.

The thick spruce cover does not change the temperature class: this is cold ground for livestock, so the animals that spawn on the podzol are the cold variants.

It shares the fox colour with the other unsnowed taigas and shares the stronghold preference with most of the Overworld surface.

Same buried ruins as the pine version at fifteen blocks below zero, same mineshafts, same chambers in the -40 to -20 band, and the same absence of anything on the surface.

The difference between these two taigas is entirely above ground, and the structure list proves it.

Old Growth Spruce Taiga pays out 9 different drops across the mobs on its spawn list: mutton, porkchops, chicken, feathers, beef, leather, rabbit meat, rabbit's feet and rabbit hide.

Sheep is the one to build a farm on: it takes 20 percent of the animal draw in Old Growth Spruce Taiga and drops mutton. 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 spruce taiga carries the same podzol, mossy cobblestone and giant spruce logs as its pine cousin, but the leaf cover is far denser, which means the ground underneath stays dark. That is a nuisance if you camp here and useful if you want mobs to spawn on your terms.

Coarse dirt generates alongside the podzol, so this is one of the few biomes where you can dig up both without crafting either. Wolves, foxes and rabbits spawn between the trunks.

On Bedrock this biome is redwood_taiga_mutated, a name from the era when Java called it Giant Spruce Taiga. Its temperature of 0.25 is the same on both editions, a twentieth colder than the pine version next door.

Downfall is 0.8 on each side. Bedrock keeps redwood_taiga_hills_mutated as a separate biome as well, which Java listed as Giant Spruce Taiga Hills before the 1.18 merge.

Old Growth Spruce Taiga has not always been called that. Java used the name Giant Spruce Taiga for 19 releases, from 1.13 through 1.17.1, and switched to Old Growth Spruce 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 Spruce Taiga has stood for 32 releases since then, and the biome itself is older than either name: it dates back to 1.7.2.

Skipping Old Growth Spruce Taiga costs you Adventuring Time. That advancement counts 56 biomes out of 67, the 16 temperate ones among them, and Old Growth Spruce Taiga has to be on your map before it fires.