Snowy Slopes
Steep mountainsides covered in snow with hidden powder snow patches. Igloos can generate on snowy slopes. Watch out for powder snow traps.
Overview
The flank of a mountain between the forest and the peak: steep, white, and hiding powder snow under an even surface.
Those patches are the danger and the point. Step in without leather boots and you sink; bring a bucket and you can carry powder snow away. Goats and rabbits work the slope, igloos sit on the flatter shelves, and pillager outposts watch the approach.
Minus 0.3 for temperature against 0.9 humidity: a freezing climate, snowfall in place of rain, with rainfall stopping lower down the mountain, and fires that go out quickly. minecraft:snowy_slopes is uncommon, arrived in 1.18, and 1.21 still lays it between treeline and summit.
Where to find it
The flank of an Overworld mountain, between the trees and the summit. Frozen Peaks, Jagged Peaks, Grove and Meadow border it, above and below.
These are the steep snow-and-ice flanks between a mountain's treeline and its peak.
Uncommon, and you pass through one on the way to any peak worth climbing. Powder snow hides in the drifts, so boots on first, and a goat will use the slope against you. No portal is needed, which means the climb is the whole cost: cross any snowy range while travelling for reasons of your own and you commonly walk one of these flanks, which is close enough to guaranteed.
Mobs
Two animals share the slope and they split it more evenly than most: goats on 56 percent of an animal spawn attempt, one to three at a time, and rabbits on 44 percent in twos and threes.
The goat is the danger, not the rabbit. It rams anything standing near an edge straight off it, and this biome is one long edge; charge it into a block instead and you get a goat horn out of it. Rabbits leave raw rabbit plus hide and occasionally a rabbit's foot, and the white ones here are easier to lose against the snow than to catch. Harmless company this is not: the numbers behind it put the goat at 56% of the animals and the rabbit at 44%, and a goat drops a goat horn when it charges into a block. Rabbits give hide, raw rabbit and occasionally a rabbit's foot, and the goat rams entities off ledges whether or not they were in its way. A goat, for example, does not care which of you was standing there first.
Blocks & resources
Snow Block, Powder Snow, Stone and Packed Ice, in that order of how much of it there is. The slope is the approach to the peaks, so you get the same materials with less climbing.
Powder Snow is the reason to stop, and the reason to walk carefully: it fills whole hollows here, and with leather boots you can cross it and mine it in the same trip. Fire burns itself out faster on these slopes than it does elsewhere.
The small print on breaking powder snow: it drops nothing at all unless you come with a bucket.
Snow Block
Powder Snow
Stone
Packed IceStructures & features
Two builds share the mountainside. An igloo is the small one, a snow shelter that sometimes hides a basement laboratory with a captured villager and a zombie villager, and only three biomes here get one.
The other is a pillager outpost, standing in twelve biomes counted here: a watchtower guarded by pillagers, with a captain whose banner triggers the Bad Omen effect when you take him down. Between the two, the powder snow layers are the real threat, since they swallow you whole unless you are wearing leather boots.
Anything else under the slopes was placed without a glance at the snow above, so mineshaft tunnels under the powder, dungeon rooms off them and a stronghold in rare cases are all fair game. Both offer their own loot and challenges to anyone exploring before the powder swallows you. Neither one offers a warm bed. Each of these is able to appear on one slope, and both are thoroughly well hidden by the powder.
Temperature
Precipitation
Version Added
IDBiome Colors
The shared snowy palette again, but the music is a track of its own that returns every 10 to 20 minutes. Fire burns out faster on these slopes, one of eight biomes where that holds. There is no fog value, so the drop below stays visible, which is worth knowing on ground that is mostly powder snow.
Terrain Features
- -steep snowy mountainsides
- -powder snow layers
- -packed ice
What generates per chunk
Forty two passes, and the only one that is not part of the standard ore and cave list is a frozen lava spring at 20 tries per chunk. No tree pass, no grass, no flowers. Everything you see on a snowy slope is either the terrain shape or the powder snow the surface rules put there.
Spawn rules and animal variants
Goats and rabbits share the slope, and the rabbits here are the white ones. Foxes take the snow coat, farm animals the cold form and frogs the cold variant.
It is the approach to the peaks in every sense, including which version of an animal the game hands you, and it is a stronghold candidate.
Structure depths and forced spawns
The snowy slopes are the third and last igloo biome on this site, and an outpost can stand on the same slope.
The portal here is the mountain version, and the chambers below keep their -40 to -20 band with the ordinary spawns switched off inside.
Structures Found
Igloo
Pillager OutpostHow to Find
The slope between the peaks and the trees is a biome in its own right, with igloos and pillager outposts on it, so run the /locate biome command, which names the slope with its igloos rather than the peak above it:
The slope requires cheats to be enabled in the save that slope belongs to, or operator permissions on a server, though the coordinate you use still ends in powder snow if you sprint into it.
