Sparse Jungle
A sparser version of the jungle with smaller trees and less undergrowth. Previously called Jungle Edge. Acts as a transition biome.
Overview
The jungle, thinned out. Fewer trees, less undergrowth, more room between the trunks, and vines that stop short of covering everything. It used to be called Jungle Edge and that is exactly what it does.
As a transition it is easier to cross and easier to build in than the jungle proper, with the same jungle logs and leaves to cut and melons growing in the clearings. Chickens are the only thing on the spawn list.
Temperature 0.95 against 0.8 humidity keeps the climate warm and humid, with rainfall rather than snow. minecraft:sparse_jungle is uncommon, arrived with the 1.7.2 variants, and 1.21 still wraps it around the dense jungle.
Where to find it
The thinned edge of an Overworld jungle. Jungle, Bamboo Jungle and Savanna border it, so it is the ground between the tall trees and the grass.
It rings the edges of jungles with thinner tree cover; treat it as a transition zone into the dense jungle.
Uncommon, and mostly a doorway: cross it and the real jungle starts. Vines and jungle logs are here in smaller numbers, and a chicken is the only thing that spawns. Neither of the other dimensions grows anything that would appear like this. Being a rim, it shows before the jungle proper: travel long enough through ordinary warm country and the tree cover soon turns patchy, which is what will reveal it. Watch the vines, and the neighbours above do the rest.
Mobs
One animal is listed for the thin jungle: chickens, on 17 percent per spawn attempt, four at a time.
That is the whole roster, so the eggs they lay, the feathers they drop and the raw chicken they carry are all the biome offers on its own. Everything else you meet here walked in from the dense jungle next door, which is where the parrots, pandas and ocelots stayed. Per attempt the chicken is a sixth of the animals, four at a time. You can turn your back on it: it lays eggs, drops feathers, and nothing else here will bother you. A chicken, for example, is still worth an egg.
Blocks & resources
Jungle Log, Jungle Leaves and Vine, the jungle list with the crops taken out. The trees stand apart instead of in a wall, so bring empty slots for wood from its trees and expect to see the sky while you cut.
Melon is the one you will struggle to find elsewhere, and here it is planted thinly on purpose: single patches in the gaps rather than the runs you get in the deep jungle. Jungle Log is in the same category, a block only a couple of biomes carry.
For a first base this is the better jungle: the same wood, the same vines, and enough light on the ground that things do not spawn behind you.
The gaps between the trees are what gives this biome its name and most of its daylight.
Jungle Log
Jungle Leaves
VineStructures & features
The thin jungle gets none of the jungle temples. Nothing generated is tied to sparse jungle, so scattered jungle trees, vines and vegetation lighter than the jungle proper are what exploring rewards you with.
It is still worth crossing, because the thin cover makes it far easier to see the ground and whatever the world has left lying in it. Mineshaft tunnels under the thin cover, dungeon rooms beside them and, on rare occasions, a stronghold can all be dug out here. Scenery over buildings again, and the dungeons and mineshafts beneath the thin canopy, plus an occasional stronghold, were generated by a placement that ignores biome edges. Exploring rewards the walk more than the pack. Generation down there ignores the boundaries a map would draw, and such a tunnel is easy to spot through thin cover.
Temperature
Precipitation
Version Added
IDBiome Colors
It keeps the full jungle palette, #59C93C over #30BB0B, even though the tree cover is thin, so the ground reads far greener than the canopy does. The music is its own rather than the jungle's. Fire behaves normally here, which is the one atmospheric thing the dense jungle changes and this variant does not.
Terrain Features
- -scattered jungle trees
- -less dense vegetation than jungle
What generates per chunk
Two trees per chunk, three on one chunk in ten, against fifty in the dense jungle. That single number is the entire difference between the two biomes as far as generation is concerned. Melons come on one chunk in 64 here rather than one in six, and vines still get 127 tries. Forty eight passes.
Spawn rules and animal variants
Chickens are the only animal the sparse jungle spawns, and being warm ground, they are the warm version of the bird rather than the plain one.
Frogs would be warm here as well, and the biome is one the game can bias a stronghold towards.
Structure depths and forced spawns
The sparse jungle gets the jungle portal but no pyramid: the temple needs the dense version of the biome, so the thin one builds nothing on its surface.
Mineshafts and the chambers underneath are the whole of the rest.
How to Find
Scattered trees and thinner growth are the edge version of the jungle, and it counts separately, which is what the /locate biome command is there for, when the canopy above you keeps opening up:
Thin canopy changes nothing, and the lookup requires cheats to be enabled in the save that thin canopy belongs to, or operator permissions on a server, though this walk is quicker than the one into dense jungle.
