Sparse Jungle

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 26.2 still wraps it around the dense jungle.

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.

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.

Chicken

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

Vine

Since 26.3 there is one build here after all, the Abandoned Camp. The sparse jungle version hides under a heavy load of jungle leaves and vines, fenced with jungle wood, with cocoa pods on the trunks, and its layouts hold more barrels than chests. One of them keeps an oxidized copper golem as a statue.

The thin jungle gets none of the jungle temples. Nothing generated before 26.3 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.

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.

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.

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.

Everything that spawns in Sparse Jungle is worth something. Between them the mobs here drop 2 different things: chicken and feathers.

17.2 percent of the animal draw in Sparse Jungle goes to Chicken, so chicken and feathers are what this biome hands out most.

The sparse jungle is a jungle you can actually walk through. The same jungle logs, jungle leaves and vines grow here, but with room between the trees, which makes it the practical place to harvest jungle wood if you do not want to cut your way in with an axe.

The trade off is the animals: only chickens spawn in the sparse jungle, so no ocelots, no parrots and no pandas, and no structure generates here at all except the Abandoned Camp.

The sparse jungle is jungle_edge on Bedrock, and that older name says more about the biome than the new one does: it is the rim of the jungle rather than a jungle of its own.

Both editions use temperature 0.95, but the downfall of 0.8 is a tenth lower than the dense jungle, on Java and Bedrock alike. Bedrock also keeps jungle_edge_mutated, once Modified Jungle Edge on Java.

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

Sparse Jungle is on the Adventuring Time list, the advancement whose text reads "Discover every biome" while it really means 56 of the 67. Sparse Jungle sits in the warm group, 11 biomes strong.