Windswept Savanna

The most broken terrain in the game. Windswept savanna tears the flat savanna into overhangs, floating islands and cliffs with nothing under them, and leaves acacia trees clinging to the edges.

It is rare, and it is worth the walk for the shape of it alone: builders come here for backdrops. Underneath it is still savanna, with coarse dirt, stone, the same horses, donkeys, armadillos and farm animals, and the same dry heat that stops a snow golem before it starts.

Temperature 2 against zero humidity: an extremely hot, arid climate that stays permanently dry, with no rainfall of any kind. Once called Shattered Savanna, minecraft:windswept_savanna has generated since 1.7.2 and still does in 26.2.

Warm Overworld grassland that the terrain tore apart. Savanna and Savanna Plateau are its two neighbours, and both are flat by comparison.

It is rare; look for wildly broken savanna terrain with overhangs and floating chunks of land.

Rare, and it forms only against those two, so work the edges of savanna country instead of sweeping open ground. Overhangs and floating land make it slow going, and a horse is worth more than a straight line. Stay close to that country and cover ground fast: a mount shortens the walk a great deal, a boat helps where rivers run, and elytra turns the whole search into a glance. It commonly sits at the place where the plateau breaks.

The torn-up version of the savanna keeps every one of its animals. Sheep 23 percent of an attempt, pigs 19, chickens 19, armadillos 19 two to three, cows 15, and horses and donkeys around 2 percent apiece.

On terrain that overhangs itself, the flat-ground animals are worth less than usual and the armadillo more: it rolls into a ball when threatened and is brushed for armadillo scutes, which is the only route to wolf armor. Cows still give beef, leather and milk to a bucket, sheep still regrow wool once sheared and back on the grass, pigs give porkchops and take a saddle plus the carrot and stick trick, chickens lay eggs and drop feathers. A tamed horse with a saddle is quick here, but the cliffs decide how far it gets, and a donkey with a chest is the safer bet. They keep to themselves out here. Per attempt the horse is 1 in 53, the chicken a fifth and the cow about a sixth; sheep give mutton, and a cow, for example, gives up leather and beef and hands over milk once a bucket is under it. Horses come 2 to 6 at a time when they come at all. A cow drops leather and is milked with any bucket you carry, wind or not.

Cow

Pig

Sheep

Chicken

Horse

Donkey

Armadillo

A short list, Acacia Log, Coarse Dirt and Stone, on the most dramatic ground in the Overworld: cliffs, overhangs and floating islands that end in mid air. The Stone is not a layer under the grass here, it is the wall in front of you.

The harvest is wood from its trees, and the acacias grow on the ledges, so the trip is half woodcutting and half climbing. Coarse Dirt hangs on the slopes where nothing else would hold.

The trees are placed by a rule this biome does not share with the ordinary savanna, which is why they end up on the edges rather than in the middle. A snow golem melts here too.

The pattern the land is laid in is what sets it apart: a few shelves left floating, made of the same stone as the cliffs under them. The grass plays by savanna rules, the stone by nobody's.

It is the windswept version of the savanna, and windswept here means the ground itself is broken rather than the trees on top of it.

Acacia Log

Coarse Dirt

Stone

Dramatic is doing the work here, not architecture. Windswept savanna carries no build of its own, so the steep cliffs, the floating islands of terrain and the coarse dirt between them are what the exploring rewards.

The world builds underneath without looking at the cliffs above, which means mineshaft tunnels inside the cliffs, dungeon rooms behind them and, rarely, a stronghold can be dug out down there. Given how the terrain overhangs itself here, a mineshaft is often already exposed halfway up a wall. Scenery is the reward for exploring here, buildings are not, since the dungeons and mineshafts generated beneath the overhangs, with an occasional stronghold, ignore boundaries altogether. Generation like that is tied to nothing and ignores everything, so such a shaft is rather more visible here than anywhere flat, which is as useful as it sounds.

Two acacia per chunk, three on one chunk in ten, which is twice what the flat savanna gets, and the extra trees end up on ground that falls away under them. Grass comes in patches of 5 and 32. Forty six passes in total, and the biome plants more than its parent while looking far emptier.

Broken ground does not cool the biome down: the windswept savanna is warm for livestock and warm for frogs, the same as the flat savanna it split off from.

Cows, pigs, sheep, chickens, horses, donkeys and armadillos all spawn on the ledges, which is a fuller list than the terrain suggests, and the biome is a stronghold candidate.

Nothing at all stands on the broken ground: no village, no outpost, only the mountain version of the ruined portal on the ledges.

Under it the mineshafts and the chambers follow the standard pattern, the chambers between y -40 and y -20 with every spawn list emptied inside.

Counting only what the spawn list can give you, Windswept Savanna yields 6 drops: mutton, porkchops, chicken, feathers, beef and leather.

The heaviest roll in Windswept Savanna is Sheep at 23.1 percent of the animal draw, which makes mutton the easiest thing to gather here. Behind it in the same draw come Pig on 19.2 percent for porkchops, Chicken on 19.2 percent for chicken and feathers and Cow on 15.4 percent for beef and leather.

The windswept savanna is worth a trip for the terrain rather than the harvest: floating islands, overhangs and cliffs that no other overworld biome generates, which makes it the standard place to build something that needs a dramatic backdrop.

Acacia logs, coarse dirt and exposed stone are what you can carry out of it, and cows, pigs, sheep, chickens, horses, donkeys and armadillos all spawn on the slopes. Nothing generates here, so the cliffs are yours.

The windswept savanna is savanna_mutated on Bedrock, the id behind the name Shattered Savanna that Java used until 1.18. Unlike the flat savanna it keeps temperature 2 on both editions.

Downfall is 0 on each. Bedrock also generates savanna_plateau_mutated, the biome Java listed as Shattered Savanna Plateau before the merge, so the broken plateau is still its own thing there.

Windswept Savanna has not always been called that. Java used the name Shattered Savanna for 19 releases, from 1.13 through 1.17.1, and switched to Windswept Savanna 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 Windswept Savanna has stood for 31 releases since then, and the biome itself is older than either name: it dates back to 1.7.2.

Adventuring Time is the one advancement Windswept Savanna feeds into. It tracks 55 of the 66 biomes in the game, and the warm group contributes 11 of them, Windswept Savanna included.