How To Set The Difficulty Level In Minecraft | What Are Their Differences?

Picking a difficulty level to play is actually an important decision in starting a Minecraft server, as it affects many parts of gameplay directly. By modifying Minecraft Difficulty, the creator can choose how easy or hard they want their gameplay experience to be. In this article, we are going to showcase how to set the difficulty in a Minecraft server and the differences between levels.

1. How to set difficulty level in Minecraft

The default difficulty level of Minecraft is easy. To modify it, just open the chat and type /difficulty, followed by whichever level you want: Peaceful, Easy, Normal or Hard. For example, if you want to set the difficulty level of your world to Hard, type in "/difficulty hard".

You can check the current Difficulty Level in Minecraft in Options.

Alternatively, you can also alter the difficulty level of Minecraft using the console or configuration file.

For console, open the control panel, click on Console and type in "difficulty [your choice]". Remember to remove the "/", as the console does not recognize it.
For configuration file, open the control panel > Config files > Server settings > Find the Difficulty Field, set it to whatever you want then save.

2. What are the differences between Minecraft difficulties?

There are 4 levels in Minecraft in total from the least to the most challenging: Peaceful, Easy, Normal and Hard. These levels have distinctive features that either facilitate an easy gameplay or cause more obstacles to players.

Peaceful level in Minecraft

In this mode, most enemies can't spawn except for a select few. They can't damage the player, either. Player health regenerates quickly and the hunger meter never depletes. Even TNT deals no damage.

The only way to die in Peaceful is to fall down in Lava, drown or taking enough fall damage for instant death. Some advancements or achievements can't be completed in Peaceful difficulty level.

Easy level in Minecraft

Enemy spawns and attack as normal, but they deal less damage than they would on Normal or Hard. Hunger bar depletion cannot kill players - it will only tick them down to 5 hearts. Poisonous enemies like cave spiders or bees cannot poison players, skeletons and zombies wear less armor... etc.

The biggest boost, however, is that lower-level enemies such as zombies, skeletons, spiders, husks and strays only deals 1 to 2 damage each hit. Most Minecraft speedruns are on Easy difficulty.

Most players speedrun Minecraft on Easy Difficulty.

Normal level in Minecraft

Similar to easy, but the aforementioned lower level enemies deal 1 more damage. Hunger bar depletion is actually dangerous now - it can bring players down to just 1 heart if completely depleted.

Villagers killed by zombies have a 50% chance of turning into zombie villagers, and zombies/skeletons can occasionally wear enchanted armor. Vindicator gains the ability to break doors.

Hard level in Minecraft

Hostile mobs now deal even more damage comparing to Normal. Hunger bar depletion can actually kill you now instead of just dealing damage.

Most basic enemies gain an additional ability or two. For example, zombies can summon reinforcements and break down wooden doors, Spiders gain a beneficial status effect, and the dangerous Pillagers now spawn near players more often.