How long does it take for items to despawn in Minecraft

Minecraft is a surprisingly calm game, despite the existence of hostile mobs such as zombies, skeletons, and creepers. However, one of the biggest downsides to dying in Mojang's blocky masterpiece is that the items in the player's inventory will be dropped to the ground. This might not seem that bad at first, but items on the ground will eventually despawn and be lost forever.

In this article, you can learn about the despawning process. This includes information on how long the process takes, ways to extend this period, and other important details.

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How long do Minecraft items take to despawn?

Seeds floating on the ground as an entity (Image via Mojang)

Any items that drop onto the ground as entities will float up and down idly for exactly 6,000 game ticks before despawning. Ticks are how the game processes time internally. The default tick rate is 20 ticks per second, which means that it takes five minutes for an item on the ground to despawn.

Items that drop into the void don't function like other dropped items. Rather than having the normal 6,000-tick, or five-minute, window described previously, any items that fall more than 64 blocks below the dimension's minimum world height will despawn instantly.

Bedrock players also have an item that's immune to the normal despawn mechanics. This is the nether star, dropped by the wither boss. This makes sense, as losing such an important item would be very frustrating. This is one of the stranger parity issues between Minecraft Java and Bedrock.

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Other important aspects of item despawning

Items beyond the player's render and simulation distances will be safe (Image via Mojang)

It's important to note that an item entity needs to be loaded for its countdown timer to pass. Since whether or not entities are loaded depends on the simulation distance Minecraft setting, players can lower this to artificially extend an item's lifespan.

This also means that if a player dies while they are far away from base or in a different dimension, their items are actually safe. This gives them time to prepare, rather than rushing into bad situations repeatedly.

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Ways to get around item despawning

The location of the keepInventory game rule in Java Edition (Image via Mojang)

The easiest way to get around the item despawning issue is to stop items from dropping on death. Thankfully, there is a built-in game rule that does exactly this. Setting the "keepInventory" Minecraft game rule to true will allow players to keep items and XP on death.