Minecraft 1.18 Caves & Cliffs Prototype data pack: Everything you need to know

Minecraft 1.17 "Caves and Cliffs" was described by Mojang as only part 1 of the overall "Caves and Cliffs" content expansion. The second and perhaps more technically impressive part of the update is yet to come.

The second part of the update will arrive in the form of Minecraft 1.18 and include features such as enhanced world generation, new mobs, new ores, and much more.

Keen Minecrafters can get a taste of these hotly anticipated world-generation mechanics by using something called a data pack. Everything players need to know about the recently released 1.18 data pack will be explained here, including downloading, installing, and using it.

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What does the Minecraft Caves and Cliffs Prototype data pack do?

The Caves and Cliffs Prototype data pack recently released by Mojang includes several upcoming world generation changes, expected to be included within the final build of Minecraft 1.18.

More specifically, these world generation changes cause the landscape to be much more varied on the Y-axis. Installing the data pack will cause worlds to spawn with vast mountains and deep underground caves unlike anything seen in current versions of Minecraft.

The new world generation system seeks to generate huge mountain tops

However, it should be noted that these generation mechanics are unstable by nature and exist solely for testing. It's not recommended for players to invest a lot of time into worlds loaded with this data pack installed.

Mojang has also confirmed that worlds loaded with this data pack will not be updated to support future Minecraft versions.

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Where to download the 1.18 Caves and Cliffs Prototype data pack?

Link to download the data pack.

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How to install the 1.18 Caves and Cliffs Prototype data pack?

After the pack has been correctly downloaded, players can follow these steps to install the pack correctly:

Step 1

Minecraft needs to first be launched, and then players need to open the world creation menu screen, as seen below. This screen should be very familiar for most Minecrafters out there.

Players need to open the world creation menu

After doing this, they need to click the "Data Packs" button in preparation for the next step.

Step 2

It's now time to install the freshly downloaded data pack to Minecraft, which can easily be done by simply dragging the downloaded zip file into the Minecraft game window itself.

Once asked if they want to install a data pack, users should just hit the "Yes" button. After this, the data pack should be successfully installed, and they can select it by clicking the arrow to move it over to the right "Selected" hand side.

Players screen should look like this right before clicking the "Done" button if all is correct

Upon confirming, their screen looks exactly like above, and the "Done" button can be pressed, and everything should be good to go.

Players should keep in mind that the data pack won't work on pre-existing worlds, and players must generate new worlds for the data pack to function and 1.18 types of terrain to generate.