Where to find Lush caves in Minecraft (2022)

Lush caves were officially added to Minecraft in the 1.17 update, though only in experimental gameplay, custom world types, or some form of an add-on. In the 1.18 update, they were added to vanilla Minecraft and were given an official home. They quickly became one of the coolest biomes players could find.

Lush caves have several great blocks and items that can only be found there and nowhere else. It's unfortunate because it's pretty challenging to find this elusive biome. Here's what gamers can do if they want to find one.

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Minecraft lush caves: Where they spawn, features, and more

Unfortunately, the only way to find lush caves is to look for them. There are no structures that generate there, and the /locate command doesn't work for biomes as of right now. There's no way to know where a lush cave is unless players get a world seed that specifically has one in a particular spot.

Additionally, crafters can't spawn in a lush cave when first generating a world. They may get lucky enough to spawn near one but will never land inside one.

A few stipulations have to be met for lush caves to spawn, which helps narrow the search a little bit. They can spawn from Y level -10 to -50 underground, so there's only a small range in which players need to look.

They are usually found in areas with forested biomes. Additionally, if players ever see an Azalea tree, a lush cave will be underneath. Azalea trees and rooted dirt will spawn if there's any space above the lush cave.

Inside a lush cave, the biome is denoted by several unique features. It has moss carpet, grass, and azalea bushes, three things that are atypical for an underground biome.

Cave vines and regular Minecraft vines grow commonly in lush caves. This is also the best place to find glow berries, which have quite a few good uses.

Lush caves are very distinct (Image via Mojang)

Rare mobs also spawn there, including (Java Edition):

• Tropical fish (100% chance)
• Glow squid (100% chance)
• Axolotl (100% chance)
• Bat (100% chance)
• Spider (19.3% chance)
• Zombie (18.4% chance)
• Skeleton (19.3% chance)
• Slime (19.3% chance)
• Creeper (19.3% chance)
• Enderman (1.9% chance)
• Witch (0.9% chance)
• Spider jockey (0.1% chance)
• Chicken jockey (0.04% chance)

Minecraft Bedrock Edition numbers vary slightly but are overall very similar. Bats do not spawn in lush caves in Bedrock, though.