Minecraft Entity Type

Entity

Entities are all dynamic, moving objects in Minecraft. This page covers general behavior and movement physics (not block entities).

General Behavior

Most entities: occupy a fixed-size 3D bounding box (not rotated visually); take damage or vanish when on fire (showing a fire effect); can have status effects (mostly from potions); can be renamed with name tags. Entities are lit by the light level at their position (e.g. a minecart jammed diagonally into solid blocks turns black).

Details

• Item frames, glow item frames, paintings, leash knots, and saddles (carpets?) are entities but align to the block grid and cannot move.
• Boats and minecarts regenerate health over time — they can only be destroyed by rapid attacks, not by evenly spaced bare-hand hits. Wobble indicates remaining health.
• Falling blocks (sand, gravel, suspicious sand/gravel, red sand, pointed dripstone, sulfur spikes, scaffolding, anvils, dragon egg, concrete powder, snow): when support disappears they become entities falling until landing on support; they then convert back to the block in the nearest grid cell — if that cell is occupied by a non-solid block (torch, slab), they drop as items. Trajectories can be altered by explosions, slime-block pistons, bubble columns, fishing rods (dripstone only), commands, or third-party tools. They despawn if they haven't settled after 600 ticks (30 s), or after 100 ticks (5 s) outside the build height — normally dropping as items. During world generation, sand above newly carved caves floats until a block update collapses it.
• Interaction: some entities (baby villagers, tamed wolves, zombies, minecarts, boats) do not block the interaction with the item in hand — e.g. a water bucket used on a tamed wolf makes it sit/stand and also pours the water.
• Riding: lower/outer entities collide and control movement. Common combinations: boats/minecarts with passengers; saddled pigs/horses/donkeys/mules/zombie horses/skeleton horses/camels; saddled striders (ridden by players or zombified piglins); llamas, parrots on shoulders; chicken jockeys; spider jockeys (skeletons on spiders); skeleton trap horses; ravagers with illagers. /ride mounts entities; /summon can nest passengers (e.g. a spider with a Passengers:[{id:"skeleton",...}] skeleton = spider jockey). The topmost entity of a stack cannot teleport (it gets teleported back onto its mount; smooth movement may show it at several intermediate positions).

Movement

All entities (except marker entities in Java) have velocity, position, and orientation. Most non-projectile entities' hitboxes cannot pass through solid blocks (projectile trajectories don't either, but their hitbox may partially clip). Most entities block block placement except items and XP orbs, which yield.

Motion Data (Java)

• Motion (required) — [x, y, z] velocity in meters/tick; components must be in −10..10 (out of range resets to 0 on load; NaN loads normally).
• Pos (required) — [x, y, z] coordinates; X/Z in −30000512..30000512, Y in −20000000..20000000 (out of range is forced back; NaN causes a load error).

Physics

Movement per tick is determined by three data: acceleration a (m/tick²; the Y axis is gravity), "drag" f (velocity multiplier, may differ horizontally/vertically), and position s. Derived: velocity v, terminal velocity v∞, horizontal max-displacement multiplier k∞ (max distance = k∞ × v0).

• Acceleration: horizontal acceleration is 0 for non-mobs; the player's is a = a1·a2·a3 + a4 with a1 = 0.1 (ground) / 0.02 (air), a2 = 1 (walking) / 1.3 (sprinting), a3 = 0.98 (one key) / 1 (two keys), a4 = 0.2 (sprinting jump straight) / 0.
• Drag: for mobs on the ground with block drag coefficient FB, mob friction F, air resistance A: vertical fv = 1 − 0.09A, horizontal fh = (1−0.09A)(1−(1−FB)·F). In air, FB = 0. Non-mobs use fixed values (see the wiki table).
• Velocity (no collision), order-dependent:
  • drag then acceleration: vt = v(t−1)·f + a, closed form vt = (v0 − a/(1−f))·fᵗ + a/(1−f).
  • acceleration then drag: vt = (v(t−1) + a)·f, closed form vt = (v0 − af/(1−f))·fᵗ + af/(1−f).
• Jump: initial vertical velocity v0 = p·j·f + vl + vs where j = jump strength, f = jump multiplier, p = charge factor (rabbits 50/21; horses/mules/donkeys/llamas from the jump charge bar 0–1; others 1); Jump Boost l adds vl = 0.1·l; magma cube of size s adds vs = 0.1·s.
• Bounciness: non-mobs always bounce 0 and block elasticity is reduced by 20%; mobs use the bounciness attribute.
• Position formulas: the six order permutations ("position/drag/acceleration" etc.) with recurrence/closed forms and inverse-time solutions (using the Lambert W function for the inverse) — see the Minecraft Wiki "Entity" page for the full formulas and the per-entity table (gravity, drag, order, float precision, terminal velocity, max horizontal distance). Notable values: minecart X/Z max speed 0.4 (reset before position update); projectiles in Bedrock cannot move more than 16 blocks/tick; thrown-item order changed in 1.21.2.
• Terminal velocity: drag-first: v∞ = −a/(1−f); acceleration-first: v∞ = −af/(1−f).
• Horizontal max displacement multiplier: position-before-drag: k∞ = 1/(1−f); drag-before-position: k∞ = f/(1−f).

Entity List

The complete list of all entities with their bounding box sizes: see the Minecraft Wiki "Entity" page (sizes in meters; the hitbox does not rotate with the visual). Entity IDs: see the entity-type tag lists and entity data format skill.

Entity Type Tags

Entities are categorized into entity type tags usable by entity predicates and target selectors; see the java-tags skill and data/minecraft/tags/entity_type/ in the source.

Common Entity NBT (Java)

• id (required for persistence only; not readable/writable via /data) — entity type namespace ID. Present when saved to chunks, structure templates, beehives, or as passengers.
• Air (−20..max air) — remaining air; +4/tick in breathable environments, decreases in suffocating ones; at −20 the entity takes damage and resets to 0 (loop). Absent = max.
• CustomName (text component; → custom_name component) — shown in death messages, villager trades, and above the entity when pointed at.
• CustomNameVisible (default false) — always render the name above the entity.
• data — arbitrary NBT (string form load-only; → custom_data component).
• fall_distance — fallen distance (fall damage).
• Fire — positive = ticks until fire goes out; negative = ticks the entity can stand in fire (players −20, others −1). Absent = 0.
• Glowing (default false) — glowing outline.
• HasVisualFire (default false) — render as on fire without actually being on fire.
• Invulnerable (default false) — resists almost all damage (only creative players and #bypasses_invulnerability damage affect it).
• invulnerable_time (default 0; not stored when ≤ 0) — remaining ticks of damage resistance.
• Motion — see above.
• NoGravity (default false).
• OnGround (default false).
• Passengers — recursive passenger data; only settable via /summon, spawners, and trial spawner spawn data.
• PortalCooldown — ticks until the entity can use a nether portal again (−1/tick while not touching a portal).
• Pos — see above.
• Rotation — [yaw, pitch] (yaw 0 = +Z (north), negative pitch = looking up).
• Silent, Tags (list of strings), Team (team name), TicksFrozen/FrozenTicks (powder snow), UUID (int array, not persisted in saves), Vehicle, CustomName... — the full common-tag list is in the entity-data-format skill.