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I am building a castle with at least four towers in Minecraft. Each tower needs 10 Jack ‘o' Lanterns, but I have only found 20 pumpkins yet.

Do pumpkins really occur at random, or are there places I should look? I have found 14 in grass and 6 in snow so far.

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  • 6
    You can now plant the pumpkins you do have and grow more; that doesn't answer the issue of where to find your first batch, but for posterity, once you find that batch you're good to go.
    – Yamikuronue
    Jul 8, 2013 at 13:16

5 Answers 5

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I've found a number of pumpkin groups in forests, others (like yourself) have found them in grassland and snow. Unfortunately, the code for generating pumpkins looks like this:

if (rand.nextInt(32) == 0) {
    ...
    (new WorldGenPumpkin()).generate(worldObj, rand, i14, i16, l18)
}

Which indicates a 1/32 chance of when generating a chunk . From there the code generates a 64 random positions within that chunk, and the positions that match a certain criteria (a block of air with grass below) makes a pumpkin. No mention of any particular biome at all.

Pumpkin generation per biome is random*. Sorry!

*as of 1.5_01

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  • Just a general question: where is the minecraft code publicly available? (Or is this not from the game code itself, but something else instead?)
    – Raven Dreamer
    May 1, 2011 at 1:54
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    @Raven Since Minecraft is java, the original code is obfuscated but not entirely inaccessible. Using technology like Minecraft Coder Pack, one can "decompile" the .class files and see bits and pieces of minecraft code, like this one.
    – authenticgeek
    May 1, 2011 at 2:11
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    So, this might mean that it is pretty unlikely to find in a desert or tundra biome since they are less likely to have grass.
    – Zoredache
    May 1, 2011 at 3:31
  • It's also worth noting that Notch has announced a developer program which will give mod developers (or, presumably, anyone who's curious and agrees to the terms) access to the unobfuscated source.
    – Ben Blank
    May 1, 2011 at 4:14
  • That will be using an inventory editor then :)
    – user1381
    May 2, 2011 at 22:05
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You only need to find one pumpkin, as you can now grow them. (which might not've been true when you first asked this). So, provided you haven't already turned them all into jack-o-lanters:

  1. place a pumpkin into your inventory, and get seeds.
  2. place two blocks of dirt
  3. till one of the dirt blocks
  4. plant the seed
  5. wait.

After a while, a plant will appear ... leave it alone. It'll get darker, then some time after that, a pumpkin will appear on the patch of dirt next to the vine. Break the pumpkin, but leave the vine/plant part, and a few one will reappear in less time than waiting for a whole new plant to re-grow.

And, as with all plants, it'll grow faster when it's within 4 blocks of water ... so I generally set up my little gardens with a square of water in the middle, then 4 blocks to each side of it as tilled dirt (so a 9x9 square), with pumpkins and watermellons planted on the outside ring (with another ring of untilled dirt for the melons/squash to grow on, as they won't form where there's something else planted)

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I've found many near trees (in forest biomes). Maybe you could look there?

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  • Well, maybe not. I just checked minecraftwiki.net and it didn't say anything about finding pumpkins especially in some biomes.
    – user9090
    Apr 30, 2011 at 21:27
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Well, I’ve found them in a forest most of the time. I have also commonly found them in snow, jungle, and plains.

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You could also look in the forest, close to the ocean or snowy places. They're commonly found here.

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