Do I need to load in new chunks to access the terrain in Minecraft Bedrock 1.17.2 if the chunks are already 1.17.0?

Question

I had originally made my survival world in version 1.16.5, but once 1.17.0 was released, I reset the chunks in my world to access the new content. Today, version 1.17.2 was released and the main issue it repairs is the fact that there are 50% less diamonds spawning.

With this update, do I need to load new chunks in order to see the repair take effect or will diamonds just appear where there was stone previously? Additionally, is it better to reset the chunks, or get new ones from exploring?

Answer 1

Yes new chunks will be needed. Minecraft (bedrock) has not ever replaced blocks and unfortunately requires new chunks to be loaded as the old ones that have already been rendered or loaded will remain the same. So you can wipe your server/game, or travel far enough that it loads new chunks.

Which is better is up to you, if you already have a town or large structure you have built and want to keep exloring further may be the better option. If you don't mind starting over then just regenerate all chunks or start a new world.

Also keep in mind a chunk is from bedrock to skybox so exploring further down will have no effect.

Answer 2

Base answer:

The addition of foliage and the dripstone stuff in caves is likely what made it have diamonds getting generated.

More information

When anyone has a high render distance on that world (where the render distance isn't very limited, like on a local world save, all the chunks that are not yet generated within the player's render distance will be generated.

(Generated chunks stay as-is once generated unless using unofficial and unsupported 3rd-party tools to edit the world save data.)

Additional notes:

• The ticking area around players (world- / server-specific) and the player's own manually set render distance (which may be limited by Realms, the official BDS software, even third-party server software which includes the ones in the featured server list) are both different.
• After any reduction to a user's render distance is applied, the larger of the render & ticking area will be used to know which chunks needed to be loaded (or generated first if the chunks do not exist yet in the world save).