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I was wondering if there is any rhyme or reason behind where you spawn in SSP in Minecraft after seeding your world.

From my first hand experience, the answer is yes you always spawn with the same x,y co-ordinates on a seed. But I wondered when this came in, and whether what I've seen is backed up by anything (and not just circumstantial).

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The Minecraft Wiki article on Spawning is a good start. Specifically;

Every world has a "spawn point" (really, an area) located within a few hundred blocks of the origin (0x, 0y, 0z). This point is stored in the level.dat file's SpawnX, SpawnY, SpawnZ attributes (although SpawnY seems to be ignored). If the spawn point is deemed unacceptable, a new, temporary spawn point will be selected (although the criteria for "unacceptable" is unknown).

So you always spawn "somewhere" near the center of the map (0,0). Generally the game will try to spawn you on a sand tile near water (The "washed ashore" effect). So, if you always load the same seed, then the algorithm should always plop you down in the same spot that is "close to" the center of the map.

The rules for multiplayer are somewhat different however, and the article is worth the read on that aspect.

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  • What I've found though is I've spawned in a swamp near water, on the exact same block, every time. I've not seen the behaviour you describe, or the wiki describes. Dec 12, 2011 at 10:33
  • This has changed since the wiki was last updated (when the new biomes were added I think). The sand tile near water thing is definitely no longer true.
    – fredley
    Dec 12, 2011 at 13:42
  • Ok so the above post is no longer true? Dec 12, 2011 at 19:52
  • i have been spawned in a different spot before but because an animal was where I normally spawn when I seed that map. usually it is fairly close to the original spawn point but sometimes it is disorienting.
    – nhutto
    Dec 21, 2011 at 17:51
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I've actually tested this... unless I wrote my seed numbers down wrong you do not always spawn in the same area. I deleted a world I had been work on for a while because I got frustrated with it. When I created the world again I haven't been able to find the village I used last time I played this seed is no where near where I've been spawning and when I first played this seed it was VERY close to my spawn point. So no, this is no longer true. It's also happened with 5 other seeds.

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    Which version of Minecraft? Oct 24, 2012 at 7:14
  • Well quite of bit of Minecraft's seed generation code is based on PRNGs (Psuedo Random Number Generators) . I too have reused seeds from 1.7.10 maps and have ended up in completely different areas than I was before. From what I understand the seed numbers are used to control how wild the PRNGs go with the random numbers. So in one way or another you are never guaranteed the same "experience twice" Jan 9, 2015 at 5:36

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