How to Change Your Minecraft Server Difficulty

Minecraft can be played in different ways. Choose a peaceful experience without hostile mobs or a greater challenge in which these mobs deal more damage. By changing the difficulty of your Minecraft server, you control factors such as how much damage hostile mobs deal and how starvation damage works. In this guide, we explain which difficulty levels are available and how to change the difficulty.

Which difficulty levels are available in Minecraft?

Minecraft has four different difficulty levels. Each difficulty level has its own characteristics and is suited to a different gameplay experience. Review the table below and choose the difficulty that best suits your Minecraft server.

Changing the difficulty using a command

1. Log in to the game panel and go to your Minecraft server.
2. Start the Minecraft server if it is not already running and wait until the server has fully started.
3. Open the Console page.
4. Enter the following command. Replace DIFFICULTY with your preferred difficulty:

difficulty DIFFICULTY

5. Press Enter. The new difficulty is active as soon as the console confirms the change.

Note Enter commands in the console without /. Do you have OP permissions and want to run the command in Minecraft? Use /difficulty DIFFICULTY in the chat.

Changing the difficulty through the server.properties

1. Log in to the game panel and go to your Minecraft server.
2. Open the Files page.
3. Open the server.properties file by clicking its name.
4. Find the following line:

difficulty=

Tip Use Ctrl+F on Windows and Linux or Cmd+F on macOS to find the setting more quickly.

5. Replace the difficulty after difficulty= with your preferred difficulty. For the hard difficulty, the line should look like this:

difficulty=hard

6. Save the file.
7. Restart the Minecraft server using the grey restart button. The new difficulty is active as soon as the server has fully started.