Updated for Java Edition 26.3 (October 2026).
The stony shore is Minecraft’s rocky beach: a strip of bare stone and gravel where the land meets the ocean, used instead of a sandy beach where the coast is steep or hilly. It is common, and in our sample of 300 Java 26.3 seeds one sat within 1,000 blocks of spawn in 70% of worlds. Come for cliffside builds and easy stone.
| Dimension | Overworld |
|---|---|
| Where it generates | Along coastlines, as the strip between the ocean and the land behind it |
| How common | 1.2% of the surface in our sample (about 1 block in 80) |
| Distance from spawn | Median 683 blocks; within 1,000 blocks in 70% of seeds, within 2,000 in 99% (our sample) |
| Mobs | No animals spawn here; only the usual hostile mobs at night, such as zombies, skeletons, creepers, spiders and endermen |
| Notable blocks | Stone and gravel, with the odd flower, tuft of grass, pumpkin or sugar cane |
| Structures | Mineshafts, ruined portals |
| Climate | Temperature 0.2 |
| Biome ID | minecraft:stony_shore |
| Added in | Java Edition 1.7.2 as Stone Beach; renamed Stone Shore in 1.13 and Stony Shore in 1.18 |
How to find a stony shore
Walk to the nearest coast and follow it. In our sample of 300 Java 26.3 seeds, every seed had a stony shore inside the area we sampled, the median distance from spawn was 683 blocks, and 99% of seeds had one within 2,000 blocks. Its neighbours were mostly water and ordinary lowland: a river 16% of the time, ocean 12%, forest 10%, plains 9% and lukewarm ocean 8%. Where a forest or plains ends at the sea with a drop instead of a sandy slope, look for a grey strip of stone along the waterline. Travelling the coast by boat is the fastest way to spot one.
These three Java 26.3 seeds put a stony shore right next to spawn. Each coordinate is inside the biome, checked at block level.
| Seed | Stony shore at | From spawn | Map |
|---|---|---|---|
7477144643603395230 |
X 134, Z 30 | 137 blocks | Open on the map |
-6828404885034942496 |
X -126, Z 58 | 71 blocks | Open on the map |
7800897251448445915 |
X 118, Z 258 | 31 blocks | Open on the map |
With cheats on, /locate biome minecraft:stony_shore finds the nearest one, or paste your seed into the biome finder. These are Java seeds; Bedrock worlds from the same number are different.
Stony shore vs beach
Both are shore biomes, and the game picks between them by the shape of the land: a stony shore where the coast is rugged, a sandy beach where it is flatter. They play quite differently:
| Feature | Stony shore | Beach |
|---|---|---|
| Ground | Stone with streaks of gravel | Sand over sandstone |
| Animals | None | Turtles |
| Structures | Mineshafts, ruined portals | Buried treasure, beached shipwrecks, mineshafts, ruined portals |
| Temperature | 0.2 | 0.8 |
| How common (our sample) | 1.2% of the surface | 2.4% of the surface |
| Median distance from spawn (our sample) | 683 blocks | 283 blocks |
The structure row matters if you are treasure hunting. Buried treasure and beached shipwrecks only generate in beach biomes, so a treasure map never leads to a stony shore, and beached shipwrecks don’t generate on one.
Mobs on a stony shore
No animals spawn on a stony shore at all, not even the ones from the land behind it. On the surface, only hostile mobs spawn here, at night or in the dark: zombies, skeletons, creepers, spiders, endermen and the occasional witch. Cows or sheep you see on the rocks have wandered in from a neighbouring biome. No pillager outpost or village generates on a stony shore either, so any pillagers you meet here have walked in or arrived as a patrol.
Ores on a stony shore
Under a stony shore you get the standard Overworld ores at their usual heights: coal, iron, copper, gold, redstone, lapis and diamonds. Emerald ore is not on that list. It only generates inside mountain and windswept biomes, so a stony shore below a mountain has none, even if the peak behind it does. What the shore does give you is exposed rock: sea cliffs can show coal and iron before you dig at all.
Building a base on a stony shore
The rocky coastline is a popular spot for a cliffside house, a harbour or a lighthouse, because the stone is already there to build into and the sea is right below. Plan for food first: nothing edible spawns here, so bring supplies or start a farm on the land behind the shore. Building material is the easy part, since stone and gravel are everywhere; just clear gravel from the top down, because it falls when you dig under it.
Bare stone with no trees or grass gives hostile mobs plenty of room to spawn, so light the rocks around your base before your first night there.
What changed in 2025-26
No changes to the stony shore are listed in the official release notes for the 2025-26 game drops, from Spring to Life (1.21.5) to Wilderness Bound (26.3).
How we measured
The numbers on this page come from our own seed map engine, running Java Edition 26.3 world generation. We generated 300 random seeds and sampled every 16th block across a 10,240 by 10,240 block square centered on each world’s spawn. “How common” is the biome’s share of those samples; “distance from spawn” is how far the nearest sample of the biome was. The seeds above were picked from the same run, and each coordinate was re-checked at block level.
