Drained Sea

A common zone where shallow sea chunks in a pattern have lost their water, leaving dry pits behind thin rims.

Drained Sea is a zone type in the Overworld. Out at sea, some chunks have no water in them. The sea floor lies dry in square pits, and a thin rim holds the sea back.

What it looks like

• Chunks picked by a pattern lose their water, seagrass and kelp. Only chunks that are all shallow open sea are drained, with the floor at most 24 blocks down.
• What is left is a square pit with the dry sea floor at the bottom, open to the sky.
• A rim one block thick runs along the four borders of the chunk, from the floor up to the sea's surface. It is made of the sea floor's own block, such as sand, gravel or clay, or cobblestone where the floor is stone or where sand or gravel would have nothing solid under it.
• Water in pockets under the floor that would leak into the pit is sealed with the same block.
• The sea stands outside the rim, level with its top.
• Drained chunks never touch, not even at a corner. From above, the zone reads as dry pits behind thin rims.
• The pattern is centred on one point in the zone, and it is one of: grid, checker, diagonals, rings, stairs, wave or towers.

Land, coasts and deep ocean in the zone stay as they are.

The rims

Do not break the rims, or dig down through the floor, unless you want to flood it. A hole in a rim lets the sea pour in, and a wider hole can fill the pit. The water stays in that one chunk, because no two drained chunks touch.

A sand or gravel rim falls if you dig out a block under it, and that opens the rim too.

Dangers

• A pit can be up to 24 blocks deep. Walking off the rim into it is a long fall.
• Mobs spawn on the dry floor at night, as on any land.

How rare it is

Drained Sea is a common zone, a little rarer than most: about one zone in 68. It exists in the Overworld only, and only in land generated after the 1.7.1 update. The land around spawn never gets it, so go far.

The chunks of the pattern count as the zone in your log, also on land, where nothing is drained.

There are no other chunk errors inside the zone.

See Chunk errors for every zone type, and Exploring for how finds are logged.