How to change difficulty in Minecraft

Type /difficulty hard in chat as an operator, or difficulty hard in the server console. Run it with no value to see the current difficulty.

difficulty

Shows or changes the world difficulty: peaceful, easy, normal or hard.

/difficulty [peaceful|easy|normal|hard]

Examples

/difficulty hard

Switches the world to hard.

/difficulty

Shows the current difficulty.

difficulty peaceful

From the server console, without the slash.

Arguments

difficultyOptional: peaceful, easy, normal or hard. Leave out to show the current one.

What it does

Without an argument it shows the current difficulty. Peaceful removes hostile mobs and stops hunger from draining health, while hard makes mobs deal more damage and hunger can kill. On a dedicated server, the difficulty value in server.properties is applied again on startup, so change it there too to keep it.

Good to know

Needs operator permission level 2.
Hardcore worlds stay locked on hard.

Run it on your server

On a SLASHPLAY server, type it in the Console tab without the leading slash; in game, operators type it in chat with the slash. New to this? Start a Minecraft server first.

Your own
Minecraft server.

Start a Minecraft server All commands

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