How to Change Difficulty in Minecraft Bedrock (And What Each One Actually Does)
Difficulty in Minecraft isn't just "mobs hit harder." It changes whether zombies can break your door, whether a bitten villager turns into a zombie villager, whether hunger can actually kill you, and whether several achievements are even possible.
Here's how to change it, and more importantly, what you're actually choosing between.
How to Change Difficulty
When Creating a New World
- Click Create New → Create New World
- In the Game tab, find Difficulty
- Pick Peaceful, Easy, Normal, or Hard
- Create the world
In an Existing World
- Pause the game
- Go to Settings → Game
- Change the Difficulty setting
The change takes effect immediately. No restart, no reload.
With a Command
If cheats are on, you can also use:
/difficulty peaceful/difficulty easy/difficulty normal/difficulty hard
You can also use the numbers 0 through 3 in the same order.
Good News: Difficulty Doesn't Affect Achievements
This trips a lot of people up, so let's be clear.
Changing difficulty through the settings menu is a normal game setting. It does not disable achievements, no matter which level you pick or how often you switch. You can play on Peaceful the entire time and still earn achievements.
Using the /difficulty command is different, but not because of the command itself. Running any command requires cheats to be enabled, and enabling cheats is what permanently disables achievements for that world. If you care about achievements, use the settings menu and avoid the command entirely.
But Some Achievements Are Impossible on Peaceful
Difficulty doesn't disable achievements, but Peaceful blocks certain ones by removing the mobs you need.
On Peaceful you can't get hostile mob drops or mob XP, which rules out anything requiring you to kill hostile mobs. You also can't collect wither skeleton skulls, so you can't summon the Wither, which means no nether star and no Beaconator.
The practical workaround: play on Peaceful while you build, then switch to Easy or higher when you need to fight something. Since switching is free and instant, there's no reason not to.
The Four Difficulties Explained
Peaceful
Mobs: Hostile mobs don't spawn at all. Any that already exist are removed the instant you switch. Neutral mobs like endermen, spiders, and zombified piglins also won't spawn. Hoglins and piglins still spawn but behave passively.
Hunger: Your hunger bar never depletes. On Bedrock you can still eat normally even at full hunger, which is a small but real difference from Java where you're restricted to a handful of items.
Health: Regenerates rapidly on its own.
Still dangerous: Lava, drowning, fall damage, and other environmental hazards still kill you. Peaceful isn't invincible. And the Ender Dragon still spawns, though it deals no damage.
Best for: Building, exploring caves without interruption, learning the game, or playing with young kids.
Easy
Mobs: Spawn, but in smaller numbers and dealing reduced damage. They never spawn wearing armor or holding weapons.
Status effects: Hostile mobs can't inflict harmful status effects. Cave spiders won't poison you, and the Wither won't apply the wither effect.
Hunger: Depletes, and an empty hunger bar damages you down to 10 health points, then stops. Hunger cannot kill you.
Zombie villagers: 0% conversion rate. A villager killed by a zombie just dies.
Best for: Survival gameplay without much pressure. Good first step up from Peaceful.
Normal
Mobs: Standard spawn rates and standard damage. This is the baseline the game is balanced around.
Hunger: Depletes and can drain your health down to half a heart, but won't kill you outright.
Zombie villagers: 50% conversion chance.
Best for: Most players. The intended experience.
Hard
Mobs: Spawn in larger numbers, deal the most damage, and frequently spawn wearing armor and carrying weapons.
Zombies break doors. A wooden door is no longer a wall. This alone changes how you design a base.
Hunger kills. This is the only difficulty where an empty hunger bar drains your health to zero. Starving to death is a real possibility.
Zombie villagers: 100% conversion. Every villager killed by a zombie becomes a zombie villager.
Best for: Experienced players, and anyone farming cured villager discounts.
The Hard Mode Trick Worth Knowing
That 100% zombie villager conversion rate isn't just a downside. It's the reason experienced players deliberately run Hard.
Curing a zombie villager gives you permanent trade discounts, often dropping enchanted books to a single emerald. To cure one, you first need a villager to become a zombie villager. On Normal that's a coin flip, and losing a good librarian to a failed 50/50 hurts. On Hard it's guaranteed every time.
If you're building a trading hall, switch to Hard for the conversion, then switch back afterward if you like. See our guide on curing zombie villagers for the full process.
Regional Difficulty: The Hidden Mechanic
Underneath the difficulty setting there's a second system most players never notice.
Regional difficulty (also called local difficulty) is a hidden value that scales your actual danger level based on four things: your difficulty setting, how long the world has existed, how much time players have spent in that specific chunk, and the moon phase.
The ranges by setting:
- Peaceful: 0.0
- Easy: 0.75 to 1.5
- Normal: 1.5 to 4.0
- Hard: 2.25 to 6.75
What this means in practice: your base gets more dangerous the longer you live there. Chunks you spend hundreds of hours in accumulate higher regional difficulty, which increases the chance of mobs spawning with armor, weapons, and enchantments.
So if it feels like your old world has gotten harder even though you never changed the setting, it has. That's not your imagination.
Can You Change It Mid-Game?
Yes, freely and as often as you want. There's no lock, no cooldown, no penalty.
A few things to know about switching:
Switching to Peaceful removes existing hostile mobs immediately. Everything that can't exist on Peaceful despawns the moment you change. This is a legitimate emergency button if you're surrounded and about to die.
Switching away from Peaceful doesn't instantly repopulate. Mobs spawn normally from that point, so give it a night.
On a Realm or server, only the owner or an operator can change it, and it applies to everyone.
Bedrock has no Hardcore mode. That's Java-only. On Bedrock, Hard is as difficult as it gets, and there's no permadeath setting.
Which Should You Pick?
Building a big project? Peaceful. No creepers blowing holes in your work.
New to the game? Easy. You get real survival gameplay without dying constantly.
Just want normal Minecraft? Normal. It's the balanced default.
Want a challenge, or farming villager discounts? Hard.
And remember you're not committing to anything. Build on Peaceful, fight on Hard, switch back whenever. The setting is a tool, not a permanent choice.
