How long does a night last in Minecraft: Everything you need to know

Minecraft is well known for its cyclical day and night cycles. They break the game up into a calm daytime where the player can explore and build with little danger, and a nighttime where enemies and threats spawn all around players, making the overworld's surface much more dangerous.

This means that maximizing the time that players have in each phase of the game, depending on what they need, is crucial for quick game progression. The day is vital for activities such as exploration and farming, whereas the night is vital for gathering useful resources such as gunpowder, ender pearls, arrows, and bones.

How long the days and nights of Minecraft last

The total time of a day

A wall clock which player's can use to keep track of the current time (Image via Minecraft)

The total daily cycle of the in-game worlds lasts for 20 real-world minutes. This means that, at the game’s default tick speed of 20 ticks per second, Minecraft time is exactly 72 times faster than real time. This means that every 50 seconds of real time equates to an in-game hour having passed.

That really makes the days seem short, knowing that an entire hour passes away in less than a minute.

Day

The sun appears after the player uses the /time set day command (Image via Minecraft)

The game's day begins bright and early at 6 AM. This is when players, as well as villagers, rise from their beds after sleeping through the night. Interestingly enough, this is not the time that the /time set day command sets the world to, as the command actually sets the world’s time to 7 AM.

Night

Nights start at 10 minutes and 50 seconds of real-time into the day, assuming players start counting at 6 AM when they wake up from their beds. This also happens to be the time that the /time set night command takes players to.

The first tick of time for hostile mobs to start spawning in clear weather does not happen until just shy of 10 seconds after the night's official start.

There are also a few important milestones that take place before the official start of the night at the game's 7 PM mark. The first milestone time is 6 PM, which is the beginning of sunset and when villagers go to sleep.

The next important time is only half a second after this in real time, which is when, if the weather is rainy, players can go to sleep. This is earlier than normal, as in clear weather, players cannot sleep until 6:30 PM, or 10 minutes and 27 seconds into a day’s total cycle.

In rainy weather, hostile mobs begin spawning at around 7 PM in game, or 10 minutes and 48 seconds of real time. This is earlier than their normal spawning time mentioned by a full 10 seconds.

Edited by Abu Amjad Khan