Minecraft health and hunger bar explained

Health and hunger bars (Image via Minecraft)
Health and hunger bars (Image via Minecraft)

Minecraft is a survival game in which players need to gather resources, defend themselves from hostile mobs, and keep themselves alive. Players can keep track of how close they are to death through health and hunger bars, which shows players whether they need to take stock of their food supplies immediately or not.

However, since the health bar has been in the game since it was in alpha mode, and the hunger bar is almost as old, there are a lot of different mechanics within them that players may not be privy to. This article will detail all the information that players need to know about the two bars.


All about Minecraft’s health and hunger bars

Health Bar

A player being poisoned (Image via Minecraft)
A player being poisoned (Image via Minecraft)

Minecraft's health bar is split into 10 hearts, with each heart having two halves. Any damage that is less than half a heart is not shown on the bar, but is nonetheless counted by the game.

Wolves and iron golems are the only two mobs that show their health visually. As their health bar decreases, iron golems become more cracked. As a wolf’s health decreases, their tail will start lowering.

If the player somehow gets enough negative health attributes to cause a negative total health, they will not instantly die. Instead, they will die in a guaranteed two hits. The first hit will set them from this negative health to half a heart, and then the second hit will kill them.

The color of the health bar changes based on a few conditions, which are as follows:

  • The poison status effect will turn hearts a sickly green.
  • The Wither effect will cause hearts to turn black.
  • The freezing effect from powdered snow will turn hearts a light blue.
  • These color changes will stack with a unique texture for hearts on hardcore, which adds glaring eyes to the health bar.

If a player is holding a totem of undying in their off hand or main hand, they will resurrect upon death, avoiding the death screen. This will leave them with half a heart and at least 40 seconds of regeneration two. Due to low health and slow regeneration, it can be very easy to use a totem and then still die.


Hunger Bar

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Similar to the health bar, the hunger bar can have a maximum of 10 drumsticks, with each drumstick made up of two halves. Thus, the hunger bar represents 20 hunger points in Minecraft.

Players only naturally regenerate health when they have 18 or more hunger points, which is nine drumsticks. They can only sprint as long as they have six or more hunger on the bar.

The number of drumsticks on the hunger bar affect the player in several ways, which are as follows:

  • While the hunger bar is at 20, players will regenerate half a heart every half second.
  • When the hunger bar is at 18, players will regenerate half a heart every four seconds.
  • If the hunger bar is empty, the player will starve, taking half a heart of damage every four seconds.

On easy, players stop taking damage at half heath, and on normal, they are reduced to half a heart. On hard and hardcore, players will starve to death. This starvation damage makes it impossible to sleep, and is not reduced by neither the resistance effect nor the armor.

There is a secondary feature of hunger that is not shown to the player. This is the saturation value of food, which controls the rate of depletion when the player partakes in activities such as sprinting and jumping.