How to Change the Difficulty on Your Minecraft Server

Set your server to Peaceful, Easy, Normal or Hard

Set your server to Peaceful, Easy, Normal or Hard

What is a World Preset?

The world preset decides what kind of terrain your world generates. You can pick a standard world, a flat world, giant biomes, or extreme amplified terrain. Changing the preset only affects newly generated worlds, so you will need to create a new world to see the changes.

Important: If you want to keep your current world, make sure to back it up or download it before making any changes. This gives you the option to restore it later if needed.

Preset Options

Changing the Preset

1. Stop your server

Go to the Console in your server dashboard and press Stop before making any changes.

2. Back up your current world

If you want to keep your current world, download a copy before continuing. This is especially important if you have built structures or made progress you don't want to lose.

You have two options:

• Keep your current world: Download it to your computer so you can upload it again later if needed.
• Start fresh: You can delete your current world or rename its folder so the server generates a new one.

Renaming the world folder is usually the safer option because it lets you keep the old world on your server while generating a new one.

3. Open server.properties

Open the File Manager in your server dashboard and find the server.properties file.

4. Change the world preset

Find the following line:

level-type=

Change it to one of the available presets. For example, to generate a world with larger biomes, use:

level-type=large_biomes

Make sure you use the correct preset name for your Minecraft version.

5. Choose how to handle your current world

Before starting the server again, decide what you want to do with your existing world.

• Keep the world: Download it as a backup and rename the existing world folder. This allows you to return to it later.
• Delete the world: If you no longer need it, you can delete the existing world folder. Make sure you have a backup first if you might want to recover it.
• Use a different world name: Change the level-name setting in server.properties to a new name. The server will generate a new world using that name, leaving the old world untouched.

For example:

level-name=NewWorld

This is a good option if you want to keep your old world and switch between worlds later.

6. Save and start your server

Save your changes and start the server again. Minecraft will generate a new world using the selected preset if the world specified by level-name does not already exist.

If you keep using an existing world, changing the preset alone will not change its terrain.

Important Considerations

• Backups: Always download or back up your current world before deleting or replacing it, especially if you have important builds.
• New World: The preset only affects newly generated worlds. Existing terrain will not change just because you update level-type.
• Keep or delete: You can rename your old world folder to keep it, download it to your computer, or delete it if you are sure you no longer need it.
• World name: Changing level-name lets the server generate a separate world without replacing the one you already have.
• Version Names: Older preset names, such as largebiomes, differ from newer names, such as large_biomes. Check which names your Minecraft version supports.

Conclusion

Changing level-type lets you generate a Minecraft world with different terrain, from flat landscapes to huge biomes and dramatic mountains.

Before making changes, back up your current world if you want to keep it. You can then choose whether to download it, rename it, or delete it to generate a fresh world with your new preset.

Similarly, if you are having any type of issue or problem with your server at MCServerHost you can always get in touch with us by joining our Discord server or writing to us at support@mcserverhost.com.

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