How to change the seed of your Minecraft server

• From a singleplayer world you like: open it and type /seed in the chat. Click the number to copy it.
• From a friend or a video: a seed is a number, sometimes a word. Words work too: Minecraft turns them into a number, and the same word always gives the same world.
• From your current server: type seed in the Console.

A seed gives the same land on the same Minecraft version. Big updates can change terrain generation, so a seed from a video made on an older version may look different on yours.

A seed that is great in singleplayer is not always great for a server, because every player starts at the same spot. Before you pick one, look at the land around spawn:

• Room to build near spawn: plains or a forest edge, rather than a steep mountain or an ocean.
• Several biomes within a few hundred blocks, so players can spread out without walking for half an hour.
• A village close by for early trading and beds on the first night.
• Ores and caves near spawn matter less on a server: a group explores in all directions anyway.

An online seed map shows a seed's biomes and structures before you use it. Type the seed and pick the same Minecraft version and edition as your server, or the map will not match.

1. Open the World tab of your server.
2. In the reset card, fill in Seed for the new world. Leave it empty for a random world.
3. Click Reset world and confirm. The panel takes a full backup, deletes the overworld, the Nether and the End, and starts the server with the new seed.
4. Watch the Console while the new world is generated. It takes about a minute.

Your plugins, their settings, the whitelist and your operators stay as they are. Only the world is replaced. Want the old world back? Restore the backup from the Backups tab, as in back up and restore your server.

The Reset tab in the menu is something else: it wipes the whole server, plugins and settings included. For a new seed you only need the World tab.

Doing it yourself is useful when you want to keep the old world folder on the server, or add a data pack before the new world is made.

1. Stop the server.
2. In Files, open server.properties and set level-seed= to your seed, for example level-seed=8675309.
3. Rename the world folder, the name in level-name, which is usually world. Call it world-old, for example. On Paper and Purpur also rename world_nether and world_the_end if you see them.
4. Start the server. It finds no world under that name and generates a new one from your seed.

Changing level-seed without removing the world does nothing. The world keeps the seed it was created with, which is saved inside the world folder.

An old world folder takes up disk space. Download it, or delete it once you are sure you will not need it again.

Renaming the world folder instead of deleting it means you can go back at any time. Two details make that work:

• On Paper and Purpur the Nether and the End live next to the overworld in their own folders, named after level-name: world_nether and world_the_end. Rename all three the same way, such as world-old, world-old_nether and world-old_the_end, so they stay a set.
• To go back, stop the server, set level-name=world-old in server.properties and start again. The new world waits in its own folder.

Want both worlds online at the same time? The Multiverse-Core plugin loads an extra world next to the main one, and players move between them with a command or a portal.

A Bedrock server keeps its worlds in the worlds folder, one folder per world, and loads the one named in level-name.

1. Stop the server.
2. In Files, open server.properties and set level-seed= to your seed.
3. Change level-name to a new name, such as Season 2. The old world folder stays in worlds under its old name.
4. Start the server. It finds no world with the new name and generates one from your seed.

Two more settings shape a new world. Both are in Settings under Server settings, and like the seed they only apply to land generated after the change.

• World type (level-type): normal, flat, large biomes, amplified, or a single biome.
• Generate structures: villages, temples, strongholds and the rest. Switched off, the world is bare land.

A data pack can change world generation as well. To have it in the new world from the first chunk, use the way by hand above and put the pack in place before the first start; install datapacks shows where it goes.

A seed and a world type work together, so the same seed gives a different world when the type changes:

So a seed found in a video only gives that world on the normal type and on the same Minecraft version.

• Stand where the spawn should be and type /setworldspawn.
• Pre-generate the area players will use, so exploring does not cause lag: pre-generate your world.
• Set a world border if the map should have a fixed size, for example worldborder set 10000.

A new seed does not have to cost your best builds. With the WorldEdit plugin you save them as schematics before the reset and paste them in the new world.

1. Install WorldEdit from the Plugins tab and restart.
2. Stand at one corner of the build and type //pos1, then at the opposite corner, top or bottom included, and type //pos2.
3. Stand where you want the paste point to be and type //copy, then //schem save townhall with a name of your choice.
4. Reset the world with the new seed. Schematics are kept in plugins/WorldEdit/schematics, which the reset leaves alone.
5. In the new world, stand where the build should go and type //schem load townhall and then //paste.

Paste on flat ground or clear the spot first with WorldEdit, and use //undo straight away if it lands in the wrong place.