Minecraft tips: Never lose your resources after respawning; Check item despawning time (2024)

If you are new to Minecraft, nothing is more important than protecting your resources, which sometimes can take days to gather and craft. But with tons of items to collect and progressing through the game in mind, it is not always easy to play it safe. On top of that, the game has its own challenges in hostile mobs, damages for falling, stepping on lava or drowning deep in water which can lead to your death. And for a new player, the worst time is to survive the night when the frequency of hostile mobs increases significantly. But once you die, you lose all your items and have to go back to your location of death to collect them back. But this is where the despawning mechanics of the game become important. If you want to never lose items in the game, follow these Minecraft tips.

Minecraft tips: What are the item despawn times

To elaborate upon the problem, once you die, you lose all your items at the spot of your dying. Although you do respawn back, it takes you back to the last bed you slept in, which is your spawn point. Now, if you have been exploring, that point would be quite far from the location where you dropped all your items. While you can get your items back, there is a time limit to it which is called the item despawning time. So, let us learn about it more.

First, there are some criteria to be met for the despawn timer to come into effect. If the chunk in which the item is dropped is not loaded, then the item will stay there forever. However, once the chunk and the items inside of it loads, you have a timer of 5 minutes to retrieve the items or lose them forever.

Now, you can use the trick to get near the death chunk and then unload it so that the timer resets. This way, you can have infinite time to get your items back. The only exception to this is lava, where if the player dies by burning, all the items also burn instantly and you cannot access them again.

Sometimes, it can be difficult to locate the exact death location. Minecraft has added a recovery compass to the game which can help you pinpoint your death spot and retrieve your items safely.