Hardcore Mode

Hardcore Mode is the highest difficulty level a player can choose in Minecraft.

Features

“Hardcore” only differs from “Hard” difficulty in that it cannot be changed to another difficulty while playing in the world. There is no bonus chest, and cheats are not allowed (unless if one uses an NBT Editor). When a player dies, the "game over" screen offers a button to delete the world, instead of the respawn and title menu buttons which appear in other gamemodes. However, since the Combat Update, another button is available, allowing a player to enter Spectator Mode when they die, so they can explore the world one last time. Technically, the saved world file still exists until the "Delete World" button is pressed, allowing a player to switch between apps and save the world with third-party tools. Closing the client and loading the world again only reloads the game at the "game over" screen.

Hardcore is also available in Multiplayer, but if a player dies, he/she cannot connect to the server again. Instead, a player will see a message stating: "You're banned from this server".

Trivia

• It is possible to permanently enable cheats in Hardcore Mode only by using an external tool like NBTExplorer
  • This means you can escape death limits by doing /gamemode <gamemode>. However, if a player dies, the mode is reset.