Around the Block: Stony Shore

If you’ve spent any time on Minecraft’s glorious coasts, you’ll have noticed that there’s a huge diversity of landscapes. In some places, there are broad sandy beaches – the kind you might relax on with a pina colada. In colder spots, there are gravelly, snowy beaches. But today we’re visiting a third option – the stony shore.

Stony shores are relatively uncommon, and form in areas where mountainous terrain meets the sea. They’re easily identifiable from the large cliffs they generate, sometimes with water or lava cascading down into the sea below. Be careful wandering around them, because the steep drops can be fatal.

You’ll find many of the same flora and fauna in this biome as you do on a regular beach, with the exception of turtles, which prefer a more sandy environment. That means bats, glow squid, and – at night – the usual dangers of spiders, zombies, skeletons, creepers, Endermen and witches – maybe even a few of those pesky phantoms if you’ve ignored sleeping again. If you’re exploring at sea level, beware of drowned wandering in from nearby ocean biomes too.

But there are resources worth collecting amongst these barren cliffs. As well as plenty of water, sand, sandstone, and dirt, you’ll also be able to collect gravel, clay, and sugar cane. What’s more, in Bedrock edition you’ll sometimes come across a hoard of buried treasure.

In the real world, cliffs are a common feature along coastlines – formed over time as rough seas and roaring storms smash against an area of high ground. Most cliffs are close to vertical, but there’s no firm definition of exactly how vertical the slope needs to be before it counts as a cliff.

Some famous cliffs on Earth include the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland, Cape Point and Table Mountain in South Africa, Troll Wall in Norway, the Qingshui Cliff in Taiwan, Ra’s Sajir in Oman, and the White Cliffs of Dover in the UK.

The world’s tallest sea cliff is the Thumbnail, part of Maujit Qaqarssuasia in southern Greenland, which drops 1,560 meters near-vertically into the ocean. But even taller cliffs can be found below sea level – including the astounding 8,000m drop down inside the Kermadec trench. 

All of these pale in comparison, however, to Verona Rupes – 20,000 meter cliff spotted by the Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1986 on Miranda, a moon of Uranus. Given the low gravity on Miranda, if you jumped off the top then it would take a full 12 minutes to hit the bottom. Plenty of time to consider what a terrible idea that was!