How to Change Difficulty on Your Minecraft Server

Switch between Peaceful, Easy, Normal, and Hard on your Minecraft Java server via console or server.properties.

Minecraft has four difficulty levels that affect mob behavior, hunger, and damage taken.

Change Difficulty

In the XGamingServer Panel, click Console in the sidebar.

difficulty peaceful
difficulty easy
difficulty normal
difficulty hard

The change takes effect immediately — no restart needed.

Click Files in the sidebar and open server.properties.

difficulty=normal

Level	Hostile Mobs	Hunger	Special
`peaceful`	None spawn — existing despawn	No hunger drain	Health regenerates constantly
`easy`	Spawn with low damage	Drains slowly	Can't starve below 5 hearts
`normal`	Spawn with standard damage	Standard drain	Can starve to half a heart
`hard`	Spawn with maximum damage	Fast drain	Can starve to death. Zombies break wooden doors

For permadeath gameplay, enable Hardcore mode in addition to setting difficulty to hard. See Hardcore Mode.

To prevent players from changing difficulty in their own world settings, set:

difficulty=hard

In single-player worlds, players can override server difficulty. On dedicated servers, the server's setting always wins.