TL;DR: It's up to you.

Scenario: You want to start a Minecraft survival world. Not a Hardcore world, just a plain old survival world. What would qualify as "cheating" vs "advanced gameplay techniques"?

Is ____ cheating?

  • Changing the difficulty in-game
  • Using coordinates
  • Using Chunk Base
  • Using Ore Finder
  • Using X-Ray texture pack
  • Using a hacked client
  • Using duplication glitches
  • Using a sand duper
  • Killing the Wither using Bedrock
  • Abusing mob pathfinding mechanics for mob farms
  • Using a schematic mod
  • Using a bot mod to do tasks for you
  • Glitching onto the Nether roof
  • Boosting your Gamma setting to see in the dark
  • Changing your FOV
  • Changing your render distance
  • Using an auto clicker
  • Using creative mode
  • Using spectator mode
  • Changing the weather to clear
  • Seeing your world's seed
  • Opening the world to LAN and enabling cheats
  • Opening the world to LAN and having a friend help you
  • Using your own second account instead of a friend
  • Manually changing your world's NBT data
  • Using a set seed
  • World backups
  • Copy the world and open it in Creative mode

There's lots more.

And quite frankly how you choose to play a local world on your own computer is totally up to you. If you have fun playing Minecraft using a schematic mod, who am I to say that "that's technically cheating"?

My cheating threshold for Minecraft survival mode

This is written by someone who plays Minecraft for Windows

Mojang already has a guide for what is and isn't considered cheating in vanilla survival Minecraft: Are achievements enabled if you do that?

But that doesn't do enough for me. I don't like the idea that editing some NBT data is "not cheating because it didn't trigger the 'achievements disabled' screen".

Let's try this: "Anything that would disable achievements is cheating. No external tool may modify the running or saved game." For example DLL injection, memory editing, file editing, mods, alternative clients, etc. are all not allowed. That covers pretty much everything that I want it to.

  • ✅ Changing the difficulty in-game
  • ✅ Using coordinates
  • ✅ Using Chunk Base
  • ✅ Using Ore Finder
  • ✅ Using X-Ray texture pack
  • ❌ Using a hacked client
  • ✅ Using duplication glitches
  • ✅ Using a sand duper
  • ✅ Killing the Wither using Bedrock
  • ✅ Abusing mob pathfinding mechanics for mob farms
  • ❌ Using a schematic mod
  • ❌ Using a bot mod to do tasks for you
  • ✅ Glitching onto the Nether roof
  • ❌ Boosting your Gamma setting to see in the dark
  • ✅ Changing your FOV
  • ✅ Changing your render distance
  • ✅ Using an auto clicker
  • ❌ Using creative mode
  • ❌ Using spectator mode
  • ❌ Changing the weather to clear
  • ✅ Seeing your world's seed
  • ❌ Opening the world to LAN and enabling cheats
  • ✅ Opening the world to LAN and having a friend help you
  • ✅ Using your own second account instead of a friend
  • ❌ Manually changing your world's NBT data
  • ✅ Using a set seed
  • ✅ World backups
  • ✅ Copy the world and open it in Creative mode

Changing the difficulty back and forth to Peaceful is allowed?
It makes it easy to cheese mobs, yes, but it is a setting that you can change in survival mode. 🤷‍♀️

Why is using an X-Ray texture pack not considered cheating?
You're getting more ores for a cumbersome hassle. The effort you have to put into using X-Ray is similar to the effort of regular spelunking.

Why are Chunk Base and Ore Finder allowed?
Chunk Base is necessary to find slime chunks. Once you open it up to determining slime chunks you might as well open it up to allow any external tool.

Why are world backups & copies allowed?
Because there's a tradeoff: you lose all progress made since the save. This is survival mode, not hardcore mode so a death isn't as significant.

Why are glitches allowed?
They're there and you're going to encounter them even if you don't abuse them.

Wait, auto clickers are OK?
Yes. If you're able to have an auto clicker mouse you might as well be able to do that programmatically.