What is a Eerie Noise in Minecraft?

Sooner or later, we all heard some creepy noises while mining underground or while exploring caves. There is in fact a group of sounds that can be heard in dark places and that, if you have the subtitles turned ON, will show the name Eerie noise.

But when does it occur? And what does it imply? We are here today to answer these and more questions about the Eerie noise in Minecraft.

minecraft eerie noise
Do we hear Eerie Noises when there are threats close to us?

How to turn on subtitles

If you want to know if a sound that you are hearing is a Eerie noise, you will need to turn ON the subtitles.

Subtitles were introduced in Minecraft Java 1.9 version for deaf people so that they could read when there is, for example, a Creeper hissing behind them, water flowing somewhere near, or other events that come with a specific sound.

To turn ON the subtitles you need to go to the Option menu, then Music& Sounds. Once there set to ON the Show Subtitles bar.

minecraft subtitles

Now the subtitles will appear in the right bottom corner of the screen. In the following screenshot you can see how they are indicating the footsteps sound.

minecraft subtitles box

What is Eerie noise?

Eerie noise is an ambient sound effect that is played wherever there is a dark place. They are also known as Cave ambience and Cave sounds, since you will hear them in caves 90% of the times.

In fact, Eerie noises are produced by blocks of air with a light level of 8 or below and no sky exposition. This means that you can hear them everywhere as long as these requirements are met by a single block of air close to you (close to you=16 blocks or less away from you), since ambient sounds can be heard through solid walls. The only exception is the Nether, where you can’t hear Eerie noises (related topic: What to do when you can’t find Nether Fortresses).

More dark air blocks around you will mean more chances that one of them will emit those sounds. This doesn’t mean that you will hear Eerie sounds all the time in a cave. In fact their frequency has to follow the Mood algorithm:

updateMood(mood):
tickDelay = 6000
maxLightLevel = 15
block = select a random block in a 17×17×17 block cube centered around the player
skyLight = block.getSkyLightLevel()
if (skyLight > 0):
mood = mood - (skyLight / maxLightLevel) * 0.015
else:
blockLight = block.getBlockLightLevel()
mood = mood - (blockLight - 1) / tickDelay
if (mood ≥ 1.0):
player.playSpookySound()
mood = 0.0
else if (mood < 0):
mood = 0.0

To put it simply, you will hear Eerie noises when your “mood” reaches a level of 100. After that, the mood will be set back at 0. The more time you spend in dark places, the more your mood will grow. And of course, if you spend time in illuminated places your mood will decrease.


All the Eerie noises

The code name for Eerie noises is ambient.cave. There are 19 different cave ambience sounds in total, you can hear them all in the following video.


Conclusions

Hearing those sounds while exploring a cave can be quite scary, but as we saw there is nothing to worry about. Eerie noises are just soundsthat Mojang put there to make us feel more the fear of exploring a dark place, a touch that helps to feel more immersed in the game.
Thank you very much for reading the article this far and I hope I’ll see you again around here. See you and take care!