players can play survival mode in four levels of difficulty: peaceful, easy, normal and hard. as the difficulty increases, the more damage monsters deal. in addition, certain mobs will gain certain abilities at higher difficulty levels. when a player creates a new world, the difficulty is set to normal by default. on peaceful difficulty, no monsters spawn, and the only way players can die is by deaths that aren't from mobs, such as falling from a high place, being in fire or lava, drowning, suffocating inside a block, or falling into the void.