Hardcore Spawn

Hardcore spawn (HCS) is a feature which causes the player to respawn in a random location after death, rather than respawning at the world's original spawn.

Mechanics

When the player dies, upon respawning they will appear in a random location within a large area around the world's original spawn. In singleplayer, this will reset the time to morning and will stop any ongoing weather effects.

This will generally require the player to survive long enough to get a compass to find their way back to spawn.

Frequent Respawns

Respawning multiple times within 10 minutes of the initial respawn will cause the player to appear within the same general area of the initial respawn. Each subsequent respawn within this time will decrease the amount of health and hunger that the player spawns with.

Ranges

The minimum range of hardcore spawn is always 1000 blocks. As progression milestones are reached in the world, the maximum range will increase.

Progression milestone	Maximum range
Pre-nether	2000 blocks
Post-nether	3000 blocks
Post-wither	4000 blocks
Post-end	5000 blocks

Mitigation

A steel beacon will allow the player to bind themselves to it, and if they die within the beacon's range then they will respawn at the beacon.

In multiplayer, there are a couple ways to help with hardcore spawn. Before accessing the nether, if a player dies, then any other players who die within 20 minutes will respawn at the same location. After accessing the nether this no longer functions. However, Pile of Soul Sand may be used. Within 20 minutes of the player's death, someone may right click while holding a pile of soul sand. This will consume the pile and spawn a cloud of particles, which will drift towards their respawn location.

Large Biomes

Large biomes increases all respawn radii by 4 times in order to match the biome size increase offered by the world type.

Trivia

Note about the more technical details between the seemingly non-random placement of spawns.