When I tried to build a mob farm up in the sky above deep frozen ocean biome, I realized that skeletons or strays are not spawning in the farm or in any caves. Strays also spawn only at the surface level, not in the mob farm or in the cave.
How to reproduce:
Create a creative world
Teleport to deep frozen ocean biome
Create a simple mob farm with a roof for cave spawn, or explore caves
We should be able to see that no skeleton or stray spawn in any caves or any spawn platform above the ground level (There is also no skeleton spawning for surface spawn)
Expected result:
Skeletons should spawn in any biome except mushroom island, the same way as other hostile mobs.
I also attached the images in this issue as well. The first two images are the mob spawn as surface spawn. We can notice that no skeletons or stray spawns on the platform. The third image shows the cave spawn under the roof. We can see that no skeletons or stray spawns inside the cave.
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GoldenHelmet
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I am having this issue in a mob farm I build at a high elevation (Y=197) over a frozen mountain top (in version 1.19.24. I tried a 1.18 world in beta that was almost as high (about 190) over an ocean, and the spawn rate for skeletons is just as it was in version 1.18.
What this report describes is exactly the way the vanilla spawn_rules\skeleton.json and spawn_rules\stray.json are written, and spawning in frozen biomes has been like this at least since spawning became data-driven and probably since Bedrock Edition was created (see MCPE-17651). So, this would seem to be working as intended.
In frozen biomes, strays spawn instead of skeletons. 20% of strays then convert to normal skeletons.
Strays only attempt to spawn on the surface, not underground.
In frozen oceans, strays only attempt to spawn from Y = 60 to Y = 66.
These spawning mechanics are used by some players to make more efficient creeper farms in frozen biomes where there is one less mob competing with creepers for spawn attempts underground. So, even though a general mob farm made in the sky in a frozen ocean will not produce bones and arrows, you can make a more efficient and productive gunpowder farm.