parameters — --chaos, --weird and --seed
Controlling variety: --chaos, --weird and --seed
Chaos spreads your results apart, weird pushes them somewhere unusual, and seed tries to hold them still. The first two are dials; the third comes with more caveats than most people expect.
Every prompt returns four images, and how different those four are from each other is itself a setting. Two parameters widen the spread in different directions, and a third tries to eliminate it.
| Parameter | Alias | Range | Default | What it varies |
|---|---|---|---|---|
--chaos | --c | 0–100 | 0 | how unlike each other the four results are |
--weird | --w | 0–3000 | 0 | how unconventional they are |
--seed | — | 0–4294967295 | random | the starting noise — pinning it reduces variation |
--chaos — spread
Called Variety on the Midjourney website and --chaos in the prompt. At the default of 0 the four images are four takes on the same idea. Raise it and they diverge.
a cloud bus stop at dusk --chaos 20
- 0four variations on one interpretation
- 20–40visibly different compositions
- 100four different ideas, loosely related to the prompt
The trade is explicit: higher chaos means the results stick less closely to your prompt. That makes it an exploration tool rather than a quality setting — a way to find out what a prompt could mean before committing to one reading of it. Once you have found the one you want, drop chaos back down.
--weird — strangeness
Where chaos spreads results apart, weird moves all of them somewhere unusual. It asks the model to take creative risks — offbeat compositions, unexpected treatments — rather than simply to disagree with itself.
The range goes to 3000, which is deceptive: this is an experimental feature, and Midjourney says outright that what counts as "weird" may change over time. Small values are the useful territory — single digits do real work. Here is one on a real prompt:
liminal space, dreamcore aesthetic, a single bed with white sheets sitting on a small grassy island, lush green grass, surrounded by endless soft white clouds, bright blue sky, natural daylight, dreamlike atmosphere, empty and quiet, soft natural lighting, vivid natural color palette with green, blue and white tones, slightly surreal and nostalgic mood, analog film grain, retro faded quality, eerie stillness, no people, wide empty composition --ar 16:9 --chaos 5 --weird 8 --profile vietqfw --hd
--seed — the starting noise
A seed is the random noise the image grows out of — Midjourney's own comparison is the static on an untuned television. Fix it and you fix that starting point; leave it out and a new one is drawn every run.
a single rose in a water glass --seed 599225575
The reason to use one is experimental control. With the seed pinned, you change one word of the prompt and the difference you see is attributable to that word rather than to a fresh roll of the dice. A real prompt carrying one, alongside the chaos value it was being tested against:
A minimalist editorial macro photograph of a single deep antique green flower viewed from the back, isolated against a sepia-toned dark background. The rose fills most of the frame, with muted olive green petals featuring subtle charcoal gradients and delicate, aged texture. Distressed sepals and a weathered stem visible at the bottom. Soft, diffused warm studio lighting with gentle shadows, preserving the velvety petal texture. High contrast between the flower and the background. A distinct analog quality: heavy film grain, de-saturated colors, and a scanned print aesthetic. A luxury fashion campaign meets conceptual still life, inspired by archival botanical documentation, contemporary fashion branding, and minimalist art direction. Ultra-clean centered composition, museum-quality editorial photography. --ar 9:16 --v 8.1 --chaos 20 --sref 1671181938 --profile 93jppib --hd --seed 599225575
Four things a seed is not
| Belief | Reality |
|---|---|
| A seed saves a style | it cannot bookmark a style, character or appearance. For that, use style references, omni references or personalization |
| A seed guarantees the same image | it has the least influence of any factor — prompt, version and small parameter changes all override it |
| A seed works next week | seeds may stop behaving as expected across sessions. Assume it degrades |
| A seed works everywhere | not in Turbo mode, where speed optimisations make seed locking unreliable |
On V8.x, Midjourney describes seeded results as 99% identical rather than identical — which is the honest number and also the reason to treat a seed as a research instrument rather than a save file.
Finding the seed of an image you already made
On the web, open the image, use the options button near the prompt, then Copy → Seed. In Discord, react to the finished grid with the plain envelope ✉️ emoji and the bot sends the number by direct message.
A note on --repeat
--repeat (alias --r) runs the same prompt several times in one go. It is not a variety control in itself, but it pairs with the two above: with chaos raised, repeat is how you generate a wide field of options quickly, and combined with --sref random every run in the batch gets a different style code — the fastest style browse Midjourney offers.
The prompts in the collection record these parameters as written, so you can see the values people actually settled on rather than the ends of the ranges.