I know, every biome feels like it is rare when you can't find it, even plains and forests and oceans, but that isn't what this thread is about.
This is about the biomes that you will possibly PROBABLY never, ever see.
For example, the "Jungle M" biome, as of 13w37b, it is one of the rarest biomes.
I used AMIDST 3.2 to look at an area of over 50,000 by 25,000 meters, blacked out everything in a screenshot until I found a "Jungle M" biome, and then blacked the rest of the screen.
The image was nearly 1.6 megapixels, each pixel being the equivalent of a little under 31x31 meters.
There where only 634 pixels of "Jungle M" in the entire area, the closest to spawn was something like 8 km away for even a single pixel, and only around 1/9th of the rows of pixels had ANY of the biome at all.
This is enough to mean that to find any of this biome, one would have to wander straight through an average of 450,000 blocks.
Even with render distance on far, and a perfect eye for the biome, you still only see a 17-pixel tall blob around you, you still have to traverse an average of 200,000 blocks or so.
Now consider how rare, say, "Jungle Edge M" must be, I actually was unable to find it even by individually blackening every biome in GIMP, despite the fact that regular Jungle edge biomes do show up well-ish at that scale.
Yes, that means it is probably around 1/3200000 if that, and that means that stumbling into it requires untold amounts of wandering, certainly further than the far lands is/was away.
Here is the actual image before and after edits, anyway:
ALL biomes:
Only Jungle M:
Only Jungle Edge M:
Imagine a black screen, blacker than space, blacker than obsidian, blacker than coal, blacker than your pupils, solid black, color 000000 and not a pixel of anything else. 1.6 megapixels of pure dark black.
Yeah, I understand what you mean by this. But seeds are all unique in a weird way, and mods only make things weirder. For example,
"Biomes O' Plenty" is what makes these biomes come more harder to find. That's why I always search for the correct seed for any specific biome that fits my needs.
Yeah, I understand what you mean by this. But seeds are all unique in a weird way, and mods only make things weirder. For example,
"Biomes O' Plenty" is what makes these biomes come more harder to find. That's why I always search for the correct seed for any specific biome that fits my needs.
Seeds are only unique in where they spawn you, the world pretty much looks like the same colorful noise when viewing it 50,000 meters wide.
I would probably generate the same low Jungle M count on any world.
Also, to clarify, no mods are present, I am simply using snapshot 13w37b.
Oh, and to get your spawn to be in view of one of these biomes on far rendering, you would still need to try a not insignificant number of seeds. I'd say that there are probably around 5000-10000 pixels where one can see the biome, which means that 160-320 seeds would need to be tried to even have it be SOMEWHERE in your spawn-visible area, of course, you'd need more like 3000 seeds to spawn IN the biome.
Trying a new seed is basically like trying another random spot on an already existing map by teleporting randomly say 2000 blocks away. Still much faster than moving in-game so yeah "seed trying" is still the "best" way to find a specific rare biome.
But to get spawn near a Jungle Edge M biome by "exploring by trying lots of Seeds" that still means trying, what, 100 000 times?
However, those biomes are merely what I call "border-fitting" variants. i.e. they exist solely as a way to make the transition between two biomes seem a bit less abrupt. Those are not what I really call "original biomes".
Separate controls in Custom World for Biome size *and* Climate Zone size, would solve everything.
Normal worlds = Those settings at 0 and 0.
Large biomes = 2 and 2 (i.e. the value is an exponent power of 2, thus 2 means worlds that are 4 times bigger in all ways)
Given that climate zones are about 4 to 16 times as wide as biomes, if you want Large biomes but almost without climate zones, then you would put settings at 2 (Large biomes) and -2 (climate zones so tiny that they span about one large biome).
But honestly I think exploration is lacking. Biomes O Plenty, Biomes XL, Highlands, those mods give a good variety of biomes. Meanwhile *MOST* of the vanilla biomes are merely "almost the same" minor variations of the few same basic biomes.
IMHO, Highlands focuses a little bit too much on epic looks, which means that TONS of the biomes are very mountainousm, or forested biomes, or both, which are kinda from "somewhat harder" to "really hard" to travel through. They are interesting to see, but not as fun to visit, because you have to concentrate more on traveling properly through the difficult terrain, than on plain simple sight seeing, and overall you travel in these environments much slower too. They also make using horses a lot more painful lol.
IMHO a mod that would add not only more greatly different types of forested/mountaneous biomes, but also even more terrain that is both interesting to see but also "fun to visit" and still easy to travel through, would be welcome. Fantasy biomes ok too! But having that in vanilla without these new biomes being super duper rare, that would be absolutely priceless!
An example of biomes that would look drastically different, looking epic yet relatively easy to travel through, and spontaneously improvised in 10 minutes:
Spider Marsh
Relatively flat biome, with lots of rather largish ponds that tend to be isolated from each other, more or less overall forming a kind of imperfect "honeycomb pattern". Each pond is about 16 blocks wide (average), separated by about 16 blocks wide of land. Each of the ponds has a single giant "spider tree" more or less in it's middle, and has a few lillypads in it, along with a few 1x1 blocks of Grass spread here and three in the shallow pond, always with Blue Orchid on these. The wide flat ground between the ponds has lots of Tall Grass, some of it 2 high. There is a new plant: Poison Ivy. Poison Ivy is a 1 tall plant that is fully green like tall grass, and thus hard to see through all the tall grass. Touching it will slightly poison the player for a short time. If riding a horse, the player will be ok but the horse will get the poison instead. Breaking it drops the plant itself only when using Shears. There are also tiny patches of sand here and there, both on land and in the ponds. Many of these sand patches reach 1 taller than the ground around them. Sugar Cane can also be found, but not commonly.
The trees are the most unique feature: about 12 blocks high, they have long 1x1 branches extending like spider-arms in at least 4 directions, often all 6 directions, basically connecting every spider tree to most of its neighbours along the honeycomb pattern. Most of these branches sag a few blocks at the middle point between 2 spider trees. A few of these branches go down to the ground instead of reaching another tree. Basically, one can travel this biome along the ground, or along the leafed branches above the ground. Spider trees are basically Dark Oak trees, but with a thin trunk and branches for a very different canopy shape. The canopy is very thin, extending only 1 block away in all directions from the branches themselves. However, the leaves cover ALL of the wood logs, reaching even all the way to the bottom of the tree (even in the water of the pond).
Spider trees commonly have cobwebs affixed under their leaves, especially near the trunk. More rarely, there is a lot of cobwebs forming a 2-thick "spider nest" under all the branches around a Spider Tree. A new type of Spiders : White Spider. This is basically a white-textured spider, 8 Health, noticeably smaller than a Cave Spider but non-poisonous, with same movement, jumping, and drops, but that spawns inside cobwebs instead of on the ground (and do so only in the Spider Marsh biome). They can easily crawl through slab-sized holes. They also attack and aggro as a group (like zombie pigmen). However, they deal 1 less damage than normal spiders. Individually they are not much of a threat, but they spawn in larger groups, up to 6 at a time (instead of up to 4).
There is an uncommon-to rare natural structure in this biome : Menhirs. These are 8-16 tall and 4-5 wide solitary natural-looking pillars of Moss Stone, some in the ponds, others on the ground, seemingly placed randomly. Each pillar also has a single Chiseled Stone Brick somewhere on one of it's side, around mid-height. Witch Huts can also spawn in this biome.
World Tree Hill
A small sub-biome that often appear somewhere in Spider Marshes. World Tree Hill is a big round hill vaguely looking like a flattened hemisherical shape, aon average 160 blocks side and 30 blocks tall, with a single really humongous "world tree" at the top. This is based on a Birch Tree, but with a huge 5 wide trunk and a quite thin but absolutely gigantic more-or-less hemispherical shaped canopy, covering pretty much the entire area above the hill, and, at its center and highest point, reaching clearly above the clouds (remember that the hill is already high enough to reach nearly halfway there). There are several "layers" of branches all around the trunk, widely spaced.
Wide long roots surround the tree, and the remainder of the ground is filled mostly with Tall Grass, Lilac, Ferns and Bright Fiddlehead, a 2 high plant that looks like a much bigger version of real-life fiddlehead fern, but of a blonde color, and light emitting (at light level 10). Silk Touch Shears allows harvesting of this light-emitting plant (the full 2-high plant is harvested), otherwise it is broken without dropping anything (even using other Silk Touch tools). Using Bonemeal on it produces only a normal Fern item.
Somehere in the world tree canopy, atop a Birch Log block, and half hidden by leaves, there is a Druid (not always, though). This is basically a special Green Robed NPC Villager. Hostile mobs with max 20 health flee when they come near a Druid, and will not attack or aggro a Druid. Druids do not move, they will only turn towards nearby players. They have these trades that are linked to their magical link with nature. Notable trades are buying frm them: Bright Fiddlehead, Enchanted Golden Shears, and Monsterbane. Monsterbane is a 3 minutes long potion that makes hostile mobs flee the player instead of attacking him, but only as long as they are at full health. Even 1 point of environment damage makes them immune to the effect.
Under the world tree, taking a lot of space in and under the roundish hill, there is a great dark cavern. Apart from the fact that lots of hostile mobs naturally spawn in big open dark areas, and a few big stony stalagmites and stalagtites and stone pillars here and there (all made of normal stone blocks), there is nothing special there.
This is about the biomes that you will
possiblyPROBABLY never, ever see.For example, the "Jungle M" biome, as of 13w37b, it is one of the rarest biomes.
I used AMIDST 3.2 to look at an area of over 50,000 by 25,000 meters, blacked out everything in a screenshot until I found a "Jungle M" biome, and then blacked the rest of the screen.
The image was nearly 1.6 megapixels, each pixel being the equivalent of a little under 31x31 meters.
There where only 634 pixels of "Jungle M" in the entire area, the closest to spawn was something like 8 km away for even a single pixel, and only around 1/9th of the rows of pixels had ANY of the biome at all.
This is enough to mean that to find any of this biome, one would have to wander straight through an average of 450,000 blocks.
Even with render distance on far, and a perfect eye for the biome, you still only see a 17-pixel tall blob around you, you still have to traverse an average of 200,000 blocks or so.
Now consider how rare, say, "Jungle Edge M" must be, I actually was unable to find it even by individually blackening every biome in GIMP, despite the fact that regular Jungle edge biomes do show up well-ish at that scale.
Yes, that means it is probably around 1/3200000 if that, and that means that stumbling into it requires untold amounts of wandering, certainly further than the far lands is/was away.
Here is the actual image before and after edits, anyway:
ALL biomes:
Only Jungle M:
Only Jungle Edge M:
Imagine a black screen, blacker than space, blacker than obsidian, blacker than coal, blacker than your pupils, solid black, color 000000 and not a pixel of anything else. 1.6 megapixels of pure dark black.
"Biomes O' Plenty" is what makes these biomes come more harder to find. That's why I always search for the correct seed for any specific biome that fits my needs.
Seeds are only unique in where they spawn you, the world pretty much looks like the same colorful noise when viewing it 50,000 meters wide.
I would probably generate the same low Jungle M count on any world.
Also, to clarify, no mods are present, I am simply using snapshot 13w37b.
Oh, and to get your spawn to be in view of one of these biomes on far rendering, you would still need to try a not insignificant number of seeds. I'd say that there are probably around 5000-10000 pixels where one can see the biome, which means that 160-320 seeds would need to be tried to even have it be SOMEWHERE in your spawn-visible area, of course, you'd need more like 3000 seeds to spawn IN the biome.
Trying a new seed is basically like trying another random spot on an already existing map by teleporting randomly say 2000 blocks away. Still much faster than moving in-game so yeah "seed trying" is still the "best" way to find a specific rare biome.
But to get spawn near a Jungle Edge M biome by "exploring by trying lots of Seeds" that still means trying, what, 100 000 times?
However, those biomes are merely what I call "border-fitting" variants. i.e. they exist solely as a way to make the transition between two biomes seem a bit less abrupt. Those are not what I really call "original biomes".
Separate controls in Custom World for Biome size *and* Climate Zone size, would solve everything.
Normal worlds = Those settings at 0 and 0.
Large biomes = 2 and 2 (i.e. the value is an exponent power of 2, thus 2 means worlds that are 4 times bigger in all ways)
Given that climate zones are about 4 to 16 times as wide as biomes, if you want Large biomes but almost without climate zones, then you would put settings at 2 (Large biomes) and -2 (climate zones so tiny that they span about one large biome).
But honestly I think exploration is lacking. Biomes O Plenty, Biomes XL, Highlands, those mods give a good variety of biomes. Meanwhile *MOST* of the vanilla biomes are merely "almost the same" minor variations of the few same basic biomes.
IMHO, Highlands focuses a little bit too much on epic looks, which means that TONS of the biomes are very mountainousm, or forested biomes, or both, which are kinda from "somewhat harder" to "really hard" to travel through. They are interesting to see, but not as fun to visit, because you have to concentrate more on traveling properly through the difficult terrain, than on plain simple sight seeing, and overall you travel in these environments much slower too. They also make using horses a lot more painful lol.
IMHO a mod that would add not only more greatly different types of forested/mountaneous biomes, but also even more terrain that is both interesting to see but also "fun to visit" and still easy to travel through, would be welcome. Fantasy biomes ok too! But having that in vanilla without these new biomes being super duper rare, that would be absolutely priceless!
An example of biomes that would look drastically different, looking epic yet relatively easy to travel through, and spontaneously improvised in 10 minutes:
Spider Marsh
Relatively flat biome, with lots of rather largish ponds that tend to be isolated from each other, more or less overall forming a kind of imperfect "honeycomb pattern". Each pond is about 16 blocks wide (average), separated by about 16 blocks wide of land. Each of the ponds has a single giant "spider tree" more or less in it's middle, and has a few lillypads in it, along with a few 1x1 blocks of Grass spread here and three in the shallow pond, always with Blue Orchid on these. The wide flat ground between the ponds has lots of Tall Grass, some of it 2 high. There is a new plant: Poison Ivy. Poison Ivy is a 1 tall plant that is fully green like tall grass, and thus hard to see through all the tall grass. Touching it will slightly poison the player for a short time. If riding a horse, the player will be ok but the horse will get the poison instead. Breaking it drops the plant itself only when using Shears. There are also tiny patches of sand here and there, both on land and in the ponds. Many of these sand patches reach 1 taller than the ground around them. Sugar Cane can also be found, but not commonly.
The trees are the most unique feature: about 12 blocks high, they have long 1x1 branches extending like spider-arms in at least 4 directions, often all 6 directions, basically connecting every spider tree to most of its neighbours along the honeycomb pattern. Most of these branches sag a few blocks at the middle point between 2 spider trees. A few of these branches go down to the ground instead of reaching another tree. Basically, one can travel this biome along the ground, or along the leafed branches above the ground. Spider trees are basically Dark Oak trees, but with a thin trunk and branches for a very different canopy shape. The canopy is very thin, extending only 1 block away in all directions from the branches themselves. However, the leaves cover ALL of the wood logs, reaching even all the way to the bottom of the tree (even in the water of the pond).
Spider trees commonly have cobwebs affixed under their leaves, especially near the trunk. More rarely, there is a lot of cobwebs forming a 2-thick "spider nest" under all the branches around a Spider Tree. A new type of Spiders : White Spider. This is basically a white-textured spider, 8 Health, noticeably smaller than a Cave Spider but non-poisonous, with same movement, jumping, and drops, but that spawns inside cobwebs instead of on the ground (and do so only in the Spider Marsh biome). They can easily crawl through slab-sized holes. They also attack and aggro as a group (like zombie pigmen). However, they deal 1 less damage than normal spiders. Individually they are not much of a threat, but they spawn in larger groups, up to 6 at a time (instead of up to 4).
There is an uncommon-to rare natural structure in this biome : Menhirs. These are 8-16 tall and 4-5 wide solitary natural-looking pillars of Moss Stone, some in the ponds, others on the ground, seemingly placed randomly. Each pillar also has a single Chiseled Stone Brick somewhere on one of it's side, around mid-height. Witch Huts can also spawn in this biome.
World Tree Hill
A small sub-biome that often appear somewhere in Spider Marshes. World Tree Hill is a big round hill vaguely looking like a flattened hemisherical shape, aon average 160 blocks side and 30 blocks tall, with a single really humongous "world tree" at the top. This is based on a Birch Tree, but with a huge 5 wide trunk and a quite thin but absolutely gigantic more-or-less hemispherical shaped canopy, covering pretty much the entire area above the hill, and, at its center and highest point, reaching clearly above the clouds (remember that the hill is already high enough to reach nearly halfway there). There are several "layers" of branches all around the trunk, widely spaced.
Wide long roots surround the tree, and the remainder of the ground is filled mostly with Tall Grass, Lilac, Ferns and Bright Fiddlehead, a 2 high plant that looks like a much bigger version of real-life fiddlehead fern, but of a blonde color, and light emitting (at light level 10). Silk Touch Shears allows harvesting of this light-emitting plant (the full 2-high plant is harvested), otherwise it is broken without dropping anything (even using other Silk Touch tools). Using Bonemeal on it produces only a normal Fern item.
Somehere in the world tree canopy, atop a Birch Log block, and half hidden by leaves, there is a Druid (not always, though). This is basically a special Green Robed NPC Villager. Hostile mobs with max 20 health flee when they come near a Druid, and will not attack or aggro a Druid. Druids do not move, they will only turn towards nearby players. They have these trades that are linked to their magical link with nature. Notable trades are buying frm them: Bright Fiddlehead, Enchanted Golden Shears, and Monsterbane. Monsterbane is a 3 minutes long potion that makes hostile mobs flee the player instead of attacking him, but only as long as they are at full health. Even 1 point of environment damage makes them immune to the effect.
Under the world tree, taking a lot of space in and under the roundish hill, there is a great dark cavern. Apart from the fact that lots of hostile mobs naturally spawn in big open dark areas, and a few big stony stalagmites and stalagtites and stone pillars here and there (all made of normal stone blocks), there is nothing special there.