We're all exicted by the 13w36 snapshots and all the new biomes, but I'm sure those of you who decided to search for the new biomes discovered that some of them are extremely rare. Roofed Forest and Savanah are actually fairly common, but Mega Taiga, Ice Spikes, Mesa and Jungle are rare to the point of ridiculousness. Jungle isn't even a new biome, but it's worth noting on this list because it has been made about as rare as the other 3. I believe that the fact that there are 4 of these rare biomes is linked to the 4 meta-biomes (biome categories) Jeb posted on https://mojang.com/2...erator-update/:
Snow-covered - Ice Spikes
Cold - Mega Taiga
Medium - Jungle
Dry/Warm - Mesa
While I understand that these are the rarest biomes in each meta-biome for a reason, they are far too rare in my opinion. I've performed tests exploring thousands upon thousands of blocks in creative and I've never found a Mega Taiga or Mesa on a random seed. If they take hours of exploring to find on creative mode (with full use of cheats e.g. teleportation), they're virtually impossible to find on survival. I'd be fine if these biomes were, say, half as common as other biomes, but it seems as if they are much more rare than that and I'd preffer than these biomes become even more common than that. Jungle in particular can be seen as a Minecraft version of rainforest, which covered almost 1/7th of the earths surface prior to deforestation; so it hardly seems proper to to make it spawn over less than 1/30th of Minecraft worlds, as the case is from my experience.
Minecraft YouTuber (DroidFreak36), and admin of the FreakCraft server (whitelisted, available to Minecraft YouTubers), now with an FTB version running a custom modpack called 'MuricaCraft (Where we aim to exploit the natural environment as much as possible, all in good fun of course).
Ive seen a TON of forests and roofed forests, but after flying around over 20 worlds I never have seen a ice spike (Without seeds) or a jungle. Heck. I haven't seen any of them with the exception of Ice spike and Mesa with seeds.
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Since melons can now generate in Jungles, I'd be fine with them being a bit more rare than usual. But not impossible to find. But everything else needs to be more common.
I've actually found all three inputting random strings of numbers as seeds.
But I understand. They're new, look cool, so naturally people would want them to be fairly common. Think back to 1.0 and mushroom biomes.
I'm actually GLAD jungles are rarer now. They were such a great dissapointment in my opinion, and they don't fit the snapshot generation (neither does ice mountains--but there is the ice plains and ice spikes).
No support.
But if you really want the biomes:
Ice spikes:-78127462765 (follow the taiga)
Mesa: 512472515452 (-706, 69, -1746)
Mega Taiga+Jungle:-1236
I've actually found all three inputting random strings of numbers as seeds.
But I understand. They're new, look cool, so naturally people would want them to be fairly common. Think back to 1.0 and mushroom biomes.
Mushroom biomes are a different story, a large part of the reason they were added was to make something that was extremely rare. And I woudn't mind if they were made more common too.
The point of these new biomes, and I quote Jeb's post on mojang.com, is to adress the problem of "Not enough variation." If they're too rare to reasonably find on survival mode, they're not acomplishing their stated purpose of adding variation. To add variation they should be not only possibly to find in survival but also likely to be stumbled across if exploring far enough.
As to you being able to find them by searching through seeds, I have two questions for you:
1) How many seeds did you have to search through to find these?
and
2) Have you ever found a seed where all four are near within 2000 blocks of spawn?
I expect the answers are 1) A lot and 2) No, that's virtually impossible. I won't be happy until you can find these biomes by searching a reasonable distance (Not necisarilly under 2000 blocks, that's just an example) in every single seed. I'm from the school of thought that thinks it should be possible to do everything on a single, randomly generated world. Sure, you can find a seed where you spawn in one of these biomes, but it won't be random and you probably won't be able to find the other 3 without searching a long ways.
I'm actually GLAD jungles are rarer now. They were such a great dissapointment in my opinion, and they don't fit the snapshot generation (neither does ice mountains--but there is the ice plains and ice spikes).
Since melons can now generate in Jungles, I'd be fine with them being a bit more rare than usual. But not impossible to find. But everything else needs to be more common.
RE jungles, I tend to find one eventually in 1.6 worlds. For the availability of cocoa I would say they need to be fairly common now there are lots of other biome IDs jostling for 'airtime'.
NOOOOO!!!!!!!!, NOT THE JUNGLES!!!, seriously though, don't make those cursed things more common, 90% of my worlds start inside a massive jungle surrounded by ocean....
I'm not saying jungles should be as common as they are in 1.2-1.6, I just want them to be more common than they are now. Like I said in the OP, I'd be content if they were 2x as rare as other biomes. In 1.2-1.6 I think they might even be more common than other biomes. I think the fact that they've become this rare is a response to all the complaints about jungles being too common and too hard to navigate, but think they went too far by making them as rare as they are in 13w36a/b. And I personally like jungles.
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Minecraft YouTuber (DroidFreak36), and admin of the FreakCraft server (whitelisted, available to Minecraft YouTubers), now with an FTB version running a custom modpack called 'MuricaCraft (Where we aim to exploit the natural environment as much as possible, all in good fun of course).
As to you being able to find them by searching through seeds, I have two questions for you:
1) How many seeds did you have to search through to find these?
and
2) Have you ever found a seed where all four are near within 2000 blocks of spawn?
1)Those were three out of six seeds. The only really rare biome seems to be Mesa (hence the coords), and Ice Spiks is actually extremely common in tundra areas. Mega Taiga is neither overly common or overly rare, but they are HUGE in size, and jungles seem to spawn next to these "medium" biomes like Ex Hills and Taiga.
2) Of course not, but that's what Mojang is trying to avoid with the new generation. Sorry, but if you want lots of biomes, you'll have to travel
edit: Read your post again, and I think Jeb meant "variation" as applied to the world at large. As of now, biomes are a mix-and-mash of large islands, with ocean being predominant. With the snapshot, (0,0) is different from (100,100) which is different from (1000,1000) which is different from (100000,100000), biome-wise (as a bonus, none of these coords were smack in the middle of the ocean in the seed that I tested). So there is more overall variation.
1)Those were three out of six seeds. The only really rare biome seems to be Mesa (hence the coords), and Ice Spiks is actually extremely common in tundra areas. Mega Taiga is neither overly common or overly rare, but they are HUGE in size, and jungles seem to spawn next to these "medium" biomes like Ex Hills and Taiga.
Well, if you've only explored 6 seeds and haven't gone far from spawn chances are you just got incredibly lucky. In my experience ice spikes may be common relative to the others but certainly not compared with the average biome. I have yet to find a Mega Taiga in the wild, and as mentioned I've explored a massive area, so I think I'm justified in saying they're quite uncommon. And it's not just Mega Taiga that's huge in 1.7, all biomes are huge. I'ts rather a pain when you're trying to explore. It's like Mojang is ignoring the existence of the large biomes option and forcing us all to have large biomes. I don't think Taiga is a medium biome, I think it's a cold one. I mean, that's basically what "taiga" means in terms of real-life biomes. And what else is more qualified to be a cold biome when the snow-covered ones are ruled out? If you happened to find a taiga next to a jungle it was probably on a meta-biome border. Ex. hills on the other hand is probably also medium, so it would make sense to be next to jungle.
2) Of course not, but that's what Mojang is trying to avoid with the new generation. Sorry, but if you want lots of biomes, you'll have to travel
I'm not compaining about having to travel, I'm complaining about having to travel a ridiculous distance. A 2000 block radius (square, because this is MC), my example distance, equates to about 4 fully explored maps on the maximum size. While this is doable, it is difficult, and I feel there should at least be a decent chance of finding all main biome types (with the exception of mushroom) in that area. If the biomes are much rarer than that then it simply won't be very practical to explore for them unless you have an inordinate amount of time to waste.
edit: Read your post again, and I think Jeb meant "variation" as applied to the world at large. As of now, biomes are a mix-and-mash of large islands, with ocean being predominant. With the snapshot, (0,0) is different from (100,100) which is different from (1000,1000) which is different from (100000,100000), biome-wise (as a bonus, none of these coords were smack in the middle of the ocean in the seed that I tested). So there is more overall variation.
The part about making ocean less rare was one of Jeb's other points, not the meaning of this point. My impression is that these are supposed to be biomes that can be found in survival mode without the need to dedicate an entire Let's Play to finding them. You've got to admit that the mushroom biome doesn't add variation to maps, it's simply an interesting goal to strive for or an extremely lucky find. These biomes are approaching that level of rarity, maybe not in actuality but in functionality - the point where you're probably not going to find them unless you search long and hard.
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Minecraft YouTuber (DroidFreak36), and admin of the FreakCraft server (whitelisted, available to Minecraft YouTubers), now with an FTB version running a custom modpack called 'MuricaCraft (Where we aim to exploit the natural environment as much as possible, all in good fun of course).
Snow-covered - Ice Spikes
Cold - Mega Taiga
Medium - Jungle
Dry/Warm - Mesa
While I understand that these are the rarest biomes in each meta-biome for a reason, they are far too rare in my opinion. I've performed tests exploring thousands upon thousands of blocks in creative and I've never found a Mega Taiga or Mesa on a random seed. If they take hours of exploring to find on creative mode (with full use of cheats e.g. teleportation), they're virtually impossible to find on survival. I'd be fine if these biomes were, say, half as common as other biomes, but it seems as if they are much more rare than that and I'd preffer than these biomes become even more common than that. Jungle in particular can be seen as a Minecraft version of rainforest, which covered almost 1/7th of the earths surface prior to deforestation; so it hardly seems proper to to make it spawn over less than 1/30th of Minecraft worlds, as the case is from my experience.
But I understand. They're new, look cool, so naturally people would want them to be fairly common. Think back to 1.0 and mushroom biomes.
I'm actually GLAD jungles are rarer now. They were such a great dissapointment in my opinion, and they don't fit the snapshot generation (neither does ice mountains--but there is the ice plains and ice spikes).
No support.
But if you really want the biomes:
Ice spikes:-78127462765 (follow the taiga)
Mesa: 512472515452 (-706, 69, -1746)
Mega Taiga+Jungle:-1236
Putting the CENDENT back in transcendent!
Mushroom biomes are a different story, a large part of the reason they were added was to make something that was extremely rare. And I woudn't mind if they were made more common too.
The point of these new biomes, and I quote Jeb's post on mojang.com, is to adress the problem of "Not enough variation." If they're too rare to reasonably find on survival mode, they're not acomplishing their stated purpose of adding variation. To add variation they should be not only possibly to find in survival but also likely to be stumbled across if exploring far enough.
As to you being able to find them by searching through seeds, I have two questions for you:
1) How many seeds did you have to search through to find these?
and
2) Have you ever found a seed where all four are near within 2000 blocks of spawn?
I expect the answers are 1) A lot and 2) No, that's virtually impossible. I won't be happy until you can find these biomes by searching a reasonable distance (Not necisarilly under 2000 blocks, that's just an example) in every single seed. I'm from the school of thought that thinks it should be possible to do everything on a single, randomly generated world. Sure, you can find a seed where you spawn in one of these biomes, but it won't be random and you probably won't be able to find the other 3 without searching a long ways.
I'm not saying jungles should be as common as they are in 1.2-1.6, I just want them to be more common than they are now. Like I said in the OP, I'd be content if they were 2x as rare as other biomes. In 1.2-1.6 I think they might even be more common than other biomes. I think the fact that they've become this rare is a response to all the complaints about jungles being too common and too hard to navigate, but think they went too far by making them as rare as they are in 13w36a/b. And I personally like jungles.
1)Those were three out of six seeds. The only really rare biome seems to be Mesa (hence the coords), and Ice Spiks is actually extremely common in tundra areas. Mega Taiga is neither overly common or overly rare, but they are HUGE in size, and jungles seem to spawn next to these "medium" biomes like Ex Hills and Taiga.
2) Of course not, but that's what Mojang is trying to avoid with the new generation. Sorry, but if you want lots of biomes, you'll have to travel
edit: Read your post again, and I think Jeb meant "variation" as applied to the world at large. As of now, biomes are a mix-and-mash of large islands, with ocean being predominant. With the snapshot, (0,0) is different from (100,100) which is different from (1000,1000) which is different from (100000,100000), biome-wise (as a bonus, none of these coords were smack in the middle of the ocean in the seed that I tested). So there is more overall variation.
Also one more reason to travel in the nether
Putting the CENDENT back in transcendent!
Well, if you've only explored 6 seeds and haven't gone far from spawn chances are you just got incredibly lucky. In my experience ice spikes may be common relative to the others but certainly not compared with the average biome. I have yet to find a Mega Taiga in the wild, and as mentioned I've explored a massive area, so I think I'm justified in saying they're quite uncommon. And it's not just Mega Taiga that's huge in 1.7, all biomes are huge. I'ts rather a pain when you're trying to explore. It's like Mojang is ignoring the existence of the large biomes option and forcing us all to have large biomes. I don't think Taiga is a medium biome, I think it's a cold one. I mean, that's basically what "taiga" means in terms of real-life biomes. And what else is more qualified to be a cold biome when the snow-covered ones are ruled out? If you happened to find a taiga next to a jungle it was probably on a meta-biome border. Ex. hills on the other hand is probably also medium, so it would make sense to be next to jungle.
I'm not compaining about having to travel, I'm complaining about having to travel a ridiculous distance. A 2000 block radius (square, because this is MC), my example distance, equates to about 4 fully explored maps on the maximum size. While this is doable, it is difficult, and I feel there should at least be a decent chance of finding all main biome types (with the exception of mushroom) in that area. If the biomes are much rarer than that then it simply won't be very practical to explore for them unless you have an inordinate amount of time to waste.
The part about making ocean less rare was one of Jeb's other points, not the meaning of this point. My impression is that these are supposed to be biomes that can be found in survival mode without the need to dedicate an entire Let's Play to finding them. You've got to admit that the mushroom biome doesn't add variation to maps, it's simply an interesting goal to strive for or an extremely lucky find. These biomes are approaching that level of rarity, maybe not in actuality but in functionality - the point where you're probably not going to find them unless you search long and hard.