Once again I'm just going to head right back out. I refill my lunchbox, head up to the airship - sadly on the wrong tower, the one still with the spiral staircase, so I have to go roundandroundandroundandroundandIamgettingdizzyohfinallythereisthedoor.
And I'm off. Wow, this is mid-fall? This looks like late fall or even winter. I'm tempted to check my Seasonal Clock, but that's not practical. I wish the Serene Season seasons were adjustable.
Here's the area I'm planning to explore. There are mountains on the west and especially in the southwest, which is why I'm using the airship. I'm going to fly to the northeast corner, head west along the north edge, pick up the small strip on the next map north, and then fly along the west and the south edges to map out the mountain areas. Then, I guess I'll fly on the east edge back to the corner, get out of the airship, and explore the rest on foot. That's more airship exploration of flatland terrain than I'd like, because it's too easy and doesn't generate as much story, but I have to get to the far corner and back, and I don't dislike it enough to waste exploration passes.
Soon enough I'm where I want to start. This is the birch forest where I almost suffocated last episode. Bad memories.
I retry a trick I've managed on the ground but not in the air - go back and forth across the line dividing the maps so I map both sides. I couldn't make it work before, but this time I manage to pull it off.
This I could have done on the ground. These daunting mountains are just past the little strip on the north map. I've already done those by airship - appropriately.
I turn south along the west edge and discover that this is not nearly as mountainous as expected. My struggles with this mountain range in Episodes 91 and 92 actually mapped most of the range, and the rest I could have done from the edge of the range.
Night falls and I sleep on the airship. My bed must have really good insulation given that I'm exposed at altitude.
In the southwest corner, though, I do find unexplored mountains I really wouldn't want to do on the ground. You can see the slope to my left is an unclimable 2:1 or even 3:1 rise ratio. I could get one valley, but getting to the next would be a pain.
At the south side of the map I stick my nose over to the next map to make sure I've already mapped everything. Do not want to have to come back! And I have; everything is fine.
The village is the Byzantine village I saw in Episode 92.
Then back to mountain mapping. I have to make two passes to get it all.
Then over to the east side of the area, to head up to find a spot to park the airship. This is another region I wish I'd mapped on the ground - finding that big clearing in the middle of the Dark Forest would have allowed me to map something that initially would have looked like a problem due to its size.
It's pretty from up here; can't argue with that.
Approaching the north east corner again - I've now done an almost complete circuit of the region - I spot a good place to set down, next to a vanilla village.
I trade my map knowledge with the locals to harvest some of the seasonal crops like carrots and potatoes I basically can't grow because I'm always exploring now in the seasons they grow.
It's very late in the day, so I spend the night in the village, trading stories with the locals over simple peasant food.
I seem to have drunk too much because although I slept in the church steeple I wake up *outside*. Or, since this is the second time in the past few episodes I've had a weird awakening (the other was almost suffocating inside a tree), maybe I got cursed by a witch or something?
Then on with exploring, starting with the rest of this swamp.
Continuing west, I spot a river heading roughly my way through an open area scattered with enormous old trees.
A vanilla lighting bug - with nothing above it! How does it mess up this badly?
After a while the river turns south and I get out to stay next to previously explored areas and keep my explorations semi-systematic. There's a huge herd of horses here, which reminds me I have to get around to taming a horse.
I pass into the cathedral forest you can see ahead.
There's a little bit of Flower Forest (on the right) before I pass into a section of Taiga with some impressive big trees.
A little bit to finish off in the corner, and then it looks like I'll be ready to finish off the rest of the map.
Next episode: more on the ground.
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Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
I saw darkness with nothing overhead once too in RTG. I think I even showed it somewhere. It was over a lake, and I think it may have been on a chunk border?
As I turn south for my next mapping pass, I spot a Millenaire building in the distance. A little paranoid after the latest bandit incident, I approach with swords drawn.
But it's just a Norman village. I pass on by - which I shouldn't have, because I might have been able to sell my extra arrows.
There's Dark Forest next to it, but an unusually thin one. I work on mapping it from the outside.
I get an occasional scare from ominous looking canines, which I'm concerned might be Timber Wolves, but they're all innocuous foxes. (innocuous for me, if not for chickens.)
There's a lot of Plains in the area, which allows some great views. The mixed-tree forest looks particularly resplendent in mid-fall colors. Good timing too, as shortly afterwards a video refresh informs me the season has changed to late fall, with browner and less vivid colors.
I cross over a small hill and then come to another mix of Plains and various forests, including Dark. I walk the perimeter of the Dark Forest, and my first spawn comes out of it - a zombie, easily dispatched.
Night is falling and since I'm right near a Dark Forest I pillar up for safety. This also affords a great sunset view. Something about sunset and autumn really go together.
In the morning I boat the lake you can see on the left.
The south end of it extends into a snowy zone, with Cold Taiga. In the distance you can see the mountains - fortunately already mapped.
I don't know if it's me, or having a little time off IRL, or the fall season, but the scenery on this map seems especially spectacular.
In the foothills of the mountains I come across a village. I head over to collect crops and share stories.
But I find only death.
Every door in the village is busted - even ones that wouldn't be reachable from the ground (thanks, lousy vanilla building placement!)
Every villager is a zombie. Most are trapped inside buildings by vanilla construction goofs - although there may have been more that came out and burned. I don't think a village could be wiped out that thoroughly just by me passing by, so I'm thinking this must have spawned as a ruined village. Although, I thought that was a modern Minecraft thing, not 1.12?
Now I'm heading east along the south edge, and after a little bit more Cold Taiga, I find yet another area mixing Plains and Dark Forest. I've seen very little of this in the continent and now it's all over this map. Yet again I suspect something off about the RNG, but I think it's actually a good thing. Adds local flavor.
A thin clearing going deep into the forest allows a lot of mapping, and then I get this river with Plains on both sides going through the forest to the east.
The river turns north sooner than I'd like. I jump out and map the south side of the forest, and then take the river through hoping it's close enough to the east edge.
But it's not. So, I have to go around to the back of the forest to get that little unmapped strip.
The backside is mostly Taigaish, with this nice mountain lake. But I still need to go into the Dark Forest a bit to map everything and - I do. I'm not sure what's come over me. I don't have any trouble, though.
Night is falling again, and I come across this particularly spectacular view of a Forest Hills subbiome at sunset as I'm looking for a place to sleep. I decide to pillar up into the leaf canopy to sleep.
Next morning, rather than going all the way to the top of the map, I turn west, and then south, and then west again. The reason for this complex path is that the airship is near the upper right corner of the map, and I want to end my explorations near there. So the upper right area I'd normally head into now I reserve for last.
I get one last overlook onto the Cold Taiga, and then turn north for my last pass.
There's some Dark Forest in the way, and I just - walk through it? Not the whole forest, but a way in from the edge. I swear I haven't been drinking.
North of that is some oak Forest, with this big cavern room opening up to the forest floor. I spot some iron at the bottom, but not a conventient way to get down, so I just continue on.
This has some more big tree cathedral forest. I don't think I'll ever get tired of seeing this. Although - pretty as it is, I probably *would* if it weren't for RTG's forest variety features.
And then yet another spectacular view as I turn east to finish the last bit of mapping. What is it about this area? It's partly the big trees, but dang, there's just so much nice to see here.
The area is a little too wide for one pass, so I'm going back and forth a bit, but I'm getting it done.
As I'm approaching the village in the NE and where the airship is, I come across swamp (an extension of the swamp near the village) with a witch hut. Initially I plan to go in and kill the witch, but when I get close I see it's out in the water so I'd have to bridge out there or something and - heh, not feeling it. You get to live til another day, witchy-poo.
I reach my airship, and the village. I drop in to relate the sad fate of the village in the mountain foothills, then board my airship to leave. This map is done, and surprisingly easily, especially considering how much Dark Forest I saw.
Next episode: Mission creep.
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Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
Episode 100: And Now for Something Completely Not Different
Wow, Episode 100 already? Time for a special episode! There's just one teeny weensy problem:
I don't have any ideas.
Much like the last time I got to my 100th episode, I have been playing along, and at my 98th episode realized I'm almost there and don't have anything planned. But this time I don't even have any big projects to pull out, because this is a very focused journal, basically on one experiment; is RTG plus, with Geographicraft, interesting enough to make a massive large continent interesting to explore, without adding in the biome mods I always felt compelled to add before?
Well, I guess the principle holds. I'm not done, but there's been enough to see to get me to 100 episodes, and I guess that's pretty darn good.
Back in the game, I had planned a big expedition to fill out about 2/3 of a large map. I figured it would take about 3 episodes, about the typical length of my expeditions, but it went pretty fast, and here I am done with my goals after only 2 episodes.
Well, I was whining a few episodes back about having skipped some stuff on the next map west, so why don't I use this episode to go fill it in?
So I head west.
First I go through the big swamp that inspired me to to a riverboating expedition, and then I spot the Tinker's island I forget to check for Purple slimes. Hey, no time like the present!
Nope, just more Blue slimes I don't need.
You'll probably notice the moon has risen. But in the airship, I don't much care, so I keep going.
I forgot to take a map pic, but the situation is that I know there's a mountain range vaguely north-south, on the eastern part of the map (the map 1 below the lower Pantheon map). My plan, since I have the airship, is to explore the range by airship, then land, and explore the remaining part on this side of the range on foot. I think that will be the last of the mountain ranges at the southern end of the continent, and my last expedtion can be on foot.
Of course, first I've got to *get* to the mountain range, and it's a ways from the west side of the map where I started.
Finally I see the range. I didn't need the airship for this...
But I do want it for this.
And then it starts snowing. But now I get one of the big advantages of night exploration:
I can sleep anytime. So I slam on the brakes, slam down my bed, slam my head on the pillow and the next thing I know it's dawn - and dry.
I'm on the coast, heading west, and I reach the other side of the range. But the range heads NE, and I want to get it all done on this expedition so I can finish the south coast without using the airship. So NE I go.
I head NE through a lot of cool terrain - but you've seen a lot like this already, so I won't show too much of it.
I pass onto the next map west, and the range just keeps going.
Finally, about halfway across that next map, I reach the hot zone which dominates that map, the one on the SE corner of the continent. The range continues, but it's Mesa, and I don't think I need the airship for that. So I turn back.
I turn a wee bit too slowly, as I leave a little unexplored strip I have to go back and cover.
After I finish that I go back along the west side of the mountains.
The two passes should have mapped enough of the mountain range. One of the peaks is on the edge, but I think I can get it from the foothills outside. I have been able to look to make sure I'll be able to finish; because of the short range of mapping I had a decent idea of the terrain for some distance out.
Then I fly up and land in the swamp. I have a plan; I'll map out the area west of me on foot, ending up back at the airship, then as I fly back to the Pantheon I'll get the little area to the east.
But I hit a complication: I spot a witch's hut. And beneath it stands the witch, regarding me with her baleful eye. Both baleful eyes, actually, which is worse. I pull out my crossbow -
And she runs for it.
I don't want to give her the chance to come up behind me so I hunt her through the brush. She's hiding well, though, and I just can't find her.
Finally. Ka-CHUNK and she's gone.
I head up to the top of the unexplored region, planning a pass to the east along the top. It works for a bit but then I hit two complication in quick order.
First, a nasty ravine.
And just behind it, Dark Forest. The Dark Forest extends far enough out that to map up to the edge I'll have to go into it a bit. So I do. It works for a while. But then a skeleton gets a bead on me. I rush it, using my sword, because I want to reserve my loaded crossbow for Creepers.
My first blow misses.
But my second connects, and then the third kills it. But now *another* skeleton starts shooting me, and I can't see it. So I run for the clearing to the side, and turn around to look for it. I don't see it, but I *do* see a Creeper so I pull out my crossbow and get a little closer so I can get a good shot through the thick trees.
But right as I'm about to take a shot, another Creeper materializes in front of me! I have no idea how - it's far too close to me to spawn. Lagged movement, maybe? I quickly adjust my aim and shoot, but the crossbow hit - usually fatal - fails to kill and the Creeper starts its countdown with a hiss.
I dive for cover, taking minimal damage. But you can see it's almost sunset; certainly NOT the time to get into a complicated fight in Dark Forest trees with a Creeper plus a Skeleton I can't locate.
So I pillar up to sleep.
A zombie comes out into the clearing to add to the fun. But I'm high enough to be safe, so I just go to sleep. I'll deal with this in the morning.
Next episode: Finding solutions.
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RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
It seems the abandoned villages were added in 1.10. Apparently, they have a 2% chance to occur in Java, and around a quarter (!?) of a chance to occur in Bedrock.
For some reason, I always thought it was something like 10% in one of the versions, but I never knew. 2% for Java seems right now that I read it though, since that's 1 in 50 villages, and they certainly don't seem anywhere near as common as 1 in 10. I don't know how many villages I found in my hardcore world, but it was certainly way more than ten (like, many dozens at least), and only recall one that was an abandoned village for sure. There might have been another I'm not remembering, but it was possibly as low as one (maybe two or three?) despite all the villages I've found. They're pretty rare in Java, and I think they should be. If it's really every 1 in 4 in bedrock, that seems really high to me. I knew it was higher than in Java but I was thinking 10% for some reason, as even that is high.
I wish sleeping didn't end ongoing precipitation. Maybe thunderstorms, but not rain/snow.
1 in 50 seems plausible to me; I've seen enough villages in my 1.12 worlds than 10% is probably too much. 25% seems high, but considering the incompetence of villages dealing with zombies, you could argue it's ecologically plausible.
We're on the same page for precipitation. Basically they made precipitation a punishment for not sleeping (also from having the start less likely after you wake) and that's just silly.
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RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
Well, at least the precipitation timer doesn't reset to 0 when sleeping, which is an improvement, but it's still odd that it clears rain if it's already ongoing.
Or rather, let me expand on that. It's odd that it always clears it. If there was a system where if you go to sleep when it's raining, there's a chance of it continuing of stopping, would be nice. The inverse would be nice, too, where if you go to sleep on a clear day, and could wake up to a rainy morning.
I think the best way to implement that would be to keep the current underlying system, but if it's raining when you sleep, make it a 50% (or whatever chance) that it will stop raining come morning, and 50% chance that it will continue raining.
That same 50% chance to possibly start raining if sleeping during a clear day might seem too high though (since in reality, it often precipitates far less than not), so maybe something like a 10% (?) chance to start raining when you sleep if it is currently clear would work.
I think something like that would feel more natural and add variety.
I need to go into the Dark Forest at least some to get my map finished, but I had altogether way too much trouble on the ground. In the morning, once the zombies burn off,
I go for the treetops.
Unlike on the ground, it's pretty uneventful up here, although I have to be careful. I potshot one Creeper through a hole in the canopy; mostly for spite although there is a tiny chance I might fall through.
It turns out that I need to go a substantial distance into the Dark Forest to finish the map; so I pretty much had to do this unless I went and got my airship.
Ooh, fall through into a cave in Dark Forest? That would be fun.
When I get to the edge I face the issue of how to get down. I *could* just jump with my Feather Falling boots, but that seems tacky. But chopping down isn't promising, and I forgot to refill my bucket so:
I do just jump down.
I seem to be in a clearing, but the lake there (on the next map west) provides a way out. Per policy, I start walking the perimeter.
The clearing connects to *another* clearing, with a village. For once, this is a pretty ordinary village - not a haunted monstrosity, and not overrun with villagers of one type. Although, it *is* surrounded by haunted forest, so not *all* that ordinary.
This maze of Dark Forest and clearing goes on quite a ways. Just walking perimeters, I end up on the next map west. As mentioned, my plan was to explore everything up to the mountain range there, which I mapped last episode. But a wilder plan is starting to emerge.
I return to the lake I saw earlier, and this time I boat it out.
That takes me to the next map north. I'm here and it's connected to what I'm mapping so... why not just go head and map out this corner?
First is the Taiga you see, and then some mixed Oak and Birch Forest. It starts to rain, but only *after* I reach the regular Forest, so at least for the moment I don't have to worry about snowing on the Taiga. But then:
Whoa. That's pretty dark for just rain. I'm not seeing any lightning or hearing thunder, but I pull out my bed and try to sleep - and succeed! This is a thunderstorm. And indeed the lightning starts as I'm falling asleep. It's like a nightlight!
That was lucky, because now I don't have to worry about snow when I go south back through the Taiga.
By the time I reach the bottom of the map, finishing the corner, I'm almost to the spot where I was forced to cross a mountain range in episode 53 because it was running off the map and I didn't have any more blank maps (on the other side of that mountain there). Ironically it looks like that was *just* before the range ended so I could have powered around it. No way to know that at the time, though.
Back on the map to the south, I resume filling it out up to the mountain range. I figure my last pass will be on the open strip. But my wild idea is growing in my head. Maybe I can do
More? Before I head back, I go back on to that map to the north, to fill in the section south of the mapping pass I made back in Episode 53.
Initially it's primarily Forest, both Oak and Birch, with a fair amount of clearings and hills sprinkled in.
But then I find some Jungle, as I start passing into the influence of one of the Hot zones that dominate the SE corner of the continent.
I can hear those of you who are following this more closely thinking "hey, though, that section you're just doing is connected to the map below, the most SE map of the continent with meaningful land. It really only makes sense to map this if you "
Are also planning to map the area below. And sorry for finishing your sentence (I know many think it rude) but that's my big idea. As long as I'm here, I'll finish mapping all of the southern end of the continent. Every last bit. That'll save me a trip, at the cost of making this now-to-be-very-long expedition more difficult to follow.
I'm deep into one of the SE hot zones. I see a Savanna village to my south, but I don't have any business with them right now, so I turn west, along the top of the map, through this desert.
On the other side is more Savanna, and one of the big rock formations that impressed me in Episode 52.
I reach the coast and turn back to fill in the gap between what I just explored and a bay to my south, through this Savanna, with an Extreme Hill that somehow intruded into the hot zone in the distance.
I spend the night in a Savanna tree and then in the morning reach this scenic lake with a view of the Savanna village I ignored the day before. The Extreme Hills is here because this is the edge of the hot zone; you can see the temperate forests in the distance there.
This time I check out the village; but there's nothing remarkable there.
Then I head south past the mountain; actually the end of the mountain range I mapped from the air last episode. Ahead is Mesa terrain; "mountain" according the Geographicraft generation rules, but, as I figured last episode, not so much in terms of exploration difficulties. But I've never tested it on the ground; so let's go see if I'm correct!
Next episode: Experimental results.
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RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
Well, at least the precipitation timer doesn't reset to 0 when sleeping, which is an improvement, but it's still odd that it clears rain if it's already ongoing.
Feels like something done for the streamers/youtubers which had lots of problems with rain with codecs in the past, as most of them had to use commands to get rid of rain. I would very much like turning this into a gamerule (stop raining after sleep True|False) so I can set it into a survival game without enabling commands.
As DoFireTick which I set to false because if I'm within jungle range and there's a lightning or a pool of lava, my notebook screams with lots of CPU spikes (the screaming is from the fans, of course).
Feels like something done for the streamers/youtubers which had lots of problems with rain with codecs in the past, as most of them had to use commands to get rid of rain. I would very much like turning this into a gamerule (stop raining after sleep True|False) so I can set it into a survival game without enabling commands.
That would be... an interesting reason if it were so. Sometimes there's certainly obscure reasons to things, but I would have had the impression that in this case, it's just like that because Minecraft never expanded on what was a functioning and "good enough" system here. I can only speculate though.
I round the last mountain of the Extreme Hills and head into a Mesa zone.
I soon pass this interesting slot canyon formed by a river, which I'm pretty sure is the same one I admired from the outside in Episode 88.
This is a pretty big Mesa region - the largest I've seen from the ground in this world. I *could* climb up to the tops, but I'll try to map it from the canyons.
I almost manage the first big mesa but I miss a few dots and have to backtrack along the coast to get them. Experimental result: only mildly inconvenient to map from the ground.
From there I'm a ways from fresh exploration, plus I'd have to wend back through the canyon.
So, instead, I boat across to the peninsula to the south of me because boating is faster than walking.
I map the Savanna, which crosses the peninsula, and then continue east, out further on the peninsula, to get the desert further out. I stick my nose on to the next map to make sure I have everything, and I do.
But now, again, I'm a ways from unexplored areas.
So, again, for speed, I boat back towards the base of the peninsula.
First is some more Savanna, and then some Jungle
With what looks like a Mayan Millenaire village. It turns out to be surprisingly difficult to *find* it in the jungle, but eventually I do. I sell a bit of Dark Oak, just to clear out my inventory, and then sleep in the village for the night.
Past the jungle is some Mesa, but too small for any plateaus, and then multiple climates. I'm staying along the coast for now so I head left into the Desert.
That goes on a ways, and then I find this river network feeding into a swamp,
This connects to some Birch Forests and Plains, from a warm climate region, as I turn south to another peninsula going in that direction.
On the peninsula is a Byzantine village in a great setting, but as a starting village, they don't have anything to trade.
There's a whole series of quests and assistance you can provide to these Millenaire villages and I kind of wish I'd done them, but the scope of the explorations in this journal precluded the considerable time and effort they require. Maybe in my next journal.
Approaching the tip of the peninsula I pass through an extremely open Forest with very scattered trees. When exploring on this scale, having biomes vary really makes things nicer. I'm also appreciating how Serene Seasons is helping with that, as biomes look so different between the various seasons.
Once again at the tip I stick my nose on to the next map to make sure it's done, and once again it is - it's only a tiny extension anyway; the map is almost entirely water.
For the third time in this episode I need to take my boat to get back to where I want to explore. My rough plan now is to go east, fill in the center leaving roughly enough width for two passes next to the mountain, then make a pass SW, and then a final pass NE right against the mountains as I set out for home.
Initially it's more temperate terrain like on the last peninsula. This is heading inland, and the Minecraft climate system favors temperate zones more towards the interior.
Not quite done with the hot zones yet, though.
Come nightfall I pillar up and enjoy a sunset over the dunes.
Next morning I finish off the Mesa area.
Then I turn back SW. This is part of my plan to make a pass SW and then one last one back NE to finish this map. I'm back in a warm area now, with swamp, and pick up a few more sugarcane.
But now I hit a complication.
There's Dark Forest where I'd need to make the SW pass so that the remaining area is small enough to pick up in one last NE pass. I take the right fork of this river, but it takes me back to where I slept last night - even further away.
I find a clearing which requires only a short run through the Dark Forest to reach, and it helps, but it still doesn't get me far enough.
I continue SW on the edge of the Dark Forest, into this Oak Forest and then Taiga, but the Dark Forest still blocks where I want to go.
Near sunset, I finally get around the end of the Dark Forest. It's definitely messed up my 2 pass plan. I start looking at the map and trying to figure solutions. But soon I have a worse problem.
A screen refresh informs me it's now winter - you might notice the grass is more drab as well - and snow can fall in any terrain other than hot zones. I've completely blown my timing. I thought I'd get this done before winter and I didn't. Now I'm thousands of blocks from my airship, with bad weather impending and a substantial portion of mapping still undone. What a mess.
Next episode: The Woes of Winter.
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RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
I was only able to speculate, being unfamiliar with the finer timings of seasons, but based on the rate of change you've shown since starting the world, I had the feeling from the start that the amount of terrain you were attempting to finish before Winter was quite ambitious.
It was very ambitious in comparison to my overall rate of exploration in this world. But I've picked up the pace recently since I'm largely done with climbing tech ladders. Better Forests is also encouraging me to speed up, because I want to play in that and experience it - but I want the goal for this world *done* before I do that. So in comparison to what I've been doing in the past 2 in-game years, it wasn't crazy, just a miscalculation.
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
So here I am with an uncompleted exploration expedition, thousands of blocks as the foot walks from where I left my airship, in turn thousands of blocks from my nearest base, and in winter, when at any time snowfall can mess up my maps. Great.
At least the scenery is nice.
My plan had been two last passes parallel to the NE/SW mountain range I mapped in Episode 100. I'm at the end of the SW pass, but I ended up with too wide a region for my NE final pass. Well, before I deal with that, I'm near the east edge of the map, and I need to stick my nose over and make sure it's finished near here.
And it's not. Great. One MORE complication, even if a minor one.
I manage to get it all mapped by walking the edge of the lake, and then I pillar up to sleep to this pretty, if pretty cold, sunset.
Next morning I head back west on to the previous map, to start this last pass. You can see it's definitely winter - I'm in Plains, a fully temperate biome, and the water is freezing.
And now one MORE annoyance. For several episodes I've been seeing mostly larger-tree forests, but now I find myself in a shrub forest. It's good for variety, but why did it have to be now? It slows me down with physical obstacles, and makes it harder to see and plan - now, when I'm in a hurry. Plus the views aren't as good, and that doesn't help my already foul humor.
I shift to Taiga, but it's shrub forest too so not any better. This river would be nice - if it went in the right direction. But it doesn't.
As I expected, the strip is too wide for one pass, so I'm having to go back and forth. It slows me considerably, as I have to watch for missing dots. And then yet ANOTHER complication -
An arm of the Dark Forest blocks my way. To get around it, I have to climb onto the mountainside. I'm going to miss some mapping on the right side. After a while, thankfully, I find a clearing leading back in that direction and head in to see if I can finish the map.
WHOMP! With all these complications and frustrations, and feeling rushed, I'm not paying attention properly, and fall into a (fortunately not deep) ravine. I pillar back up and resume.
At least the clearing let me map all of that Dark Forest extension I was just dealing with. Back to heading NE. At least I'm making progress.
Next is some swamp, and *another* ravine, but I'm more on alert and don't fall in. It's still an obstruction though.
in the swamp I get lamprey'd, and then as if I'm not dealing with enough already:
NOOOO!!! It starts snowing. I'm still having to go back and forth to finish mapping the too-wide strip, and I'm slowed further by the swamp. I need to go really fast to keep snow off the map, and this is definitely going to mess up my map. And it's just past noon, so I can't sleep any time soon, and I'm not next to a hot or snowy zone I could hang out in where the snow won't cause trouble.
But there really is *nothing* I can do about this, so I have to just struggle onward. The snow is pretty to look at and if I weren't dealing with mapping issues I'd enjoy looking at it and the change of scenery. But that's like saying if my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a bicycle.
Finally I'm done with the mapping pass - or, really pass and a half. And I'm close to the big Mesa area, where it doesn't snow. So I dash over. But it's still several minutes to sunset, so I need to find something to do.
So I climb up to the top of one of the mesas. I have to pillar up many times due to a jump larger than 1 block high, but I make it. I still have to wait a bit for this sunset view. Then, finally, I can sleep away the snow (which is still strange, but that's the rules.)
Now I start wrapping around the mountain range, as planned, to pick up all the areas I'd left.
I get that area at the top of the map, and then take this pass towards the next. I should have gone around the range to the north, but all these problems were interfering with my judgement. But when I get to that next area, it's got - Dark Forest.
And a greeting party. I crossbow this one. I try to go around
But I just can't do it. Once again, I could probably get it from the other side - but it looks like the other side is on another map, so I can't map this area from there. But just at the very end.
I find a narrow band of Dark Forest which I can go through to get to the village I spotted in Episode 101. And from here I can finish the mapping.
Naturally Minecraft responds to this success by starting to snow. No fair! I just had to deal with this yesterday!
Between where I am to where I want to map is some Dark Forest. If I wait in the village everything nearby will get snowed in. It's a *long* way around, and going through is pretty risky, so I decide (quickly)
To go to the treetops.
But stress, hurry, and a bit of disorientation combine.
And I fall through.
Next episode: Escape (I hope)
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I catch a small break in that when I fall through the Dark Forest roof I've gotten most of the way through the forest, and there's nothing waiting for me on the floor.
I sprint to this lake where Sunflowers incongruously pretend to face the absent sun. Sadly, it's still snowing.
A quick check back confirms nothing is following me.
On the lake I'm fast enough to avoid snow accumulating to the point of showing up on the map. But on the other side is some mountain foothills to map, and I'm not fast enough on *that*. Snow is building up fast.
By the time I'm done and can dash across the lake - to *another* hill, sigh - one area is almost completely white on the map.
And then *finally* it's sunset, and I can sleep.
I awaken to a mess - but at least I'm done mapping this area.
Now I just have to find my airship. Which I cleverly left in a large swamp. Without a landmark. Oh, and I can only see it from a few chunks away. I get to the swamp and start looking around. But, man, it *is* a big swamp. I do a lot of looking.
I find the witch hut - fortunately the witchless hut at the moment - which is helpful because I saw it shortly after leaving the airship, and I know I was going roughly NW.
Even with that additional information, it takes some looking, but I do eventually find it.
Then I fly around in the swamp a bit to get that last area.
And I'm done! This was the last map. I mapped the entire southern coastal area, in less than a game year - although since I finished in Winter, I guess I have to admit I needed overtime.
So now, back to the Pantheon for the big picture.
I take a slight detour to get another strip mapped on the lower Pantheon map.
That's a cute little mountain lake.
But as I approach the Pantheon:
It start snowing AGAIN. Third day in a row! I have to put my map aside and navigate by dead reckoning - pretty good now since I've come this way multiple times now.
At the Pantheon I park above the yard, converting the airship so I can root through the chest. But then, I realize I'm going to get snow on the roof and resulting trouble like in Episode 54. So I reassemble, descend to the ground, and dismount leaving the airship assembled (so snow won't stick to the roof.)
There's already so snow up in the air from where it was disassembled, and I try to pillar up to destroy it. But the game interprets my right-clicking to place blocks as right-clicking on the airship, and puts me back in it. I just give up and leave it for later.
And now, the big picture:
The continent is coming along quickly now. And that area with inappropriate snow is not really noticeable on this scale. The South and the West are entirely done. There are still some areas left east of the Pantheon, but collectively they're probably smaller than what I just did on this last extended expedition.
But they're going to wait a bit, because my plan now is to winter at the chateau, and then, next Spring, go *north* to finish the entire coastline of the continent. (Wow, that's really on the agenda now.) Then I'll decide how to fill in the remaining areas and finish off the continent.
Now, it's time to head to the chateau for the winter. Fortunately, it's sunset, so I can sleep off the snow. Then I grab all the paper and sugarcane I've collected, and hop into the airship.
Already pretty solidly snowed in right around the Pantheon.
After I get some distance, though, there's no snow (other than in snowy biomes), and I can take out my map to get a strip of this area on the upper Pantheon map.
It's a mountain overlooking a forest; nice to look at.
After that, it's just a routine trip back to the chateau.
I approach the chateau from the Jungle, which is a first. But as I'm landing:
It starts to snow. FOUR days in a row! I'm sick of this! I have to leave the airship assembled on the roof so snow won't accumulate on the top and prevent it from moving.
And then down into the chateau for winter
Next episod: getting organized
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I like the look of mid Autumn, but I'm not so sure about Winter. It looks out of place with the leaves present. It would look better without leaves, but... how do you accomplish that in Minecraft? Just deleting all the leaves doesn't seem too graceful, and how do you bring therm back? Bedrock just turns the leaves White, but I'm not sure I like that approach either (at least not for spruce trees). Leaveless trees besides the Green of spruce trees is how Winter would feel right.
Seasons is one of those things I think the game would have had to be set up for from the start. It'd be hard to implement now without causing disruptions. Having formal cold zones existing on their own might just be the best stand-in for "Winter".
I notice a similar thing on your map that I did with my world; formal cold zones seem to be more common than formal hot zones? Ar at least, using desert and mesa as the definition for a hot zone, it appears that way, but I'm not sure how much of that snowy area is mountains. Most of them look too big and spread to be that.
I'm sort of surprised you're not finishing the empty areas to the East before doing the North, but maybe I'm too used to finishing a map before moving onto the next.
at least, using desert and mesa as the definition for a hot zone, it appears that way
The game defines "hot" as containing Desert, Savanna, and Plains, along with Mesa; the initial distribution of biomes looks like this:
private Biome[] warmBiomes = new Biome[] {Biomes.DESERT, Biomes.DESERT, Biomes.DESERT, Biomes.SAVANNA, Biomes.SAVANNA, Biomes.PLAINS};
private final Biome[] mediumBiomes = new Biome[] {Biomes.FOREST, Biomes.ROOFED_FOREST, Biomes.EXTREME_HILLS, Biomes.PLAINS, Biomes.BIRCH_FOREST, Biomes.SWAMPLAND};
private final Biome[] coldBiomes = new Biome[] {Biomes.FOREST, Biomes.EXTREME_HILLS, Biomes.TAIGA, Biomes.PLAINS};
private final Biome[] iceBiomes = new Biome[] {Biomes.ICE_PLAINS, Biomes.ICE_PLAINS, Biomes.ICE_PLAINS, Biomes.COLD_TAIGA};
Biomes are chosen from each list, one per climate zone, at random with equal probability so this means that half of "hot" climates will initially be Desert, a third will be Savanna, and a sixth will be Plains (which is also "medium" and "cool" so Plains by itself isn't really indicative of "hot", and in fact, leans more towards "cool" where it is 1/4 of biomes, while having its temperature set to the warmer side). Larger areas (multiple "biome units") may be converted to Mesa (or Jungle for "medium" and Mega Taiga for "cool") and smaller regions may likewise be converted to a "mutated" variant or a "sub-biome", yielding the biomes not included on these lists).
Also, I've always wondered why Mojang did this; the "default_1_1" world type was added in 1.2 to preserve world generation of 1.1 worlds by omitting jungles (the overall biome map was otherwise unchanged so it was possible to do this and preserve the older generation; at one time Mojang planned for all older worlds to be updated to use this but they decided not to, but for one reason or another various people have had worlds set to it, and were confused as to why they could never find savannas, or why AMIDST wouldn't show the correct biomes in such areas (the obvious thing to do would have been to just remove the world type in 1.7, handling any worlds set to it as default):
There's also the other odd decision to make the original (snowy) taiga snowless and add a new "cold" taiga biome instead of just adding a snowless variant, as this affected all older worlds (the entire point of saving biomes with the world in 1.2 was to avoid this).
In the FAQ for Serene Seasons, Abduz says trees without leaves look awful, and he won't try anything like that. You could change the texture in-game (to twigs without leaves), but I think that would require some fearsome hacking - athough maybe there's a way to swap texture packs.
This came up before; on average 1.7 era Minecraft hot zones look smaller because one of their components is temperate zone plains. In vanilla there is a complicated preference system and the total area of hot and cold zones is not the same, but in Geo *on average* they are.
I can't do the eastern regions now because of the winter weather. I pretty much have to go north for the winter (to the chateau) and as long as I'm up there may as well work on the north. Having the entire coast mapped will be pretty satisfying.
There's also the other odd decision to make the original (snowy) taiga snowless and add a new "cold" taiga biome instead of just adding a snowless variant, as this affected all older worlds (the entire point of saving biomes with the world in 1.2 was to avoid this).
Another amateur hour decision from Mojang. They have gotten better over the years, thankfully.
The game defines "hot" as containing Desert, Savanna, and Plains, along with Mesa...
Oh, yeah, I know the game has more biomes for the actual, formal hot zones than what I'm looking at. I was just saying that is was an interesting observation I made that what I noticed in 1.18+ is also seemingly going on here, despite the differences between 1.7 through 1.16, and 1.18+. Cold regions tend to seem more common and/or larger than hot ones. Maybe more of the cold regions having snow and the hot region biome list including more than just desert and mesa (while that's specifically what I look at as true, hot regions) is why.
But I definitely feel those two biomes in particular (and thus, hot regions) need to be a bit more common.
In the FAQ for Serene Seasons, Abduz says trees without leaves look awful...
Oh, definitely, they would, and that's the other part of the problem.
Minecraft just isn't well suited for seasons as it is. If trees were more than blocks, especially those pillar-only bush types, maybe it's look less bad, but even for the larger trees, it wouldn't be that great. Minecraft trees just need leaves to look like trees because I think branches that are smaller than blocks would be needed to make leaveless trees look good.
This came up before; on average 1.7 era Minecraft hot zones look smaller because one of their components is temperate zone plains.
Does this exist with 1.18+ as well?
If so, I think making the hot regions larger than cold ones to compensate would be a good solution. As a player, it doesn't matter if a plains boime is cool, warm, or hot; they're all just plains. In my mind, "hot" is desert and mesa, with jungle and savanna being their own type of hot. The problem is most "cold" biomes have snow, and few have none, so cold regions dominate compared to deserts and mesas.
In terms of making hot zones larger to compensate for some biomes not looking "hot" on the map, IMO the on-ground experience is far more important than map appearance (even obsessed as I am with maps) so I think that would have been a bad choice.
Oh, I forgot Savanna *also* looks like a temperate zone on a map (dark green area), I forgot because at least on the ground you know you're in hot, where with "hot plains" there is absolutely no way to know.
No, 1.18+ doesn't have the same problem. The hottest climate (there are now 5 steps) is always distinctive - Desert or Badlands (maybe Mangrove too). Ironically now it's the *coldest* climate which can have a "stealth biome" - the wettest cold biome is *non*-snowy Taiga. That said, depending on the tuning of the noise numbers and the temp cut-offs, cold might be more or less common than hot. Looking at the numbers on the wiki, cold is probably more common; the distribution is apparently symmetrical around 0, but it turns cold at -0.45 but hot not until 0.55 (and these Perlin distributions favor intermediate numbers, so that could be a fairly significant change in frequency.)
Obviously YMMV on seasons. I don't mind snow on birch or oak trees. I'm aware that the real trees don't tolerate it, but there are enough evergreens that it doesn't look odd to have snowed on trees and it's not like Minecraft has particularly accurate biology. My only issue with Seasons is the map issues from seasonal snow. If the map ignored snow that melts in summer I'd be a pretty happy camper.
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Curse PremiumEpisode 98: Favoring Fall Forest
Once again I'm just going to head right back out. I refill my lunchbox, head up to the airship - sadly on the wrong tower, the one still with the spiral staircase, so I have to go roundandroundandroundandroundandIamgettingdizzyohfinallythereisthedoor.
And I'm off. Wow, this is mid-fall? This looks like late fall or even winter. I'm tempted to check my Seasonal Clock, but that's not practical. I wish the Serene Season seasons were adjustable.
Here's the area I'm planning to explore. There are mountains on the west and especially in the southwest, which is why I'm using the airship. I'm going to fly to the northeast corner, head west along the north edge, pick up the small strip on the next map north, and then fly along the west and the south edges to map out the mountain areas. Then, I guess I'll fly on the east edge back to the corner, get out of the airship, and explore the rest on foot. That's more airship exploration of flatland terrain than I'd like, because it's too easy and doesn't generate as much story, but I have to get to the far corner and back, and I don't dislike it enough to waste exploration passes.
Soon enough I'm where I want to start. This is the birch forest where I almost suffocated last episode. Bad memories.
I retry a trick I've managed on the ground but not in the air - go back and forth across the line dividing the maps so I map both sides. I couldn't make it work before, but this time I manage to pull it off.
This I could have done on the ground. These daunting mountains are just past the little strip on the north map. I've already done those by airship - appropriately.
I turn south along the west edge and discover that this is not nearly as mountainous as expected. My struggles with this mountain range in Episodes 91 and 92 actually mapped most of the range, and the rest I could have done from the edge of the range.
Night falls and I sleep on the airship. My bed must have really good insulation given that I'm exposed at altitude.
In the southwest corner, though, I do find unexplored mountains I really wouldn't want to do on the ground. You can see the slope to my left is an unclimable 2:1 or even 3:1 rise ratio. I could get one valley, but getting to the next would be a pain.
At the south side of the map I stick my nose over to the next map to make sure I've already mapped everything. Do not want to have to come back! And I have; everything is fine.
The village is the Byzantine village I saw in Episode 92.
Then back to mountain mapping. I have to make two passes to get it all.
Then over to the east side of the area, to head up to find a spot to park the airship. This is another region I wish I'd mapped on the ground - finding that big clearing in the middle of the Dark Forest would have allowed me to map something that initially would have looked like a problem due to its size.
It's pretty from up here; can't argue with that.
Approaching the north east corner again - I've now done an almost complete circuit of the region - I spot a good place to set down, next to a vanilla village.
I trade my map knowledge with the locals to harvest some of the seasonal crops like carrots and potatoes I basically can't grow because I'm always exploring now in the seasons they grow.
It's very late in the day, so I spend the night in the village, trading stories with the locals over simple peasant food.
I seem to have drunk too much because although I slept in the church steeple I wake up *outside*. Or, since this is the second time in the past few episodes I've had a weird awakening (the other was almost suffocating inside a tree), maybe I got cursed by a witch or something?
Then on with exploring, starting with the rest of this swamp.
Continuing west, I spot a river heading roughly my way through an open area scattered with enormous old trees.
A vanilla lighting bug - with nothing above it! How does it mess up this badly?
After a while the river turns south and I get out to stay next to previously explored areas and keep my explorations semi-systematic. There's a huge herd of horses here, which reminds me I have to get around to taming a horse.
I pass into the cathedral forest you can see ahead.
There's a little bit of Flower Forest (on the right) before I pass into a section of Taiga with some impressive big trees.
A little bit to finish off in the corner, and then it looks like I'll be ready to finish off the rest of the map.
Next episode: more on the ground.
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RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
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I saw darkness with nothing overhead once too in RTG. I think I even showed it somewhere. It was over a lake, and I think it may have been on a chunk border?
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Curse PremiumEpisode 99: Running into Ruins
As I turn south for my next mapping pass, I spot a Millenaire building in the distance. A little paranoid after the latest bandit incident, I approach with swords drawn.
There's Dark Forest next to it, but an unusually thin one. I work on mapping it from the outside.
I get an occasional scare from ominous looking canines, which I'm concerned might be Timber Wolves, but they're all innocuous foxes. (innocuous for me, if not for chickens.)
There's a lot of Plains in the area, which allows some great views. The mixed-tree forest looks particularly resplendent in mid-fall colors. Good timing too, as shortly afterwards a video refresh informs me the season has changed to late fall, with browner and less vivid colors.
I cross over a small hill and then come to another mix of Plains and various forests, including Dark. I walk the perimeter of the Dark Forest, and my first spawn comes out of it - a zombie, easily dispatched.
Night is falling and since I'm right near a Dark Forest I pillar up for safety. This also affords a great sunset view. Something about sunset and autumn really go together.
In the morning I boat the lake you can see on the left.
The south end of it extends into a snowy zone, with Cold Taiga. In the distance you can see the mountains - fortunately already mapped.
I don't know if it's me, or having a little time off IRL, or the fall season, but the scenery on this map seems especially spectacular.
In the foothills of the mountains I come across a village. I head over to collect crops and share stories.
But I find only death.
Every door in the village is busted - even ones that wouldn't be reachable from the ground (thanks, lousy vanilla building placement!)
Every villager is a zombie. Most are trapped inside buildings by vanilla construction goofs - although there may have been more that came out and burned. I don't think a village could be wiped out that thoroughly just by me passing by, so I'm thinking this must have spawned as a ruined village. Although, I thought that was a modern Minecraft thing, not 1.12?
Now I'm heading east along the south edge, and after a little bit more Cold Taiga, I find yet another area mixing Plains and Dark Forest. I've seen very little of this in the continent and now it's all over this map. Yet again I suspect something off about the RNG, but I think it's actually a good thing. Adds local flavor.
A thin clearing going deep into the forest allows a lot of mapping, and then I get this river with Plains on both sides going through the forest to the east.
The river turns north sooner than I'd like. I jump out and map the south side of the forest, and then take the river through hoping it's close enough to the east edge.
But it's not. So, I have to go around to the back of the forest to get that little unmapped strip.
The backside is mostly Taigaish, with this nice mountain lake. But I still need to go into the Dark Forest a bit to map everything and - I do. I'm not sure what's come over me. I don't have any trouble, though.
Night is falling again, and I come across this particularly spectacular view of a Forest Hills subbiome at sunset as I'm looking for a place to sleep. I decide to pillar up into the leaf canopy to sleep.
Next morning, rather than going all the way to the top of the map, I turn west, and then south, and then west again. The reason for this complex path is that the airship is near the upper right corner of the map, and I want to end my explorations near there. So the upper right area I'd normally head into now I reserve for last.
I get one last overlook onto the Cold Taiga, and then turn north for my last pass.
There's some Dark Forest in the way, and I just - walk through it? Not the whole forest, but a way in from the edge. I swear I haven't been drinking.
North of that is some oak Forest, with this big cavern room opening up to the forest floor. I spot some iron at the bottom, but not a conventient way to get down, so I just continue on.
This has some more big tree cathedral forest. I don't think I'll ever get tired of seeing this. Although - pretty as it is, I probably *would* if it weren't for RTG's forest variety features.
And then yet another spectacular view as I turn east to finish the last bit of mapping. What is it about this area? It's partly the big trees, but dang, there's just so much nice to see here.
The area is a little too wide for one pass, so I'm going back and forth a bit, but I'm getting it done.
As I'm approaching the village in the NE and where the airship is, I come across swamp (an extension of the swamp near the village) with a witch hut. Initially I plan to go in and kill the witch, but when I get close I see it's out in the water so I'd have to bridge out there or something and - heh, not feeling it. You get to live til another day, witchy-poo.
I reach my airship, and the village. I drop in to relate the sad fate of the village in the mountain foothills, then board my airship to leave. This map is done, and surprisingly easily, especially considering how much Dark Forest I saw.
Next episode: Mission creep.
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Curse PremiumEpisode 100: And Now for Something Completely Not Different
Wow, Episode 100 already? Time for a special episode! There's just one teeny weensy problem:
I don't have any ideas.
Much like the last time I got to my 100th episode, I have been playing along, and at my 98th episode realized I'm almost there and don't have anything planned. But this time I don't even have any big projects to pull out, because this is a very focused journal, basically on one experiment; is RTG plus, with Geographicraft, interesting enough to make a massive large continent interesting to explore, without adding in the biome mods I always felt compelled to add before?
Well, I guess the principle holds. I'm not done, but there's been enough to see to get me to 100 episodes, and I guess that's pretty darn good.
Back in the game, I had planned a big expedition to fill out about 2/3 of a large map. I figured it would take about 3 episodes, about the typical length of my expeditions, but it went pretty fast, and here I am done with my goals after only 2 episodes.
Well, I was whining a few episodes back about having skipped some stuff on the next map west, so why don't I use this episode to go fill it in?
So I head west.
First I go through the big swamp that inspired me to to a riverboating expedition, and then I spot the Tinker's island I forget to check for Purple slimes. Hey, no time like the present!
Nope, just more Blue slimes I don't need.
You'll probably notice the moon has risen. But in the airship, I don't much care, so I keep going.
I forgot to take a map pic, but the situation is that I know there's a mountain range vaguely north-south, on the eastern part of the map (the map 1 below the lower Pantheon map). My plan, since I have the airship, is to explore the range by airship, then land, and explore the remaining part on this side of the range on foot. I think that will be the last of the mountain ranges at the southern end of the continent, and my last expedtion can be on foot.
Of course, first I've got to *get* to the mountain range, and it's a ways from the west side of the map where I started.
Finally I see the range. I didn't need the airship for this...
But I do want it for this.
And then it starts snowing. But now I get one of the big advantages of night exploration:
I can sleep anytime. So I slam on the brakes, slam down my bed, slam my head on the pillow and the next thing I know it's dawn - and dry.
I'm on the coast, heading west, and I reach the other side of the range. But the range heads NE, and I want to get it all done on this expedition so I can finish the south coast without using the airship. So NE I go.
I head NE through a lot of cool terrain - but you've seen a lot like this already, so I won't show too much of it.
I pass onto the next map west, and the range just keeps going.
Finally, about halfway across that next map, I reach the hot zone which dominates that map, the one on the SE corner of the continent. The range continues, but it's Mesa, and I don't think I need the airship for that. So I turn back.
I turn a wee bit too slowly, as I leave a little unexplored strip I have to go back and cover.
After I finish that I go back along the west side of the mountains.
The two passes should have mapped enough of the mountain range. One of the peaks is on the edge, but I think I can get it from the foothills outside. I have been able to look to make sure I'll be able to finish; because of the short range of mapping I had a decent idea of the terrain for some distance out.
Then I fly up and land in the swamp. I have a plan; I'll map out the area west of me on foot, ending up back at the airship, then as I fly back to the Pantheon I'll get the little area to the east.
But I hit a complication: I spot a witch's hut. And beneath it stands the witch, regarding me with her baleful eye. Both baleful eyes, actually, which is worse. I pull out my crossbow -
And she runs for it.
I don't want to give her the chance to come up behind me so I hunt her through the brush. She's hiding well, though, and I just can't find her.
Finally. Ka-CHUNK and she's gone.
I head up to the top of the unexplored region, planning a pass to the east along the top. It works for a bit but then I hit two complication in quick order.
First, a nasty ravine.
And just behind it, Dark Forest. The Dark Forest extends far enough out that to map up to the edge I'll have to go into it a bit. So I do. It works for a while. But then a skeleton gets a bead on me. I rush it, using my sword, because I want to reserve my loaded crossbow for Creepers.
My first blow misses.
But my second connects, and then the third kills it. But now *another* skeleton starts shooting me, and I can't see it. So I run for the clearing to the side, and turn around to look for it. I don't see it, but I *do* see a Creeper so I pull out my crossbow and get a little closer so I can get a good shot through the thick trees.
But right as I'm about to take a shot, another Creeper materializes in front of me! I have no idea how - it's far too close to me to spawn. Lagged movement, maybe? I quickly adjust my aim and shoot, but the crossbow hit - usually fatal - fails to kill and the Creeper starts its countdown with a hiss.
I dive for cover, taking minimal damage. But you can see it's almost sunset; certainly NOT the time to get into a complicated fight in Dark Forest trees with a Creeper plus a Skeleton I can't locate.
So I pillar up to sleep.
A zombie comes out into the clearing to add to the fun. But I'm high enough to be safe, so I just go to sleep. I'll deal with this in the morning.
Next episode: Finding solutions.
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It seems the abandoned villages were added in 1.10. Apparently, they have a 2% chance to occur in Java, and around a quarter (!?) of a chance to occur in Bedrock.
For some reason, I always thought it was something like 10% in one of the versions, but I never knew. 2% for Java seems right now that I read it though, since that's 1 in 50 villages, and they certainly don't seem anywhere near as common as 1 in 10. I don't know how many villages I found in my hardcore world, but it was certainly way more than ten (like, many dozens at least), and only recall one that was an abandoned village for sure. There might have been another I'm not remembering, but it was possibly as low as one (maybe two or three?) despite all the villages I've found. They're pretty rare in Java, and I think they should be. If it's really every 1 in 4 in bedrock, that seems really high to me. I knew it was higher than in Java but I was thinking 10% for some reason, as even that is high.
I wish sleeping didn't end ongoing precipitation. Maybe thunderstorms, but not rain/snow.
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Curse Premium1 in 50 seems plausible to me; I've seen enough villages in my 1.12 worlds than 10% is probably too much. 25% seems high, but considering the incompetence of villages dealing with zombies, you could argue it's ecologically plausible.
We're on the same page for precipitation. Basically they made precipitation a punishment for not sleeping (also from having the start less likely after you wake) and that's just silly.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
Well, at least the precipitation timer doesn't reset to 0 when sleeping, which is an improvement, but it's still odd that it clears rain if it's already ongoing.
Or rather, let me expand on that. It's odd that it always clears it. If there was a system where if you go to sleep when it's raining, there's a chance of it continuing of stopping, would be nice. The inverse would be nice, too, where if you go to sleep on a clear day, and could wake up to a rainy morning.
I think the best way to implement that would be to keep the current underlying system, but if it's raining when you sleep, make it a 50% (or whatever chance) that it will stop raining come morning, and 50% chance that it will continue raining.
That same 50% chance to possibly start raining if sleeping during a clear day might seem too high though (since in reality, it often precipitates far less than not), so maybe something like a 10% (?) chance to start raining when you sleep if it is currently clear would work.
I think something like that would feel more natural and add variety.
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Curse PremiumEpisode 101: Creepers Drive Mission Creep
I need to go into the Dark Forest at least some to get my map finished, but I had altogether way too much trouble on the ground. In the morning, once the zombies burn off,
I go for the treetops.
Unlike on the ground, it's pretty uneventful up here, although I have to be careful. I potshot one Creeper through a hole in the canopy; mostly for spite although there is a tiny chance I might fall through.
It turns out that I need to go a substantial distance into the Dark Forest to finish the map; so I pretty much had to do this unless I went and got my airship.
Ooh, fall through into a cave in Dark Forest? That would be fun.
When I get to the edge I face the issue of how to get down. I *could* just jump with my Feather Falling boots, but that seems tacky. But chopping down isn't promising, and I forgot to refill my bucket so:
I do just jump down.
I seem to be in a clearing, but the lake there (on the next map west) provides a way out. Per policy, I start walking the perimeter.
The clearing connects to *another* clearing, with a village. For once, this is a pretty ordinary village - not a haunted monstrosity, and not overrun with villagers of one type. Although, it *is* surrounded by haunted forest, so not *all* that ordinary.
This maze of Dark Forest and clearing goes on quite a ways. Just walking perimeters, I end up on the next map west. As mentioned, my plan was to explore everything up to the mountain range there, which I mapped last episode. But a wilder plan is starting to emerge.
I return to the lake I saw earlier, and this time I boat it out.
That takes me to the next map north. I'm here and it's connected to what I'm mapping so... why not just go head and map out this corner?
First is the Taiga you see, and then some mixed Oak and Birch Forest. It starts to rain, but only *after* I reach the regular Forest, so at least for the moment I don't have to worry about snowing on the Taiga. But then:
Whoa. That's pretty dark for just rain. I'm not seeing any lightning or hearing thunder, but I pull out my bed and try to sleep - and succeed! This is a thunderstorm. And indeed the lightning starts as I'm falling asleep. It's like a nightlight!
That was lucky, because now I don't have to worry about snow when I go south back through the Taiga.
By the time I reach the bottom of the map, finishing the corner, I'm almost to the spot where I was forced to cross a mountain range in episode 53 because it was running off the map and I didn't have any more blank maps (on the other side of that mountain there). Ironically it looks like that was *just* before the range ended so I could have powered around it. No way to know that at the time, though.
Back on the map to the south, I resume filling it out up to the mountain range. I figure my last pass will be on the open strip. But my wild idea is growing in my head. Maybe I can do
More? Before I head back, I go back on to that map to the north, to fill in the section south of the mapping pass I made back in Episode 53.
Initially it's primarily Forest, both Oak and Birch, with a fair amount of clearings and hills sprinkled in.
But then I find some Jungle, as I start passing into the influence of one of the Hot zones that dominate the SE corner of the continent.
I can hear those of you who are following this more closely thinking "hey, though, that section you're just doing is connected to the map below, the most SE map of the continent with meaningful land. It really only makes sense to map this if you "
Are also planning to map the area below. And sorry for finishing your sentence (I know many think it rude) but that's my big idea. As long as I'm here, I'll finish mapping all of the southern end of the continent. Every last bit. That'll save me a trip, at the cost of making this now-to-be-very-long expedition more difficult to follow.
I'm deep into one of the SE hot zones. I see a Savanna village to my south, but I don't have any business with them right now, so I turn west, along the top of the map, through this desert.
On the other side is more Savanna, and one of the big rock formations that impressed me in Episode 52.
I reach the coast and turn back to fill in the gap between what I just explored and a bay to my south, through this Savanna, with an Extreme Hill that somehow intruded into the hot zone in the distance.
I spend the night in a Savanna tree and then in the morning reach this scenic lake with a view of the Savanna village I ignored the day before. The Extreme Hills is here because this is the edge of the hot zone; you can see the temperate forests in the distance there.
This time I check out the village; but there's nothing remarkable there.
Then I head south past the mountain; actually the end of the mountain range I mapped from the air last episode. Ahead is Mesa terrain; "mountain" according the Geographicraft generation rules, but, as I figured last episode, not so much in terms of exploration difficulties. But I've never tested it on the ground; so let's go see if I'm correct!
Next episode: Experimental results.
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Feels like something done for the streamers/youtubers which had lots of problems with rain with codecs in the past, as most of them had to use commands to get rid of rain. I would very much like turning this into a gamerule (stop raining after sleep True|False) so I can set it into a survival game without enabling commands.
As DoFireTick which I set to false because if I'm within jungle range and there's a lightning or a pool of lava, my notebook screams with lots of CPU spikes (the screaming is from the fans, of course).
Treetop traveling and large land area outings!? Well, I certainly approve.
But, but... there's a llama right there!?
That would be... an interesting reason if it were so. Sometimes there's certainly obscure reasons to things, but I would have had the impression that in this case, it's just like that because Minecraft never expanded on what was a functioning and "good enough" system here. I can only speculate though.
A game rule would be a good compromise too.
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Curse PremiumEpisode 102: Village Viewing Variety
I round the last mountain of the Extreme Hills and head into a Mesa zone.
I soon pass this interesting slot canyon formed by a river, which I'm pretty sure is the same one I admired from the outside in Episode 88.
This is a pretty big Mesa region - the largest I've seen from the ground in this world. I *could* climb up to the tops, but I'll try to map it from the canyons.
I almost manage the first big mesa but I miss a few dots and have to backtrack along the coast to get them. Experimental result: only mildly inconvenient to map from the ground.
From there I'm a ways from fresh exploration, plus I'd have to wend back through the canyon.
So, instead, I boat across to the peninsula to the south of me because boating is faster than walking.
I map the Savanna, which crosses the peninsula, and then continue east, out further on the peninsula, to get the desert further out. I stick my nose on to the next map to make sure I have everything, and I do.
But now, again, I'm a ways from unexplored areas.
So, again, for speed, I boat back towards the base of the peninsula.
First is some more Savanna, and then some Jungle
With what looks like a Mayan Millenaire village. It turns out to be surprisingly difficult to *find* it in the jungle, but eventually I do. I sell a bit of Dark Oak, just to clear out my inventory, and then sleep in the village for the night.
Past the jungle is some Mesa, but too small for any plateaus, and then multiple climates. I'm staying along the coast for now so I head left into the Desert.
That goes on a ways, and then I find this river network feeding into a swamp,
This connects to some Birch Forests and Plains, from a warm climate region, as I turn south to another peninsula going in that direction.
On the peninsula is a Byzantine village in a great setting, but as a starting village, they don't have anything to trade.
There's a whole series of quests and assistance you can provide to these Millenaire villages and I kind of wish I'd done them, but the scope of the explorations in this journal precluded the considerable time and effort they require. Maybe in my next journal.
Approaching the tip of the peninsula I pass through an extremely open Forest with very scattered trees. When exploring on this scale, having biomes vary really makes things nicer. I'm also appreciating how Serene Seasons is helping with that, as biomes look so different between the various seasons.
Once again at the tip I stick my nose on to the next map to make sure it's done, and once again it is - it's only a tiny extension anyway; the map is almost entirely water.
For the third time in this episode I need to take my boat to get back to where I want to explore. My rough plan now is to go east, fill in the center leaving roughly enough width for two passes next to the mountain, then make a pass SW, and then a final pass NE right against the mountains as I set out for home.
Initially it's more temperate terrain like on the last peninsula. This is heading inland, and the Minecraft climate system favors temperate zones more towards the interior.
Not quite done with the hot zones yet, though.
Come nightfall I pillar up and enjoy a sunset over the dunes.
Next morning I finish off the Mesa area.
Then I turn back SW. This is part of my plan to make a pass SW and then one last one back NE to finish this map. I'm back in a warm area now, with swamp, and pick up a few more sugarcane.
But now I hit a complication.
There's Dark Forest where I'd need to make the SW pass so that the remaining area is small enough to pick up in one last NE pass. I take the right fork of this river, but it takes me back to where I slept last night - even further away.
I find a clearing which requires only a short run through the Dark Forest to reach, and it helps, but it still doesn't get me far enough.
I continue SW on the edge of the Dark Forest, into this Oak Forest and then Taiga, but the Dark Forest still blocks where I want to go.
Near sunset, I finally get around the end of the Dark Forest. It's definitely messed up my 2 pass plan. I start looking at the map and trying to figure solutions. But soon I have a worse problem.
A screen refresh informs me it's now winter - you might notice the grass is more drab as well - and snow can fall in any terrain other than hot zones. I've completely blown my timing. I thought I'd get this done before winter and I didn't. Now I'm thousands of blocks from my airship, with bad weather impending and a substantial portion of mapping still undone. What a mess.
Next episode: The Woes of Winter.
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I was only able to speculate, being unfamiliar with the finer timings of seasons, but based on the rate of change you've shown since starting the world, I had the feeling from the start that the amount of terrain you were attempting to finish before Winter was quite ambitious.
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Curse PremiumIt was very ambitious in comparison to my overall rate of exploration in this world. But I've picked up the pace recently since I'm largely done with climbing tech ladders. Better Forests is also encouraging me to speed up, because I want to play in that and experience it - but I want the goal for this world *done* before I do that. So in comparison to what I've been doing in the past 2 in-game years, it wasn't crazy, just a miscalculation.
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Curse PremiumEpisode 103: Woes of Wandering in Winter
So here I am with an uncompleted exploration expedition, thousands of blocks as the foot walks from where I left my airship, in turn thousands of blocks from my nearest base, and in winter, when at any time snowfall can mess up my maps. Great.
At least the scenery is nice.
And it's not. Great. One MORE complication, even if a minor one.
I manage to get it all mapped by walking the edge of the lake, and then I pillar up to sleep to this pretty, if pretty cold, sunset.
Next morning I head back west on to the previous map, to start this last pass. You can see it's definitely winter - I'm in Plains, a fully temperate biome, and the water is freezing.
And now one MORE annoyance. For several episodes I've been seeing mostly larger-tree forests, but now I find myself in a shrub forest. It's good for variety, but why did it have to be now? It slows me down with physical obstacles, and makes it harder to see and plan - now, when I'm in a hurry. Plus the views aren't as good, and that doesn't help my already foul humor.
I shift to Taiga, but it's shrub forest too so not any better. This river would be nice - if it went in the right direction. But it doesn't.
As I expected, the strip is too wide for one pass, so I'm having to go back and forth. It slows me considerably, as I have to watch for missing dots. And then yet ANOTHER complication -
An arm of the Dark Forest blocks my way. To get around it, I have to climb onto the mountainside. I'm going to miss some mapping on the right side. After a while, thankfully, I find a clearing leading back in that direction and head in to see if I can finish the map.
WHOMP! With all these complications and frustrations, and feeling rushed, I'm not paying attention properly, and fall into a (fortunately not deep) ravine. I pillar back up and resume.
At least the clearing let me map all of that Dark Forest extension I was just dealing with. Back to heading NE. At least I'm making progress.
Next is some swamp, and *another* ravine, but I'm more on alert and don't fall in. It's still an obstruction though.
in the swamp I get lamprey'd, and then as if I'm not dealing with enough already:
NOOOO!!! It starts snowing. I'm still having to go back and forth to finish mapping the too-wide strip, and I'm slowed further by the swamp. I need to go really fast to keep snow off the map, and this is definitely going to mess up my map. And it's just past noon, so I can't sleep any time soon, and I'm not next to a hot or snowy zone I could hang out in where the snow won't cause trouble.
But there really is *nothing* I can do about this, so I have to just struggle onward. The snow is pretty to look at and if I weren't dealing with mapping issues I'd enjoy looking at it and the change of scenery. But that's like saying if my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a bicycle.
Finally I'm done with the mapping pass - or, really pass and a half. And I'm close to the big Mesa area, where it doesn't snow. So I dash over. But it's still several minutes to sunset, so I need to find something to do.
So I climb up to the top of one of the mesas. I have to pillar up many times due to a jump larger than 1 block high, but I make it. I still have to wait a bit for this sunset view. Then, finally, I can sleep away the snow (which is still strange, but that's the rules.)
Now I start wrapping around the mountain range, as planned, to pick up all the areas I'd left.
I get that area at the top of the map, and then take this pass towards the next. I should have gone around the range to the north, but all these problems were interfering with my judgement. But when I get to that next area, it's got - Dark Forest.
And a greeting party. I crossbow this one. I try to go around
But I just can't do it. Once again, I could probably get it from the other side - but it looks like the other side is on another map, so I can't map this area from there. But just at the very end.
I find a narrow band of Dark Forest which I can go through to get to the village I spotted in Episode 101. And from here I can finish the mapping.
Naturally Minecraft responds to this success by starting to snow. No fair! I just had to deal with this yesterday!
Between where I am to where I want to map is some Dark Forest. If I wait in the village everything nearby will get snowed in. It's a *long* way around, and going through is pretty risky, so I decide (quickly)
To go to the treetops.
But stress, hurry, and a bit of disorientation combine.
And I fall through.
Next episode: Escape (I hope)
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
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Curse PremiumEpisode 104: Sadly Suffering Snow
I catch a small break in that when I fall through the Dark Forest roof I've gotten most of the way through the forest, and there's nothing waiting for me on the floor.
I sprint to this lake where Sunflowers incongruously pretend to face the absent sun. Sadly, it's still snowing.
A quick check back confirms nothing is following me.
On the lake I'm fast enough to avoid snow accumulating to the point of showing up on the map. But on the other side is some mountain foothills to map, and I'm not fast enough on *that*. Snow is building up fast.
By the time I'm done and can dash across the lake - to *another* hill, sigh - one area is almost completely white on the map.
And then *finally* it's sunset, and I can sleep.
I awaken to a mess - but at least I'm done mapping this area.
Now I just have to find my airship. Which I cleverly left in a large swamp. Without a landmark. Oh, and I can only see it from a few chunks away. I get to the swamp and start looking around. But, man, it *is* a big swamp. I do a lot of looking.
I find the witch hut - fortunately the witchless hut at the moment - which is helpful because I saw it shortly after leaving the airship, and I know I was going roughly NW.
Even with that additional information, it takes some looking, but I do eventually find it.
Then I fly around in the swamp a bit to get that last area.
And I'm done! This was the last map. I mapped the entire southern coastal area, in less than a game year - although since I finished in Winter, I guess I have to admit I needed overtime.
So now, back to the Pantheon for the big picture.
I take a slight detour to get another strip mapped on the lower Pantheon map.
That's a cute little mountain lake.
But as I approach the Pantheon:
It start snowing AGAIN. Third day in a row! I have to put my map aside and navigate by dead reckoning - pretty good now since I've come this way multiple times now.
At the Pantheon I park above the yard, converting the airship so I can root through the chest. But then, I realize I'm going to get snow on the roof and resulting trouble like in Episode 54. So I reassemble, descend to the ground, and dismount leaving the airship assembled (so snow won't stick to the roof.)
There's already so snow up in the air from where it was disassembled, and I try to pillar up to destroy it. But the game interprets my right-clicking to place blocks as right-clicking on the airship, and puts me back in it. I just give up and leave it for later.
And now, the big picture:
The continent is coming along quickly now. And that area with inappropriate snow is not really noticeable on this scale. The South and the West are entirely done. There are still some areas left east of the Pantheon, but collectively they're probably smaller than what I just did on this last extended expedition.
But they're going to wait a bit, because my plan now is to winter at the chateau, and then, next Spring, go *north* to finish the entire coastline of the continent. (Wow, that's really on the agenda now.) Then I'll decide how to fill in the remaining areas and finish off the continent.
Now, it's time to head to the chateau for the winter. Fortunately, it's sunset, so I can sleep off the snow. Then I grab all the paper and sugarcane I've collected, and hop into the airship.
Already pretty solidly snowed in right around the Pantheon.
After I get some distance, though, there's no snow (other than in snowy biomes), and I can take out my map to get a strip of this area on the upper Pantheon map.
It's a mountain overlooking a forest; nice to look at.
After that, it's just a routine trip back to the chateau.
I approach the chateau from the Jungle, which is a first. But as I'm landing:
It starts to snow. FOUR days in a row! I'm sick of this! I have to leave the airship assembled on the roof so snow won't accumulate on the top and prevent it from moving.
And then down into the chateau for winter
Next episod: getting organized
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
I like the look of mid Autumn, but I'm not so sure about Winter. It looks out of place with the leaves present. It would look better without leaves, but... how do you accomplish that in Minecraft? Just deleting all the leaves doesn't seem too graceful, and how do you bring therm back? Bedrock just turns the leaves White, but I'm not sure I like that approach either (at least not for spruce trees). Leaveless trees besides the Green of spruce trees is how Winter would feel right.
Seasons is one of those things I think the game would have had to be set up for from the start. It'd be hard to implement now without causing disruptions. Having formal cold zones existing on their own might just be the best stand-in for "Winter".
I notice a similar thing on your map that I did with my world; formal cold zones seem to be more common than formal hot zones? Ar at least, using desert and mesa as the definition for a hot zone, it appears that way, but I'm not sure how much of that snowy area is mountains. Most of them look too big and spread to be that.
I'm sort of surprised you're not finishing the empty areas to the East before doing the North, but maybe I'm too used to finishing a map before moving onto the next.
The game defines "hot" as containing Desert, Savanna, and Plains, along with Mesa; the initial distribution of biomes looks like this:
private Biome[] warmBiomes = new Biome[] {Biomes.DESERT, Biomes.DESERT, Biomes.DESERT, Biomes.SAVANNA, Biomes.SAVANNA, Biomes.PLAINS}; private final Biome[] mediumBiomes = new Biome[] {Biomes.FOREST, Biomes.ROOFED_FOREST, Biomes.EXTREME_HILLS, Biomes.PLAINS, Biomes.BIRCH_FOREST, Biomes.SWAMPLAND}; private final Biome[] coldBiomes = new Biome[] {Biomes.FOREST, Biomes.EXTREME_HILLS, Biomes.TAIGA, Biomes.PLAINS}; private final Biome[] iceBiomes = new Biome[] {Biomes.ICE_PLAINS, Biomes.ICE_PLAINS, Biomes.ICE_PLAINS, Biomes.COLD_TAIGA};Biomes are chosen from each list, one per climate zone, at random with equal probability so this means that half of "hot" climates will initially be Desert, a third will be Savanna, and a sixth will be Plains (which is also "medium" and "cool" so Plains by itself isn't really indicative of "hot", and in fact, leans more towards "cool" where it is 1/4 of biomes, while having its temperature set to the warmer side). Larger areas (multiple "biome units") may be converted to Mesa (or Jungle for "medium" and Mega Taiga for "cool") and smaller regions may likewise be converted to a "mutated" variant or a "sub-biome", yielding the biomes not included on these lists).
Also, I've always wondered why Mojang did this; the "default_1_1" world type was added in 1.2 to preserve world generation of 1.1 worlds by omitting jungles (the overall biome map was otherwise unchanged so it was possible to do this and preserve the older generation; at one time Mojang planned for all older worlds to be updated to use this but they decided not to, but for one reason or another various people have had worlds set to it, and were confused as to why they could never find savannas, or why AMIDST wouldn't show the correct biomes in such areas (the obvious thing to do would have been to just remove the world type in 1.7, handling any worlds set to it as default):
if (p_i45560_4_ == WorldType.DEFAULT_1_1) { this.warmBiomes = new Biome[] {Biomes.DESERT, Biomes.FOREST, Biomes.EXTREME_HILLS, Biomes.SWAMPLAND, Biomes.PLAINS, Biomes.TAIGA}; this.settings = null; } else { this.settings = p_i45560_5_; }There's also the other odd decision to make the original (snowy) taiga snowless and add a new "cold" taiga biome instead of just adding a snowless variant, as this affected all older worlds (the entire point of saving biomes with the world in 1.2 was to avoid this).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
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Curse PremiumIn the FAQ for Serene Seasons, Abduz says trees without leaves look awful, and he won't try anything like that. You could change the texture in-game (to twigs without leaves), but I think that would require some fearsome hacking - athough maybe there's a way to swap texture packs.
This came up before; on average 1.7 era Minecraft hot zones look smaller because one of their components is temperate zone plains. In vanilla there is a complicated preference system and the total area of hot and cold zones is not the same, but in Geo *on average* they are.
I can't do the eastern regions now because of the winter weather. I pretty much have to go north for the winter (to the chateau) and as long as I'm up there may as well work on the north. Having the entire coast mapped will be pretty satisfying.
Another amateur hour decision from Mojang. They have gotten better over the years, thankfully.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
Oh, yeah, I know the game has more biomes for the actual, formal hot zones than what I'm looking at. I was just saying that is was an interesting observation I made that what I noticed in 1.18+ is also seemingly going on here, despite the differences between 1.7 through 1.16, and 1.18+. Cold regions tend to seem more common and/or larger than hot ones. Maybe more of the cold regions having snow and the hot region biome list including more than just desert and mesa (while that's specifically what I look at as true, hot regions) is why.
But I definitely feel those two biomes in particular (and thus, hot regions) need to be a bit more common.
Oh, definitely, they would, and that's the other part of the problem.
Minecraft just isn't well suited for seasons as it is. If trees were more than blocks, especially those pillar-only bush types, maybe it's look less bad, but even for the larger trees, it wouldn't be that great. Minecraft trees just need leaves to look like trees because I think branches that are smaller than blocks would be needed to make leaveless trees look good.
Does this exist with 1.18+ as well?
If so, I think making the hot regions larger than cold ones to compensate would be a good solution. As a player, it doesn't matter if a plains boime is cool, warm, or hot; they're all just plains. In my mind, "hot" is desert and mesa, with jungle and savanna being their own type of hot. The problem is most "cold" biomes have snow, and few have none, so cold regions dominate compared to deserts and mesas.
Oh, I meant after the winter.
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Curse PremiumIn terms of making hot zones larger to compensate for some biomes not looking "hot" on the map, IMO the on-ground experience is far more important than map appearance (even obsessed as I am with maps) so I think that would have been a bad choice.
Oh, I forgot Savanna *also* looks like a temperate zone on a map (dark green area), I forgot because at least on the ground you know you're in hot, where with "hot plains" there is absolutely no way to know.
No, 1.18+ doesn't have the same problem. The hottest climate (there are now 5 steps) is always distinctive - Desert or Badlands (maybe Mangrove too). Ironically now it's the *coldest* climate which can have a "stealth biome" - the wettest cold biome is *non*-snowy Taiga. That said, depending on the tuning of the noise numbers and the temp cut-offs, cold might be more or less common than hot. Looking at the numbers on the wiki, cold is probably more common; the distribution is apparently symmetrical around 0, but it turns cold at -0.45 but hot not until 0.55 (and these Perlin distributions favor intermediate numbers, so that could be a fairly significant change in frequency.)
Obviously YMMV on seasons. I don't mind snow on birch or oak trees. I'm aware that the real trees don't tolerate it, but there are enough evergreens that it doesn't look odd to have snowed on trees and it's not like Minecraft has particularly accurate biology. My only issue with Seasons is the map issues from seasonal snow. If the map ignored snow that melts in summer I'd be a pretty happy camper.
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RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.