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Which biomes are there?
- Water: Deep ocean, Ocean, Warm ocean, Frozen ocean, River, Frozen river.
- Shores: Beach, Snowy beach, Stony shore.
- Plains and swamps: Plains, Swamp, Mangrove swamp.
- The forest group (as common as the deserts or the jungles): Forest, Birch forest, Dark forest, Giant mushroom forest, Autumn forest, Cherry grove, Taiga, Snowy taiga, Old-growth taiga.
- Hot and dry: Desert, Canyon, Savanna; hot and wet: Jungle.
- Cold and high: Tundra, Snowy peaks.
- Special: Volcanic, the cone of a volcano and its foot.
- The Moon: Lunar plains and Lunar craters.
What decides the biome of a place?
- Temperature falls with latitude (the poles are cold) and with altitude. Seas freeze at high latitudes: frozen ocean, snowy beaches, tundra.
- Humidity separates dry from wet. The driest lands are deserts; in the canyon regions, warm and dry land is canyon country: ochre tables, mesas, towers and gorges. Hot and half dry gives savanna, hot and wet gives jungle. Temperate and dry gives plains, wet gives the forest group: mixed, birch, dark, giant mushroom, autumn or cherry forest, taiga in the cold.
- The amplification, a slow field over the planet, sets the relief of every biome: almost flat in its low tail, fine hills most of the time, giant ranges, escarpments and gorges in its high tail, where the summits carry snow. An ocean is deep ocean beyond 60 m of depth, warm ocean under 30 m where it is hot; underwater ranges rise there, some as islands.
- Volcanic provinces raise volcano cones on the ridges of some mountain chains, and hot-spot islands at sea.
What are the two world layouts?
Classic: scattered biomes
- Land masses of about 120 km
- All the landscapes close together
- The default way the world is made
Giant continents
- A few continents of 1,000 to 3,000 km
- True oceans between them
- About a third of the planet is land: you have to travel
- Scattered biomes
Landmasses of about 120 km with the biomes close together: every kind of land is a short trip away.
- Giant continents
A few giant continents of 1,000 to 3,000 km between true oceans: long journeys, climates far apart.
You choose the layout when you create a world, on the Solo screen under Terrain. On a dedicated server, start it with the option below or set terrain in server.json. The layout is kept with the seed and never changes afterwards. The seed itself can be any text from 1 to 256 bytes, or a number.
owserver --terrain continentsHow high is the land?
- 0 mbedrock, the floor of the world
- 160 msea level
- 460 mthe highest summits
Heights are absolute altitudes, measured from the reference sphere of the planet; the depth of an ore is counted down from the ground above you. Oceans are up to about 150 m deep; most land stays within 140 m of the sea and only the high tail of the amplification climbs to 300 m above it. The Moon has no sea: its reference altitude is 200 m. Space starts at 1012 m (see the planet).
Where do I start?
On dry land, never in water, never on a cliff. The seed picks a kind of country (plains, savanna, desert, canyon, cherry grove, birch forest, forest, autumn forest, taiga or jungle) never beyond 50 degrees of latitude, so two worlds rarely start the same way.
Questions
How many biomes does the game have?
28 on the Earth and 2 on the Moon.
Can I change the layout of a world later?
No. It is chosen when the world is created and kept with the seed.
Where do I find a desert or a jungle?
Hot land: toward the equator and at low altitude. Hot and dry gives desert, hot and wet gives jungle.
Is the start always a forest?
No. The seed picks a kind of country, deserts and canyons as often as meadows and woods, always on dry land.
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