Minecraft World Generation mods

Posted On July 22, 2024

Tristan recently commented that I should look into world generation mods for my Minecraft server as it would make the world more interesting. I wasn’t sure what that meant. It turns out that developers have come up with a variety of ways to add additional “biomes” to Minecraft.

Early Minecraft biomes included Plains, Forest, Desert, and Snowy Tundra. Later versions added Swamps, Taiga, Savana, Mesa and more. These world gen mods add even more biomes, including Volcanic Peaks, Redwood Forest, Salt Flats and Iceberg Fields. Some of these mods create new blocks, but the ones I found most interesting leverage existing blocks in new creative ways.

After some research, I found a number of these world generation mods, like:

• Tan’s Huge Trees ( Forge)
• Biomes O’ Plenty (Forge)
• Regions Unexplored (Forge & Fabric)
• Terrestria (Fabric)
• Ecotones (Fabric) 04:08
• Vanilla Vistas (Forge)
• Dregora Remastered (Forge)
• Oh The Biomes You’ll Go (Forge)
• Far From Home (Forge)
• TerraForged (Forge)
• Tectonic (Forge & Fabric)
• William Wythers’ Overhauled Overworld (Forge & Fabric)
• Terralith (Forge & Fabric)

Many of these mods are meant for a singe user, desktop install. Finding versions that work on servers seems a little more complicated…or at least, used less often.

Since I am running a Paper server (Spigot, Bukkit), based on the great work of James A. Chambers, my options are limited.

I chose to install Terralith as is seems extremely popular and has a version that is compatible with Minecraft 1.21. Installing the datapack verion turned out to be as simple as copying the .zip file (Terralith_1.21_v2.5.3.zip) to the ./minecraft/world/datapack directory and restarting the server.

(NOTE: installing v2.5.4 stopped some minor errors reported during startup.)

This worked (thankfully) and I can see terralith tagged biomes created when I journey to edges of the known world. I am not sure if it is related, but the server seems to take a significant amount of time to create these new chunks. (I did not notice this delay previously.)

I heard that you could combine worldgen mods, so also added the datapack version of William Wythers’ Overhauled Overworld (William Wythers’ Overhauled Overworld v2.3.5.zip). I installed it in the same directory with Terralith and it appears to load:

If I perform “datapack list”, I am shown:

• 19:18:22 INFO]: There are 5 data pack(s) enabled:
  • [vanilla (built-in)],
  • [file/bukkit (world)],
  • [paper (built-in)],
  • [file/Terralith_1.21_v2.5.3.zip (world)],
  • [file/William Wythers’ Overhauled Overworld v2.3.5.zip (world)]

I have yet to see evidence that WWOO is working, but I am told (on Discord) that the WWOO biome names would be displayed.

Since that appeared to work (atleast load), I decided to try sone WWOO add-ons:

• file/Cliffs and Coves v1.2.2.zip (world)],
• [file/Navigable Rivers v1.2.1.zip (world)],
• [file/Towering Tepuis v1.0.1.zip (world)],
• [file/william-wythers-better-cacti.zip (world)]

It is my understanding the William Wyther’s Overhauled Overworld was split into two parts. WWOO now modifies existing biome type, while William Wyther’s Expanded Ecosystems adds new biomes. Since WWEE is a Fabric / NeoForge / Forge plugin, I don’t think I am going to be able to leverage it.