It's off to explore. My plan is to circumnavigate my continent, if possible. I'm looking for a Silverwood tree, hopefully in a Magical Forest, and a village, hopefully containing a potato. I'm also planning to mark some nodes and generally take a look at the world

I've already mapped my immediate coast to my south and partly to the east. I haven't mapped to the northeast and to what i suspect is a coast near to my north. So I strike off to the northeast to where my coast map ends.



I reach the coast uneventfully and board a boat.



As I proceed north the snowy zone yields to a Roofed Forest. The coast doesn't bend to the west, so the ocean I found on my last expedition is apparently just a lake.

I spot a number of nodes out on the water but I don't stop to mark them, which is a little tedious. I try to take F3 pics as I fly by to help find them later, if I want.



I travel north onto the next map, and the Atlas dutifully pops out a tiled map for me with the 16x16 blank maps I've stocked it with. I spot two nodes on land and stop to mark them.



Soon I come to a Rock Mountains biome. These are quite spectacular rounded mountains created with an algorithm very different from Minecraft's normal terrain algorithm. They come out quite smooth, unlike large Minecraft mountains, which can get messy and fantastical. It's a nice change of pace. You can see there are a lot of exposed ores. That's one of the big reasons I cut back on the frequency of the Metallurgy ores, as exposed rock surfaces can get downright cluttered at default frequencies.

The coast does turn west here.



Next I come to a Highlands Redwood Forest, next to a Plains. I come ashore to hunt a village but it's a very small plains, and there isn't one. There are some horses, mostly black.

As I continue the Redwood Forest mixes with an Autumn Forest, which is a possible sub-biome of Redwood Forest.



Near the next nightfall I come ashore next to a Woodland Mountains. This is one of the more popular Highlands biomes, although it's hard to use in hardcore because it's both extremely rugged and subject to daytime spawns. Always a great backdrop, of course.

I cross to the next map to the west, and come across a Bog biome.



I come ashore to adjust my inventory and take some close-up picks but a creeper comes floating up. I'm not sure what spawned him, so I leave instead.

The Bog goes well out into the water and is mostly water itself, so I end up sailing on the Bog itself.



From the Bog I spot some plains and come ashore to look for a village.

The plains is small, and village-less. But it's next to a desert, also a good spot for villages. The desert is quite large and I search it extensively - with no luck. At this point I'm starting to get a little bit worried something is wrong. I've seen villages on flyarounds but now I've looked at a fair amount of territory and not found one. Highlands adds villages to many of its biomes too, so it's more of an issue.

Eventually, however, I come across an Eerie biome



This was the result of an experiment gone right. Thaumcraft adds three biomes: Magical Forest, Eerie, and Tainted. The last two aren't formed in worldgen but occur as a result of game events. When I was adding Thaumcraft biome options to Climate Control, I was curious what those biomes would like like if created in worldgen. They came out as Magical Forests but with the Eerie and Tainted aspects, respectively. I thought the effect was really nice and put them in as the default (users can take them back out with changing settings).

Even the regular Magical Forest occasionally spawns monsters in day, and Eerie will spawn some souped-up zombies. But - Magical Forests have Silverwood, and that's what I'm here for, so I head in and look for one.



And there one is! The cobble you see is part of another Thaumcraft structure, a barrow, which contains a Sinister Node and multiple spawners. I go past *that* in a big hurry.



The Silverwood tree has apparently spawned *2* nodes and they have converted a tiny bit of the biome into Magical forest. I chop down the silverwood except for the nodes; if you chop the nodes' blocks you also destroy the nodes and I don't want to do that. I also collect 3 silverwood saplings, which is great - I'm used to not getting even one from chopping down a silverwood.

So - one goal down, one to go.

Next episode: more exploration