Sparrowhawk's Immersive Biomes

1.17 Update

I am currently not working on a 1.17 update. This pack will require substantial changes for 1.18, and I currently do not have the time to update it only to update it again in 6 months or less. I plan on doing some cool stuff using the new blocks and items, but world generation code is going through many changes on Mojang's side every month, and relearning the changes only to have to relearn them again later this year is too much at the moment. I will update this section if that changes.

A subtle and natural vanilla biome overhaul

Sparrowhawk's Immersive Biomes is a datapack that modifies almost every biome in the overworld while maintaining the feeling of playing in a vanilla Minecraft world. It makes subtle changes to your world's generation in order to create a natural and diverse landscape. It also adjusts the spawn rate of animals and plants to create more realism. It is designed for survival worlds, where uncovering new animals, resources, and scenery should be exciting and immersive.

Some of the main features are:

• Trees are taller and more varied.
• Rivers are slightly deeper and wider.
• Ravines form only in hilly or mountainous biomes.
• Lakes (both lava and water) are removed from most biomes to prevent trees generating above them.
• Water and lava springs are found only in mountain biomes.
• Terrain is smoother with less random floating blocks.
• The different types of animals, plants, and flowers prefer different biomes.
• Unique variations of rare biomes like flower forests, desert lakes, and giant spruce taigas.

Some things this datapack doesn't change:

• There are no changes to oceans.
• There are no changes to the nether or end dimensions.
• There are no changes to any structures or their chances of spawning.
• There are no changes to the way biomes generate or their chances of generating.
• The terrain should be a similar height to vanilla and the overworld height is unchanged.
• All ores and resources should be just as common or rare as before, with the exception of certain animals and flowers.

If you are having difficulty locating certain animals, they prefer the following habitats:

• Chickens like open fields and forests.
  
• Sheep like mountainous regions and, more rarely, forest hills of any kind.
• Pigs like forests, swamps, and jungle regions.
• Cows and horses are rare, preferring open fields for grazing.
• Rabbits are commonly found in forests, along with their desert and tundra habitats.
• Villages often have a variety of animals, and their spawn chances there have not been changed.

How to install

Simply open the datapack folder when creating a new world and add the file, then activate the datapack in the menu.

While the datapack is loaded, it will effect any newly generated chunks that you load when traveling through the overworld. If you remove the pack from an existing world, newly generated chunks will revert to vanilla generation, but the previously loaded terrain should remain untouched. This will often cause dramatic cutoffs on chunk borders. If you add the datapack to an existing world, it will only effect newly generated chunks.

Attribution

This datapack was inspired by William Wyther's Overhauled Overworld. Although the files in this datapack are unique, some are similar, as I studied Overhauled Overworld to learn how to create my own world generation datapack. Some ideas in Overhauled Overworld (like deeper rivers or soul sand mud in swamp biomes) are also present in this pack in a modified form, used with permission from the creator. If you're looking for a world generation datapack that goes a little further and creates beautiful and unique overworld biomes, I highly recommend downloading it.

Notes

If you encounter bugs or errors, please let me know in a comment.

All screenshots are taken with BSL shaders.

This datapack will not work on Minecraft Realms servers right now, due to Mojang restricting world generation datapacks to single-player worlds. However, it may work on a 3rd-party server (although I am not able to test this personally). It will not work with any datapack that modifies overworld biome generation.

With any datapack, you may experience issues when using it alongside any other datapacks or mods. I do not guarantee compatibility with any other datapacks or mods. I plan to continue working on this datapack to ensure it's compatibility with new Minecraft versions, but I will likely not be able to adjust it to accommodate other packs or specific requests.