Extra Biomes ... Not compelling content.

[Spasticon]

I have been struggling to understand how Extra Biomes really fits well into the mod pack.

- The extra biomes tend to significantly outnumber the regular biomes on the overworld.
- Most of the extra biomes content (wood, cattails, etc) have no use other than cosmetic.
- The wood is frustratingly incompatible with even normal recipes.

I find that I end up fairly quickly building mystcraft capability so that I can build single biome worlds for the generic minecraft biomes instead of just exploring the overworld. This doesn't really seem the intent.

One thing I'm not sure is if there is a way to turn down the frequency of extra biomes vs. generic biomes in the overworld. Right now the extra biomes seem to outnumber the generic ones by 4-5 to 1 in my worlds. I'd probably be satisfied if this was lowered to 1:1 or even something where generic biomes slightly outnumber regular biomes.

What are your experiences with Extra Biomes? Am I doing something wrong?

 

[Omicron]

In my experience, ExtraBiomes is something just like GregTech: it needs to be configured to suit one's personal style.

I really like how the mod gives you config options to, for example, enable or disable village generation in every single biome, even vanilla ones. And you can toggle on and off each addon biome as well. I love the red stone and the cracked sand and the pale acacia wood as building material. "Cosmetic" is a perfectly viable purpose for an item in a game where the whole point is building something cool.

What I don't like is how similar many added biomes are. For example, there is not one biome where Redwood trees grow; there's at least four, maybe five of them. One type has snow, another doesn't. One type is rich green, the other pale green. One type has lots of grass and undergrowth, another doesn't. These are fine points that are completely lost to the player who is faced with an entire map full of redwood trees, kilometers in each direction, the ground too mountainous to build anything, FPS on older computers slowed to a crawl by the sheer amount of geometry and the task of cutting even a single tree down taking an entire ingame day, if not more. This is also true to a lesser extent for other biome types, but its the redwood trees that really slap it into your face. This by the way is the reason why people feel that there's hardly any vanilla biomes left - because the mods spams an unnecessary number of almost identical extra biomes.

Now, the issues with wood being incompatible with recipes and such might potentially be fixed already, thanks to Forge's resource dictionary expanding to materials beyond just ores. The issues with the biome spam, that's up to the user to correct in the config file, by disabling all of the essentially duplicate biomes so that only a few key ones that truly stand out are left.

 

[MrZwij]

I agree, dial it back some.

Purely anecdotal gripe (YMMV): I spent a good 40 minutes (two full MC days and nights) the other night looking for a freaking birch tree so I could get a birch sapling. Normally that would just require a trip to a forest, but there aren't any within hundreds of blocks of my base. (Finally found a "birch forest" about 800 blocks away.)

I think this is already a really good mod and has potential to be a great one though. I'd like to see the issues Spasticon raised be fixed (wood incompatibility, unusable plants), and I think they already are in the works. I'd also like to see more species variation, particularly in biomes like Autumn Forest. And I'm hoping there's some way to deal with the bizarre things it does to villages sometimes, like putting a house 25 blocks higher than the house next-door.

 

[Mero]

Aesthetics, at least for me. I build my bases around nature instead of conforming the landscape to suit my wants. I do create mystcraft worlds for resources though, but as far as I am concerned, that is all they are there for.

 

[Lunarknight32]

This is one of those mods that needs to be configured. Personally, I disabled over half the biomes and only left the ones I really liked. If you enable as many biomes as vanilla ones, in my experience, I have had around a 1:1 ratio.

 

[Flip]

There have been significant Forge related improvements to this mod since the version available in the main FTB pack was released, so hopefully all wood is now compatible. There's also mention of a more sophisticated config system.

https://github.com/ExtrabiomesXL/ExtrabiomesXL/wiki/Change-Log

 

[EternalDensity]

I'm playing with the Magic World pack and I started on an island populated entirely by redwood trees. I haven't had any significant problems arising from that. But my usual playstyle is to build underground, so I'm not really minding the lack of building space. And there was just enough space between the trees to set up a cow paddock. Anyhow, Mystcraft makes it very easy to design whatever kind of space you want, though I guess it would be a problem for people who start with no canes in sight.
There are still a few mod recipes in this version that want vanilla wood, but I found enough off the island to carry on. I've only cut down two trees so far... and they were 'short' ones I've found spiraling up the trunk works better than going straight to the top with a sand tower, since it's easier to take a break part way if necessary.

 

[Hydra]

The Extrabiomes biomes are really REALLY pretty, and the large trees are a great source of wood (I made a CC turtle program that cna chop down the big 4x4 trees for me). Basically they make getting charcoal in large quantities completely trivial. However, they do cause a problem when you for example need to find rubber or birch trees. With the amount of 'new' biomes and mods like IC2 not really spawning rubber trees in those, you might end up having to create craptons of Mystcraft ages to finally get some rubber saplings.

Many cows lost their lives to provide me with enough books. I finally found some but although I have "Dense ores" I still haven't found the regular 'forest' biome.

 

[Golrith]

Personally, I had to disable all the biomes that added the massive trees. Main reason was FPS issues. So much decay going on and sapling being dropped, entity overload. Other reason was the sheer size of the biomes being generated combined with the size of the trees. Yes, I know redwoods are supposed to be the tallest tree, but they just feel out of place when compared to the scale of all the other trees.

Hopefully there is a way to control the size of the trees, and the chances of the biomes being spawned with a weighting system.

 

[Hoff]

Personally use treecapitator along with the extra biomes add-on. Yeah yeah and before all the hate for using it; save it. Anyway it makes dealing with it fairly easy. Makes some nice charcoal and then I generally use forestry for all other wood I need. The biomes have yet to be a problem since I don't have a problem running ~2000 blocks around once I have a portal gun.

 

[Hydra]

Can't blame you for using TreeCap for those trees. Chopping the big ones down by hand is just tedious.

 

[Hoff]

And quite honestly I don't really find it that overpowered any more since it takes a hit on the durability for every log it chops. It simply removes the unnecessarily long time needed to chop a lot of wood.

 

[Mero]

And quite honestly I don't really find it that overpowered any more since it takes a hit on the durability for every log it chops. It simply removes the unnecessarily long time needed to chop a lot of wood.

Also, it's not like there aren't many other ways to get lots of wood without work. Forestry Tree farms will get you more wood than you can ever need. Setting up a filler in one of those forests and letting it clear the land will "chop" all the trees for you. Making a Mystcraft world with Wood Tendrils and setting your quarry up there will get you plenty of wood without work.

Iirc, the reason people haven't included it before was because of the Axe of the Stream from TC2. That axe had the exact same function.

The whole point of all these mods, at least for me, is to take out all of the menial labor tasks that you have to do in vanilla and allow yourself more time to devote to build contraptions and stuff.

 

[INCSlayer]

i have manually added it and because i dont like it when my axe breaks in the middle of a tree going down changed the config so that it will always allow me to break the current tree im cutting down even if it breaks the axe i am using this can ofc be abused by making wooden axe's and using them to deforest a jungle very easily but since this is in ssp thats not really a problem and i could always remove the wooden and stone axes from the config file if i wanted to

 

[Meara]

hmmm... Well concerning the fact this mod pack is still beta, i think a lot of this is going to to fixed. Like the fact that mod recipes don't use the Fir Wood for example. Something like the plant dictionary (Don't quote me on this as i cant even remember where i herd it from). You can still use them for Vanilla recipes and Oak or something for modded.
But I don't think Extra Biomes is supposed to be ... how would you say... "In-yo-fact" kind of stuff.. I think it's designed to be more of a suddle change to make worlds seem new. Or at least add really awesome skylines. I actually like setting up my base near a Redwood Forest just to have that out side my window.

I also don't see why they are so timely to cut down.. spiral stair case up the tree and then cut the rest down, from the top. that takes like a stone axe and a half.. max. Besides once you have the Chainsaw it takes more time to cut down a big Oak, and less wasted Durability on the leaves.

 

[EternalDensity]

Can't blame you for using TreeCap for those trees. Chopping the big ones down by hand is just tedious.

I'm using an enchanted thaumium axe (I found a couple in TC3 dungeons ) which chews through the redwoods pretty well. Though I have just finally set up some Forestry to get me vanilla wood (that sounds kinda weird). Thermal Expansion's redstone power cells are really handy for powering machines 'in the field', I've found. 20 magmatic engines charge them pretty fast too.

And I agree with Meara above about Extra Biomes being a more subtle kind of mod.

 

[makeshiftwings]

I love ExtraBiomes... it makes exploring the world much more interesting. I don't think a mod needs machines or yet another power grid to be interesting. Factories are only a small part of Minecraft. Building things is a big part too; and having more environments to build in makes it much more aesthetically interesting.

 

[Hydra]

I love ExtraBiomes... it makes exploring the world much more interesting. I don't think a mod needs machines or yet another power grid to be interesting. Factories are only a small part of Minecraft. Building things is a big part too; and having more environments to build in makes it much more aesthetically interesting.

Definetely agree with you there. My only problem is that sometimes it can become really hard to find something simple as a rubber tree. Those new biomes are REALLY pretty. My previous base was in a little swamp between two redwood forests.

 

[ICountFrom0]

Some of the trees are big enough to make Elo's rubberwoods look small.

 

[Golrith]

Indeed, apart from the FPS issues that these trees can cause, I personally feel they are out of scale with the rest of the minecraft world. Yes, I know redwoods are the tallest trees IRL, but they seem too tall for minecraft. Same goes for the massive firs.