How can i generate a more compact adventure?

[Wandering Cow]

I keep trying to generate new worlds with smaller biomes or less mountains but it always seems to spawn me in a very similar biome in every world. Is there a way i can make the world less mountainous and a little more diverse without having to travel tens of thousands of blocks to see different biomes? Also I've found that exploration on some worlds is very rewarding but on others it can lead to endless empty caves devoid of any ore or lore content whatsoever. Is there also a way i can modify world settings to help me find more lore content or am I doing something wrong?

[Thorfinn]

Welcome to the forums, @Wandering Cow!

Less mountainous, yes. It's the Upheaval Rate in world creation.

Smaller biomes, not yet. Or at least not without using a mod.

Lore is a crapshoot. Again, mods might help here. Better Ruins might be one option.

[LadyWYT]

First off, welcome to the forums!

3 hours ago, Wandering Cow said:

Is there a way i can make the world less mountainous and a little more diverse without having to travel tens of thousands of blocks to see different biomes?

As Thorfinn said, you can always tune things like water/land distribution, terrain roughness, forest coverage, and more under the world settings. For more diverse biomes in a fashion similar to what Minecraft has, you'll want to go to "Climate Distribution" and chance that from "Realistic" to "Patchwork". That should make it so that biomes are randomly distributed and potentially save you the legwork of needing to travel tens of thousands of blocks before the climate changes. As far as I'm aware though(never played Patchwork so can only guess), the seasonal changes will still apply in temperate/colder biomes, so it might be a little jarring to see or cut back on the survival challenges.

3 hours ago, Wandering Cow said:

Also I've found that exploration on some worlds is very rewarding but on others it can lead to endless empty caves devoid of any ore or lore content whatsoever. Is there also a way i can modify world settings to help me find more lore content or am I doing something wrong?

The main lore content is found via talking to a Treasure Hunter trader. He'll give you a task, and reward you with a map to the first major story location. It's quite a trek, but some of the goodies you can find there are other bits of lore about various things. As for other lore content...the more minor pieces are kinda scattered around in various places. Some of it you can find by talking to the traders about various things. Some of the traders sell things that provide insight(Artisan traders and tapestries); some items have flavor text that provides insight into what once was, or what might have happened. Panning bony soil is a good way to acquire lore books and other valuables.

As for caves, it's not unusual for them to be empty. Sometimes you'll get lucky and find some exposed ore, or some long-forgotten ruins that may or may not hold anything of interest. Surface ruins sometimes have basements that have extra supplies, sometimes a lore fragment or two.

In regards to world settings though, there's not really much you can modify here to make finding the lore easier, aside from perhaps smoothing out terrain to make traveling easier, and removing a lot of the survival challenges so you're not as likely to die while out and about. You could go the modded route with Better Ruins in order to have more interesting things to explore while still being "lore friendly", but it's not quite the same thing as the vanilla game. I will note though that the next update is right around the corner, and will be featuring a mount and a proper boat in order to make traveling around easier, as well as the second story chapter.

[LadyWYT]

One other possibility that I forgot to mention: if you'd prefer to keep the more realistic world climate generation, you might try changing the polar-equator distance to a lower number. The climate will still be arranged in "real world" layers that way, but it'll take much less time to travel from a cold region to a warmer one, and vice versa.