What is the logic for surface level temporal stability?

[Broccoli Clock]

I have this question because I started a new world for 1.21, didn't like my spawn and went searching for somewhere nicer. The problem being, almost all the places I thought were "nice" had bad temporal stability. Obviously part of that is me being picky about where I want to settle, but I couldn't for the life of me work out why some areas on the surface were bad while others weren't.

The wiki states..

..but doesn't say why.

Obviously if this was underground, or near rifts, I'd understand, but I'd wander to an area and think, "this looks lovely for a base", only to see the gear turning anti-clockwise. There will be no (surface) structures, there will be no rifts, there will be no visible caves. Is it just random? Or does bad temporal stability on the surface signify there is something underneath that surface?

It's not a big deal, the world is big, the good stability areas massively outnumber the bad areas, but I'd still like to know if there is some logic as to why an area is chosen to be bad.

 

Thanks in advance.

==[bc]==

[Professor Dragon]

The blue gear "Temporal Stability" moving anti-clockwise is determined in an area at world generation. It never changes after that, for that area.
It is not bound to anything in particular  - like Ruins - it is just assigned at world creation by whatever formula handles this. Think of it like the rock strata allocation - a big, general band, overlaid over the terrain.

Don't confuse this with the "Rift Activity" level which can vary between Calm to Apocalyptic. This changes regularly, like the weather.

So wander until you find a nice place to live, and check the Temporal Stability. 

All good? Now wander in a biiiiig circle of the kind that you might imagine your largest base with fields and farms might be. Ideally it is all stable. If not, move on (unless you like the torment). You don't want to build a lovely base, only to find that where you were going to put the fields is unstable. It's not the end of the world, but it is a nuisance which is easily avoided.

Professor Dragon.

Edited September 7, 2025 by Professor Dragon

[Thorfinn]

When I looked into it several versions ago, I did not see anything other than random placement. Take that with a grain of salt. Not only might there have been changes in response to complaints, the whole "absence of evidence" thing applies. The code is pretty well structured, and I looked where it probably would have been if it were there, but it's always possible to fiddle with another module's namespace, protected or not. Maybe not in C#, but C itself, sure, it's way too common to use the pointers to pointers trick.

[LadyWYT]

For the most part, stability values are random, and the instability gets worse the deeper underground you venture. The only exception to the rule that I've found is story locations--these seem to have specific stability values, presumably for narrative reasons. IE, a location full of monsters will be pretty unstable, while an inhabited area will be stable.

[Professor Dragon]

7 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

When I looked into it several versions ago, I did not see anything other than random placement. Take that with a grain of salt. Not only might there have been changes in response to complaints, the whole "absence of evidence" thing applies. The code is pretty well structured, and I looked where it probably would have been if it were there, but it's always possible to fiddle with another module's namespace, protected or not. Maybe not in C#, but C itself, sure, it's way too common to use the pointers to pointers trick.

Off topic, but could you briefly explain in which file/s you would go looking for this type of thing?

I see several posts on this forum along the lines of "I checked the code, and I found . . ." but a quick pointer on the main file/s would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Edited September 7, 2025 by Professor Dragon

[Thorfinn]

Sure. Easy enough. Just type "git anego survival" into your browser. Somewhere in the top few hits is the repo. Go there. Now, you have to know a little about how the game is structured. The difference between items, entities and blocks is essential, at a bare minimum. Anyway, go into whatever seems the most appropriate to what you want to look into. There's no way I know of to do this apart from a little intuition and the assumption that the codebase is reasonably well structured. You can't very well read all the C# out of context and hope to understand the whole.

Depending on what you are looking for, you might have to go up a level to Anego's home git and select the essentials repo. Or the API repo. Again, depending on what you want to know.

Edited September 7, 2025 by Thorfinn

[Broccoli Clock]

21 hours ago, Professor Dragon said:

The blue gear "Temporal Stability" moving anti-clockwise is determined in an area at world generation. It never changes after that, for that area.
It is not bound to anything in particular.

Thank you, that's what I had initially thought. 

 

Edit: btw, I'd say the colour of the gear is green, not blue, although I have to say I've had this sort of discussion several times in the past, for example one of my friends was certain that the Independence Day poster was blue. It's green. Image in spoiler below..

Spoiler

https://i.imgur.com/vhZu7Zr.jpeg

 

Edited September 8, 2025 by Broccoli Clock

[Professor Dragon]

18 minutes ago, Broccoli Clock said:

. . . btw, I'd say the colour of the gear is green, not blue

You look to be right there.  

But it is a temporal gear . . . there is a good chance it was messing either with my memory or my vision. 

[Broccoli Clock]

1 minute ago, Professor Dragon said:

You look to be right there.  

But it is a temporal gear . . . there is a good chance it was messing either with my memory or my vision. 

It's cool, just funny that the blue/green seems to be a regular thing, like "multiple times over decades" regular.

[Maelstrom]

Based on my experience in how random temporal stability is in location and size, it seems to me that this mechanic has a heat map all to itself.  Perhaps testing it with multiple spawns of the same seed will confirm if the same temporal stability exists.

One thing that is definite, is that stability decreases with altitude.   I once had a rich copper reading in a pretty low temporal stability area on the surface.   By the time I found my first deposit to mine out I could only get maybe 1/4 of it before my stability was at 25%.  Up to the surface, night on a high activity night... joy!   Run forever and a day in <pick a direction> to find a positive temporal stability area, run back through at least 100 blocks to get to the mine, mine another 1/3 of the deposit before I'm at 25% and running for the hills. 

That copper area was in the middle of a HUGE negative stability area, as mentioned, 100 block radius to it!

Edited September 8, 2025 by Maelstrom