Tropical overhaul

[jaelyn666]

I love this game so much and its really disappointing that the tropics are so neglected, we really need palm trees in the game to give it the true tropical vibe, not to mention more diverse animals like monkeys, peacocks, Crocs, Hippos, Leopards, parrots, lizards, beetles and all sorts of insects. Imagine having a leopard skin rug and clothing, leopard skin dress etc. The tropics have the highest level of biodiversity on earth so it doesn't make sense there's only one main species of tree in the jungles, we need more than just kapok and purpleheart. There should be all sorts of tropical plants and flowers in the jungle. We need bananas and coconuts! There are mods for these things but I hate using mods I would love these features in vanilla. I live in the tropics in game and I really wish we had more going on down here and it feels like the temperate zone gets all the love and attention the tropical reefs were a great addition and a great step in the right direction.

Edited September 11, 2025 by jaelyn666

[Crunchy Chicken]

May I ask why you hate using mods? Also if you check the roadmap you can see there is this part in there:
 

Quote

Improved world generation

• Very large scale patterns that alter the current world generation
• Regions of distinct flora and fauna
• Richer caves
• Experiment with river generation
• Rich ocean life
• Procedural dungeons

but considering that it's a small dev team and there is a lot of various features outside of this in the roadmap, it may take a while until this get's implemented. I would suspect new/reworked game mechanics and the story will take priority over new plants and animals.

[jaelyn666]

4 hours ago, Crunchy Chicken said:

May I ask why you hate using mods? Also if you check the roadmap you can see there is this part in there:
 

but considering that it's a small dev team and there is a lot of various features outside of this in the roadmap, it may take a while until this get's implemented. I would suspect new/reworked game mechanics and the story will take priority over new plants and animals.

With the mods thing there is always the possibility a particular mod will stop being updated forcing me to abandon and potentially corrupt my save, I also like the purity of having it completely vanilla as it's the true game and true experience and with mods it just feels wrong to me for some reason

 I totally understand they have a small dev team and I have nothing but respect for them, just wishing we had more going on with the equator :3 I feel like palm trees should be fairly simple to implement and probably should have been there from the beginning.

[LadyWYT]

10 hours ago, jaelyn666 said:

Crocs, Hippos

These are already being worked on and should be added in the next update or so. Otherwise, I would recommend looking into mods like Floral Zones or Fauna of the Stone Age(unfortunately, not all of these are updated for 1.21 yet). They tend to be very stable mods, and can add quite a lot to warmer regions, and fit quite well with vanilla as well. If you're worried about saves, best to start a save specifically for a modded playthrough, and stick to just a handful of well-known mods, since those are typically kept up to date. 

[Crunchy Chicken]

26 minutes ago, jaelyn666 said:

With the mods thing there is always the possibility a particular mod will stop being updated forcing me to abandon and potentially corrupt my save, I also like the purity of having it completely vanilla as it's the true game and true experience and with mods it just feels wrong to me for some reason

 I totally understand they have a small dev team and I have nothing but respect for them, just wishing we had more going on with the equator :3 I feel like palm trees should be fairly simple to implement and probably should have been there from the beginning.

I understand and it's a completely fair opinion man, I just have the exact opposite as I like to have a lot to do and don't care one bit about an experience being vanilla, I like playing my way and that's that. So I was curious as to your reasoning. Now since I mod a lot I can actually tell you that as far as the "Stone Age" animal collection or really any other mod that adds only animals and no changes to world generation has less than miniscule chance of corrupting anything in your save. As the animals aren't a block that is static in the world but an entity, if the entity gets removed nothing changes for the world.

Now the plants mods on the other hand are a problem, precisely because they add to the generation. All in all it's your choice if you'll give mods a try or just wait for official updates to add more content.

[Krougal]

17 minutes ago, Crunchy Chicken said:

I understand and it's a completely fair opinion man, I just have the exact opposite as I like to have a lot to do and don't care one bit about an experience being vanilla, I like playing my way and that's that. So I was curious as to your reasoning. Now since I mod a lot I can actually tell you that as far as the "Stone Age" animal collection or really any other mod that adds only animals and no changes to world generation has less than miniscule chance of corrupting anything in your save. As the animals aren't a block that is static in the world but an entity, if the entity gets removed nothing changes for the world.

Now the plants mods on the other hand are a problem, precisely because they add to the generation. All in all it's your choice if you'll give mods a try or just wait for official updates to add more content.

I can see op's point. I will use what I consider QOL & bugfix mods all day long, however it is extremely rare I use mods that add new content.

I'd never even consider the stone age mods since they aren't things I feel fit the vanilla theme and I just have no interest.

I am not knocking them or anyone who enjoys them by any means, they might be high quality content, but they are just not for me.

The same for what little I have seen of most of the other similar mods.

The devs will get to it eventually, but right now yes, the warmer regions are very lacking and could be considered "easy mode"

Edited September 11, 2025 by Krougal

[Echo Weaver]

In my heyday with that other block game, I maintained several games on different versions with entirely different modpacks to build totally different experiences. I intend to do that with VS, but VS has a vanilla storyline that I'm very interested in, and I think I'm always going to want a primary game that's Vanilla+ and allows me to continue to update. The fact that Dana held off updating Vanilla Variants to 1.21 in favor of a larger refactor already gave me trouble because upgrading your game to a ton of "?"s is not terribly fun.

I couldn't face the possibility of not having villages in VS, so I started my primary game with VS Villages, but then when I got in deep enough to feel the big mood/lore difference from MC, the villages seemed out of place, and I removed the mod. Now I have a couple of deserted villages on my map, and that kind of adds to the mood.

I really like the vanilla experience in VS, so it feels like a much bigger deal to put in big mods.

I view heavily-modded games as a way to build a totally new experience on top of the base game. A heavily-modded game may stay on the same version for a long time and really isn't going to try to track the vanilla story. I'm hoping to see updates to Fauna of the Stone Age because I have a modpack assembled for a prehistory/low-tech themed game that I'd like to try out, but we popped to 1.21 before I was ready, and I'd rather wait than start on 1.20. 

I also have spent years modding other games, and I'm all-to-aware of the kind of code quality and performance issues one faces when going the heavily-modded route. 

At any rate, there are a lot of avid snowball earth players who would like the game to build out arctic gameplay, and I agree we need to build out tropical gameplay too. It's just a matter of what they're prioritizing.

[Crunchy Chicken]

41 minutes ago, Krougal said:

I can see op's point. I will use what I consider QOL & bugfix mods all day long, however it is extremely rare I use mods that add new content.

I'd never even consider the stone age mods since they aren't things I feel fit the vanilla theme and I just have no interest.

I am not knocking them or anyone who enjoys them by any means, they might be high quality content, but they are just not for me.

The same for what little I have seen of most of the other similar mods.

The devs will get to it eventually, but right now yes, the warmer regions are very lacking and could be considered "easy mode"

I never said I disagree tho? I have the opposite viewpoint so I was curious as to op's reasoning. You could call it a professional preversion, I have a tendency to try and understand people's motivations and motives just for the sake of it. Not using any mods or only QOL mods is absolutely valid, it's part of what I love about modding. You can tweak it to your heart's content or skip altogether - and just play the game however you want.