World-gen option: Old-growth Forests

[Lakul]

One thing I'd love to see in the game are forest filled with massive trees--trees so ancient you can only imagine what stories they have to tell, their tall, shaded groves full of mysteries, opportunity (and danger!)

(plus, imagine the tree houses you could build!)

As it is, in base game most trees are relatively small compared to their real world counterparts. Even Redwood trees max out at only about half as high as they can get IRL.

Understandably having massive trees can be a resource hog, so I propose this be an option that can be toggled/adjusted for world-gen. Tree size would also be configurable. Another change that would be needed is for some trees to spawn in with 2x2 or even 3x3 width at the base, so you don't have a massive orb of leaves on top of a twig of a trunk.

If selected, most forests will consist of old growth the deeper in you go--on the edges you'll have normal-size trees, but as you go further the trees grow gigantic, their canopies tightly packed. These trees would only be available at world-gen. If you cut it down, while you may reap a bountiful harvest of wood, you'll never be able to get a tree to grow to similar size. Alternatively, using hefty amounts of compost (like 64+) on a sapling before it matures will allow it to grow to old-growth size.

Let me know what you think!

[LadyWYT]

I know that these do sort of already exist in the game, at least for oak trees. But I do agree, it would be nice to see some other variants on old growth forests as well.

[coolAlias]

They say we can never get old growth trees back once we cut them down, but what if we play our world to year 300+?

I've seen some fairly massive pine trees, but I agree trees in general should be larger.

[LadyWYT]

6 hours ago, coolAlias said:

They say we can never get old growth trees back once we cut them down, but what if we play our world to year 300+?

I've seen some fairly massive pine trees, but I agree trees in general should be larger.

I do think it would be a nice touch that some player-planted trees could turn into old growth trees if the player decides to play that world for 25-50 in-game years or so. That being said...I'm not sure that most players would play a world for that long, so I doubt that kind of detail is going to get added anytime soon.

[Dilan Rona]

Another option would be to let trees grow bigger over time. Takes x amount of days for a sapling to turn into a tree. Give it an x amount of days to get to the next stage of tree size, etc. Till its big enough to harvest later.

[FrogMouse]

I just wish there was a tree growing tool in creative. I love the way the huge trees look. Sometimes its the only thing missing from my build.

[Dilan Rona]

actually there is one. use the worldedit tools.

[Lakul]

44 minutes ago, FrogMouse said:

I just wish there was a tree growing tool in creative. I love the way the huge trees look. Sometimes its the only thing missing from my build.

Like Dilan said, there is a tree brush you can use! It’s how I made the screenshot, I just selected a tree type and set the sizes between 1.3-2, and boom, big trees! You can do some really big ones but they start to look ridiculous after a certain point (I mean giant, giant canopy in top of a teeny 1x1 trunk). To me they look natural up until 2.5 in size.

Edited 15 hours ago by Lakul

[Lakul]

13 hours ago, Dilan Rona said:

Another option would be to let trees grow bigger over time. Takes x amount of days for a sapling to turn into a tree. Give it an x amount of days to get to the next stage of tree size, etc. Till its big enough to harvest later.

 

On 3/13/2026 at 8:47 PM, LadyWYT said:

I do think it would be a nice touch that some player-planted trees could turn into old growth trees if the player decides to play that world for 25-50 in-game years or so. That being said...I'm not sure that most players would play a world for that long, so I doubt that kind of detail is going to get added anytime soon.

It’d be super cool if forests were dynamic like that, especially if they could drop their own saplings, but I’m not sure how that could be implemented without causing excessive lag. So my compromise would be feeding a sapling a ton of compost and maybe even a temporal gear so that once it matured you instantly get a bigger tree. Not realistic, but you’d have a way to access the bigger trees and even restore old-growth forests if you cut anything down.

Edited 15 hours ago by Lakul