World migration 1.21 to 1.22 when stable

[Rainbow Fresh]

I know, I know. Ages old question asked and answered about a million times in various forms. Person has played the game on a world they like very much in game version A (1.21.6) but a new version B (1.22) is looming on the horizon with cool new stuff that person would like to have, without losing their world. I have read around abit and know the general consensus of "should be doable", "worst case world-edit over your base on a fresh gen" and "if you play modded you're f-ed".

That's not what matters to me though. I will eventually update, and if I have to world edit my base over to a freshly generated world as a last resort option, so be it. What I am more interested in, is knowing what exactly updating a world between major game versions would technically entail.

To start off with, as a seasoned Minecraft player I am very well aware of the world generation border; the area past the already generated and explored chunks where new content will now generate, but there will be a hard cut in the world, potentially "transitioning" the deepest ocean into the sliced middle of a tall mountain, as the new version now uses a new world generation algorithm accounting for all the new things and so, even on the same world seed, generates a different outcome. Does Vintage Story also have this "issue", or is the world generator forgiving enough to smooth out the terrain between versions?

Next off, I am indeed "f-ed" as I am playing with a list of 50+ mods, most all of which I deem necessecary for general enjoyment of the game. I am aware that this means I will have to wait extra for all of them to update - if ever - before being allowed to play 1.22 after it releases into stable, and I will certainly need to ditch some of them (either abandoned or now obsolete due to vanilla mechanics). But assuming we reached the point where all still maintained and necessary mods are then up-to-date and I can do the big update, what do I need to expect? And what do I need to prepare? Purge my world of all modded entities? Missing textures after the update? How many things could need admin-power maintenance after the great update?

[LadyWYT]

3 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

Does Vintage Story also have this "issue", or is the world generator forgiving enough to smooth out the terrain between versions?

I think it was 1.21 that saw some changes to the world gen, and the devs went to some lengths to ensure that chunks would blend smoothly for players upgrading older worlds. That's not to say that something couldn't go wrong, mind you, just that precautions have been taken so the chunks should blend smoothly, assuming the world is vanilla or not otherwise using mods to alter terrain generation. If those kinds of mods are used, then it becomes a lot more dicey.

 

3 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

Next off, I am indeed "f-ed" as I am playing with a list of 50+ mods, most all of which I deem necessecary for general enjoyment of the game. I am aware that this means I will have to wait extra for all of them to update - if ever - before being allowed to play 1.22 after it releases into stable, and I will certainly need to ditch some of them (either abandoned or now obsolete due to vanilla mechanics). But assuming we reached the point where all still maintained and necessary mods are then up-to-date and I can do the big update, what do I need to expect? And what do I need to prepare? Purge my world of all modded entities? Missing textures after the update? How many things could need admin-power maintenance after the great update?

It really depends on the mods. Generally it's best to wait for mods to update before trying to update a modded world, but there's no guarantee they will be updated either. Older mods sometimes work fine on newer game versions, but it depends on what content the mod adds and what content was changed in the update. Depending on what content the mod adds, they can usually be safely removed mid-playthrough, with only ? blocks left over that can be deleted by breaking those blocks(creative usually works best for this). However, not all mods can be removed mid-playthrough, and removing even the "safe" mods typically isn't the best idea as that can create problems. Some mods will also have special instructions for updating them, so it's best to check the mod pages carefully.

Overall, the best advice I can give is to make sure you backup your world before updating, just in case something goes wrong. Make sure to test mods for older game versions on a special test world before adding them to your main world, in order to make sure those mods are working correctly. Also make sure to read each mod page carefully to see if there are any special instructions for how to update the mod and older worlds using that mod.

[Rainbow Fresh]

On 4/12/2026 at 4:54 AM, LadyWYT said:

assuming the world is vanilla or not otherwise using mods to alter terrain generation. If those kinds of mods are used, then it becomes a lot more dicey.

I am currently using the Watersheds mod for rivers, which till be replaced by native rivers in 1.22 afaik. So that's a problem then?

On 4/12/2026 at 4:54 AM, LadyWYT said:

Depending on what content the mod adds, they can usually be safely removed mid-playthrough, with only ? blocks left over that can be deleted by breaking those blocks(creative usually works best for this). However, not all mods can be removed mid-playthrough, and removing even the "safe" mods typically isn't the best idea as that can create problems.

Some mods will probably need to be removed though, as their intended additions/mechanics will be implemented as vanilla content in 1.22. Which brings me to another thought - the wiki has some information for past updates where manual block-remapping needed to be done via command to map old blocks to their newer version (probably when things got split into variants or variants combined into a single block). Can this work for transferring modded blocks to their new vanilla alternative too?

[LadyWYT]

4 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

I am currently using the Watersheds mod for rivers, which till be replaced by native rivers in 1.22 afaik. So that's a problem then?

Rivers aren't being implemented in 1.22, though the devs have made progress toward getting the game ready for them. Maybe in 1.23 they will be added.

As for the Watersheds mod, that could prove to be an issue in the future, depending on exactly how rivers are implemented in the game and what the mod author decides to do. For 1.22 though, it should be fine, since it seems to be getting updated regularly.

4 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

Some mods will probably need to be removed though, as their intended additions/mechanics will be implemented as vanilla content in 1.22. Which brings me to another thought - the wiki has some information for past updates where manual block-remapping needed to be done via command to map old blocks to their newer version (probably when things got split into variants or variants combined into a single block). Can this work for transferring modded blocks to their new vanilla alternative too?

Maybe, but that's outside my expertise. The best I can say is do some research on it, then make a backup and try it to see what happens. It might work, and it might not.

[Rainbow Fresh]

New, very technical question I got while reading around other random topics:

I haven't used one yet but considering being sent thousands of blocks away via translocator without a way to go back would be a death sentence and people had no real reason to use them, so I'm gonna assume translocators come in linked pairs. The question would then be - assuming I use a translocator but then, once updating to 1.22 wipe all generated chunk data outside of a specific radius (to keep new 1.22 world gen close-ish), which would wipe only the destination area of a translocator I have wandered through (I haven't yet, been holding back on using one for this very reason), would that break things?

 

EDIT: Welp, no need to find out anymore. Just gotta hope for... 21 mods to update and wait for about another 30 to stabilize on 1.22 stable.

Edited Tuesday at 08:39 PM by Rainbow Fresh
Oh no 1.22 is out

[Twilishewolf]

How did it go? My friend group is wondering about updating our server

[Rainbow Fresh]

4 hours ago, Twilishewolf said:

How did it go? My friend group is wondering about updating our server

It did not go yet, and probably won't for a while, cause about 95% of my mods aren't adapted for 1.22 stable.