i was thinking about the reindeer mounts that were added, and it got me thinking... how cool would an update to the plains type biomes be? you could add horses as the next tamable animal, there could be a tweak to the fire system to make plains fires a thing, like maybe rain and lightning are super rare on the plains but when lightening does strike it causes a fire, then have some type of check system where if the fire is in the plains and it was caused by lightening, the game makes it rain after like 15 to 30 minutes. People would be fighting for survival against an unstoppable inferno trying to save their homes and then the rain would come pouring down and put out the fires, it would make players have to think about building fire ditches and there would be all sorts of changes to people's survival strategies to be able to live on the plains... for instance with the lack of rain and low Nutrients of the plains (have plains always have low fertility) it would make farming conventional crops in the game extremely difficult they would either have to travel large distances to get the fertile soil or... they could grow Corn, that's right the perfect plains crop... make it take way less water and have it able to grow at a normal speed between stages despite how poor the nutrients in the soil are, the balance for it could be a long overall grow length, it could greatly lower all three nutrient types in the soil it's in, and have a low yield. the corn itself eaten like a vegetable could be poor in nutrition, but if turned into flour it could be in between the value of flax and a better grain. This would encourage large corn farms akin to the kinds found on the great plains. Or there is an alternative to building a farm, the Buffalo. they could spawn in a "herd" of ten or so Buffalo and they could be programmed to not stay in the same chunk for longer than 3 days to make them "migrate" then you could have them set to roam until they reached a certain temperature range. They would turn around to keep them on the plains or only in Biomes close enough in temperature, these would be the akin to the Bisons that would live in woodland areas. you could link their preferred temperature range to the month of the year, so they adjust for seasons... with horses added and the ability to fire arrows off horse back and with the migrating herds of buffalo, you could RP as a nomadic native American from the great plains. you could add in "native" saddles that are crude, maybe have a speed penalty applied to the animal or the rider could fall of randomly with it being a rare chance. The "great plains" would be a separate type of biome than a regular plain, they could span a lot further distances and have vastly different wildlife, and while the regular plains are teeming with wild crops the Great plains would be a sea of up to two block tall grass and hardly any crops besides corn, some root crops and really hardy grains. Two new mobs, one new crop, one new item and a new form of biome would greatly change the game in my opinion, but the biome itself adds in tons of new things that could be added in by you or the modders.
