Nature's Compass

The Nature's Compass is a biome-finding item added by the Nature's Compass mod, written by ChaosTheDude for NeoForge 1.21.1 (version 3.4.0). Holding the item and choosing a biome from its list starts a search of the world's climate layout. When the search succeeds, the compass points toward the biome and shows its distance, and the holder can keep searching for further instances of the same biome. A player cares about it because Fear Nightfall contains a very large number of biomes, many of them rare, and the compass is the quickest way to locate them.

Overview

The mod adds a single item, the compass itself, and the search screen that opens when it is used. It adds no blocks, mobs, structures, effects or enchantments. Its role in Fear Nightfall is that of a navigation aid for the pack's biome content, which comes mostly from other mods. The pack's biomes are listed in Biomes and the mods that supply them include Biomes O' Plenty, Terralith, Regions Unexplored, Sleepy Hollows and Hexerei. Many of these biomes are generated in very small areas, so the compass is the practical way to find them. Biome placement and rarity are summarised in Finding Structures and Biomes and World Generation.

Content

The mod contributes one item and two crafting recipes, described under Obtaining. The biomes it can find are not added by this mod; examples include:

• Rare overworld biomes: Floodplain, Hot Springs, Fractured Savanna and Gravel Desert.
• Horror biomes: Sleepy Hollows, Ominous Woods, Spider Nest, Willow Swamp, Bayou, Ashen Woodland, Blackwood Taiga, Dead Forest, Ashen Savanna, Infested Caves and Frostfire Caves.
• Other biomes: Tropics and the other biomes listed in Biomes.

The compass searches for biomes only. It does not locate structures. The pack's structure locators are separate items, including the Sanctum Compass for Sanctums, Furled Maps, and the Crystal Ball and Dowsing Rod, whose dowsing rod points to swamp and jungle biomes. For the creatures that appear in the pack's horror content, see Mobs and Horror and Spooky Content.

Mechanics

The compass has two states. An inactive compass shows no direction. When a search starts, the compass enters a searching state, and then becomes found or not found.

• Searching. The search runs in a background worker so the game does not stall. It samples the world's climate layout, the same layout that world generation uses, and so it reports the biomes that actually exist in the world, including biomes from datapacks. The search radius and sample spacing are set by the server configuration. The radius modifier is 2500 and the sample space modifier is 16, both multiplied by the size of the sought biome. A search takes at most 50,000 samples.
• Found. The compass stores the biome's coordinates and the search radius. The HUD overlay then shows a direction arrow. With the server configuration option displayCoordinates on, which is the default, the overlay also shows the exact coordinates and distance of the biome.
• Not found. If the search finds no matching biome within its radius, the compass reports that the biome could not be located.
• Next instance. After a successful search, the compass can search again for the next instance of the same biome. The configured limit is 25 next-searches (maxNextSearches). Setting the limit to 0 disables this and makes the compass always report the nearest instance.
• Choosing a biome. The search screen lists every biome in the world. A text field filters the list, and the list can be sorted by name, by source mod, by temperature, by rainfall, by dimension or by biome tags.
• Teleporting. The configuration option allowTeleport, which is on by default, lets a player in Creative mode, a server operator or a player in cheat mode teleport to the located biome. Survival players cannot use it.
• Biome blacklist. The configuration option biomeBlacklist accepts wildcard patterns of biome ids to exclude. It is empty in this pack, so no biome is excluded.

Changes to vanilla

The mod does not change how the vanilla compass works. It adds its item to the minecraft:compasses item tag, so any recipe or effect that accepts a compass through that tag also accepts a Nature's Compass. The vanilla compass remains the ingredient for the crafting recipe described below.

In Fear Nightfall

The pack's changes to the mod are small. The only change recorded for it is the crafting recipe: diamonds replace saplings in the four corners of the grid. The server configuration is otherwise the mod's defaults, with three exceptions that matter for play:

• Durability is off. compassDurability is 0, so the compass never breaks and never needs repair.
• Searches are free. defaultXpLevels is 0 and perBiomeXpLevels is empty. Each search costs no experience levels. The mod allows a maximum of 3 levels per search if the server changes these values.
• No biomes are blocked. biomeBlacklist is empty.

The compass is most useful for the pack's rarest biomes. Fear Nightfall weights several horror biomes at 6× in forests, taigas and swamps, which makes them common in those regions. The biomes that remain hard to find outside those regions, such as Floodplain and Hot Springs, are the ones where the compass is most needed.

Obtaining

The Nature's Compass is not generated naturally, does not appear in chest loot or mob drops, and is not sold by villagers. It can only be crafted.

Crafting

Nature's Compass · Crafting

Nature's Compass · Crafting

The main recipe is a 3×3 grid. Diamonds fill the four corners, any log fills the four edge positions, and a vanilla compass fills the centre. The pack uses diamonds in the corners, where the mod's own recipe uses saplings. The recipe is shown in the table above.

A second recipe, which is the repair recipe, combines a Nature's Compass with a vanilla compass to produce a Nature's Compass. It is a shapeless recipe. It matters only when durability is enabled, which it is not in this pack.

Usage

Starting a search

Right-clicking with the compass opens the biome search screen. Choosing a biome in the list and confirming starts the search. The search is free in this pack, so no experience levels are taken. The compass then displays the direction of the located biome, along with its coordinates and distance when that display option is on.

Finding further instances

Once a biome has been found, the compass can search for the next instance of the same biome from the current position. Each further search counts toward the limit of 25 next-searches.

Practical notes

• The compass is most effective for rare biomes. Common biomes, such as the forest and plains variants, rarely need a search.
• The teleport option requires Creative mode, operator status or cheat mode. Survival players must walk to the located position.