Custom Biomes

## An Explorer's Dream

In addition to the biomes offered by the base-game, there are many biomes across the server's world inspired by the seemingly ancient Biomes O' Plenty mod. Rhapsody has several custom biomes built by Bunny with the help of world-shaping tools.

## Creation

Often, new biomes sprout across Rhapsody when Bunny is undoubtedly in one of their more creative moods. They can appear anywhere globally, but currently they are limited to the overworld.

Each custom biome begins as a very typical biome you would expect to find on any vanilla Minecraft server. Then, if the biome happens to be a good candidate for the process, it will be essentially mowed down, terraformed, and transformed. The features of the new biome will replace the naturally generated ones, usually with hand-built structures, custom trees, terrain, and even new mobs. With the use of world edit, it is possible to change the atmosphere of these areas completely by setting the region to other biome types with attributes closest to the ideal of the new biome.

## Reasoning

These places are created with love for all players to enjoy on the server- whether you're are headed there to build in a unique location or just to enjoy some of the different resources a specific biome offers, everyone is allowed to treat these biomes the exact same as naturally generated ones. It is not considered grief to take from them.

The main reason beyond pure explorational enjoyment lies in the nostalgia these locations bring to those who enjoyed Minecraft's golden age of modding. Many folks may still recall the excitement of loading up a modded world to find unique, foreign, yet comfortable biomes that could be endlessly found throughout their generated worlds when any biome generation related mod was employed. This combination of unfamiliarity with hominess brings truly special feelings to the front of any player's mind, whether they remember or appreciate such modifications to the vanilla game or not.

Another recognized motive of the creation of these locations is to inspire the players to explore, despite such a small overworld.

## Current Findable Biomes

### Candyland

Characterized by brilliant cotton candy colors mixed together over bright pink terrain. Here you can find lollipop plants, cotton candy bushes, plenty of blue and pink sheep, and dozens of candy-blue twisting vines. It is the only custom biome that will send you a notification in chat when you're approaching it. The notification reads "*The air smells a bit sweet...*" in pink letters.

There is no warp to this biome, though it is blatantly visible on Rhapsody's spawn map due to it's bright candy colors, showcased at the welcome center for all to visit. To get here, you must travel on foot. This is the case with many custom biomes, as most are not directly accessible through warps.

### Toxic Sludge Swamp

An idea directly from the discord server's #suggestions channel, this biome came into existence around the same time as the Volcano, Ancient forest, and Mushroom inland biomes.

Scattered across an absolutely hazardous looking landscape, you can find plenty of giant spines and ribcages amongst slimy, radioactive appearing sludge. You will notice some decay in the form of sculk veins, as well as perfectly dead trees accompanied by unnaturally green, semi-transparent glowing mushrooms. The only living inhabitants appear to be neon green radioactive sheep.

Despite this biome's gnarly, hazardous appearance, none of the water or land is harmful for you to stand on or swim in.

### Glacier

This was one of Rhapsody's very first custom biomes, inspired by the penguin filled glaciers that can be found in the Twilight Forest Dimension within Benematic's Twilight Forest mod. This is one of the most notable custom biomes on the server due to its close proximity to spawn and its status as an outpost.

Surrounded by a large snowy expanse and some frozen ocean, a giant, thick wall of ice stands towering over Glacial Outpost, making it one of the only custom biomes accessible via warp. This biome is characterized by it's icy, ragged terrain and towering spruce trees near the glacier itself. Common inhabitants are white rabbits, pumpkin-lacking snowmen, polar bears, and, for some reason, frogs. At night, husks are known to spawn here as well.

### Volcano

One of the more alarming biomes to come across in the overworld is the volcano- one of which exists nestled just southwest of Milkyway Commune, neighboring a giant mesa plateau. Here you'll find crispy trees scattered across an ashy desert where embers and smoke cloud the atmosphere above you. Fire and copious amounts of lava are common across the landscape, easily keeping blazes that inhabit the area feeling right at home. Traversing this area is difficult primarily due to the treacherous steepness of the volcano itself, and long term dwelling here is not advised- but the ashy ground can be harvested for the creation of black concrete... Just be careful where you dig.

### Floral Meadow

Created specifically for Rhapsody's 2023 spring event: "Town Together", this biome features all things spring. It is heavily inspired by the Biomes O' Plenty Flower Island biome, and it is among the few custom biomes that can be accessed via warp, due to its event location status.

Giant subtly glowing flowers of red, yellow, and white tower over a windswept meadow filled to the brim with every kind of flower you can imagine. You can find some bamboo scattered about in the most verdant areas. Pink sheep are common here, as well as chickens- which may be a callback to Biomes O' Plenty Rosesters.

### Enchanted Forest

Another Twilight Forest mod inspired biome can be found in close proximity to spawn near the Event Arena behind Queen Bumble & Bunny's maze. While this biome cannot be warped to, it can be very easily located. It is the only biome created with the help of Queen Bumble, and features some interesting secrets hidden by her. The smallish biome is shadowed by a replica of a Twilight Forest Lich Tower structure.

Here you can spot trees reminiscent of the canopy trees found in the twilight forest dimension, which, regrettably, Rhapsody does not have. Among these custom lantern-filled trees are large mushrooms, and thick foliage. Some spore blossoms and glow lichen can be spotted hanging from the leaves of the trees.

### Mushroom Inland

The continental counterpart from the naturally spawning mushroom island biome which features much larger mushrooms in more plentiful amounts.

Just like a regular mushroom island you may come across in the ocean, the mushroom inland is covered with slightly off-putting purple mycelium and populated by plenty of mushroom cows. The most notable differences between the two biomes are that the inland is land-locked, and its flora is much larger. You might also notice the addition of glow berries and glow lichen commonly above ground in this area.

### Ancient Forest

This biome was inspired greatly by the custom trees that the Realistic Terrain Generation mod used to offer. Those trees are somewhat mimicked in this vast, expansive biome. It is currently one of the largest custom biomes on the server.

Lilacs are known to spawn plentifully around the darkened, lush grass. The terrain is somewhat hilly and turbulent in some areas of the biome, but often flat across the majority of the landscape. Between the giant oak trees that are endlessly common here, you will find giant mushrooms, several types of flowers (including those that the sniffer may unearth seeds for), and many natural large oaks. The lush canopy above the ancient forest blocks out a significant amount of sunlight, allowing for lots of hostile mobs to easily thrive here.

### Ominous Woods

Inspired greatly by a Biomes O' Plenty biome by the same name, this densely wooded, shadowy area makes a fantastic home for mobs at all hours of the day. Besides a few scattered birch trees on the forest floor, massive trees of two different variants can be found here. The larger of which sports leaves semi-lit by glow lichen, which helps very little with navigation, as they are too far off of the ground to do anything but make you eerily aware of just how many towering trees surround you.

Be wary here, as wither skeletons naturally spawn in the area. In addition, you are somewhat likely to experience a darkness effect if you stay in the forest for too long. As if traversing this biome couldn't get any more challenging, the wither roses that surround the bases of the huge trees can take a lot from you if you aren't careful.

This custom biome does however have a few exceptionally redeeming qualities, and can be rewarding to explore if you know what to look for.

### Neapolitan Mesa

Inspired by the classic ice-cream treat, this biome looks all too sweet to be as hot as the regular mesa biome that can be found nearby. It has similar features as naturally generated mesas, but in place of Dorito-cheese dust colored sand, the sand is just regular sand instead. The regular sand really adds to the vanilla ice-cream vibe on the top layer of the mesa.

Following the top "vanilla" layer of white terracotta is a "strawberry" layer of pink terracotta, followed by a "chocolate" brown terracotta layer. It looks good enough to eat.

## Artificially Placed Vanilla Biomes

Like custom biomes, some biomes on Rhapsody are manually built within the overworld. This is often due to players' lack of access to the naturally generated variants because of their distant proximity to spawn. Furthermore, as Rhapsody's overworld was generated in 1.16, some of the biomes that exist in the latest version cannot be naturally located, and instead have to be placed manually for players to explore within the border instead.

Unlike custom biomes, these biomes have nothing unordinary that you would not find in a naturally generated area, and they are created with the intent to mimic natural generation. They often replace common biomes like forests, plains, or swamps, depending on which terrain would be less demanding to imitate the terraforming of the intended biome. All artificially placed biomes replace biomes vacant of player made structures, but players will often build in or around them once post construction.

### Mangrove Swamp

After the 1.19 update, this mangrove swamp was hastily built to replace a regular swamp so that residents of the server could easily find and collect the new resources associated with the update.

### Ice Spikes

Previously, no ice spikes biome within Rhapsody's world border existed. Bunny remedied that by building an insufferably tiny one over a previously forested area. They built the area almost exclusively by hand as the server's very first custom biome. It can be found left of spawn, leading to Glacial Outpost.

### Meadow

Replacing a regular plains biome at the foot of a sizable mountain near the southwest world border, a lush meadow now sits full of structures. Shortly after the biome's creation, it became home to Pumpkin Town. This makes it the only artificially placed biome that can be accessed by warp.

### Cherry Blossom Grove

Like many other manually placed biomes, this cherry blossom grove was born overtop a common plains biome drained of any surface ponds. Because this biome was built in the span of ten minutes using world edit, the tree feller plugin does not take any trees in this particular forest down instantaneously like it would in other parts of the server. This "issue" remains unresolved mostly to deter folks who happen to be eager enough to deforest the entire area to collect the pink wood, which is found scarcely throughout the rest of the server. Visitors who plan to do logging must cut the trees here the regular way, without the aid of any plugins to speed through the process.

## Future plans

Biomes and structures are perpetually being considered and built for Rhapsody. Undoubtedly, this list will continue to grow as more updates come out that include new resources that the residents of the server will be looking to collect.