Natural Philosophy

Natural Philosophy replaces and overhauls Minecraft biome decoration, integrating newer blocks and features into older biomes while keeping some of the essence of Minecraft biome decoration. It extends upon Minecraft's ideas without entirely supplanting or replacing them, while integrating new content and new biome features into a holistic Overworld biome overhaul.

Built around the concept that most Minecraft biome decoration is sparse, empty, and lacking in sub-biome variation, Natural Philosophy aims to accurately represent ecosystems that could have developed in each biome. Rather than following the Minecraft biome philosophy and producing new variations on its lackluster style, or breaking with it entirely and integrating excess hand-built detail, Natural Philosophy aims to thread the needle and provide environments full of subtle detail.

Terrain profile is unchanged from the Minecraft default; Natural Philosophy focuses on adapting biome decoration rather than terrain. For a more natural look, a combination of Deeper Oceans and Continents is suggested to increase ocean depth and make oceans more distinct from standard biomes.

Compatibility Notes

It is not recommended to use Natural Philosophy alongside other mods that add features to or overhaul single or multiple Minecraft biomes, such as Project: Vibrant Journeys, Geophilic, or Biome Makeover. Overlapping content, incompatible replacements, or other issues are likely.

Natural Philosophy does not change biomes from other mods; those mods which are installed alongside it that use Terrablender, Lithostitched, or Biolith will not see their biomes modified, except for several widely-applicable changes to riparian sediment and cliffs. How modded biomes are sorted inside of these features can be controlled via tags in the naturalphilosophy:worldgen/biome/cliffs/ and naturalphilosophy:worldgen/biome/sediment/ folders.

Compatibility with datapacks that modify Minecraft biomes is not guaranteed, and not supported. Datapacks that add new biomes or change terrain should be compatible directly upon install; those that change terrain profile such as Tectonic or Larion are not incompatible but may cause some features to not generate.

Datapacks that modify existing features such as minecraft:flower_plain or minecraft:oak_bees_005 are likely incompatible. Natural Philosophy replaces the vegetation features of most biomes, and only certain features that are commonly modified (minecraft:flower_meadow) are generated unmodified.

Inspirations

Geophilic is similar to Natural Philosophy but hews more closely to the Minecraft decoration style.
Project Vibrant Journeys is focused on adding block-based decoration features.
Stony Cliffs Are Cool adds stone cliffs to steep surfaces on generation.
Simple Snowy Fix adds snow spawning and ice spawning underneath trees.

Other inspirations come from too many biome mods to count. A selected list for some features of note can be found in the notes directory, alongside previous and future plans for the mod.

Simple Snowy Fix and Stony Cliffs are Cool are integrated into Natural Philosophy and need not be included alongside.