Guides · The world

Biomes and lands

Every world is made from its own seed, so no two are alike, but they all share the same lands. You start in the calm middle lands. Far from them lie the burned wastes of the Firstfolk Wastes, the old home of the Firstfolk, and four wild lands where the elements fled, together called the Elemental World.

The middle lands

Biome	What it looks like	What you find there	At night
Plains	Open grass, flowers, wide and round oaks	Wild carrots and potatoes, pumpkins, melons, cabins	The Waned, Slagcasters, Rivenmaws
Forest	Great oaks on twin trunks, round oaks and birches, their crowns heaped on branches	Hedgeberry bushes, red and brown mushrooms, melons, cabins	The Waned, Slagcasters, Rivenmaws
Pine woods	Tall pines, cornflowers	Pine logs, hedgeberries, mushrooms, cabins	The Waned, Slagcasters, Rivenmaws
Desert	Sand over sandstone, cactus	Desert temples with gold in their chests	Mostly the Dustwaned, which do not burn by day
Snowy lands	Snowy turf, frozen lakes, drift snow	Igloos, snowberries, frost crystal ore	Mostly the Rimewaned, whose hits chill
Mountains	Bare stone peaks, snow and hard ice on top	Exposed ore in the cliffs, frost crystal ore	The Waned, Slagcasters, Rivenmaws

Drift snow in the snowy lands is soft: you sink into it, and standing in it too long starts to freeze you (not on Easy). Hard Ice and Deep Ice are slippery. Water at sea level freezes over in the snow.

Seas

Out past the spawn lands lie seas, five to nine hundred blocks across: a beach, a shelf of clear shallows, then deep blue water some sixteen blocks down to a bed of sand, gravel and clay. Where the land is snowy, the sea freezes over. A boat crosses one in a minute or two. /locate sea gives the way to the nearest (single player and operators).

Seas come only to land nobody had built in: in a world from before them, all the land near anything anyone built stays as it was, and the seas lie further out.

Places with chests

• Cabins (plains, forest, pine woods): food, seeds, torches, a stone pickaxe now and then.
• Desert temples: gold ingots, copper, sometimes Dawnspar or a Sun Carrot.
• Igloos (snow): snowballs, snowberries, frost crystals, baked potatoes, sometimes an iron pickaxe.
• Dungeons, buried between about Y −12 and Y −72: iron, gold, coal, bread, sometimes Dawnspar, obsidian or iron gear.

Chests in all four can hold the first five Torn Pages. The first chest you open in the middle lands always holds Page I.

Wrecks and ruins

• Fishing Cutters lie sunk in lakes at least 8×8 and 3 deep, about one lake in four and never two within 200 blocks of each other. The broken mast stands two or three blocks out of the water: that is the place to dive. The chest in the hold has fish, Seamcord, iron, driftwood, often a Recipe Scrap, and in one Cutter in three a Live Heart.
• Firstfolk Reliquaries stand on open land, about one in every 1024 by 1024 blocks and never near the world spawn: a broken ring of eight pale pillars, some capped in brass, round a stair down to a small sealed vault. The vault chest holds gold, two Recipe Scraps, sometimes wanestone or Dawnspar, and always a Live Heart. The stone can’t be mined and the land can’t be claimed, so the next player finds it whole.

A heart chest gives every player one Live Heart, the first time each of them opens it, so friends exploring together each get their own. Use a Live Heart to take it in: one more shard of life for good, filled at once and kept when you die, up to five (15 shards; Earth Leggings still add 10 on top). Live Hearts sit at the end of the medallion’s ring as gold-rimmed shards. Once you have five, a sixth can’t be used, but it can be given to a friend.

Wrecks and Reliquaries appear in land generated from now on, in older worlds too; land you have already built on stays as it was.

Underground: what lies at which depth

Turn on Coordinates (Settings > Comfort) to see your height, the Y number. Sea level is Y 3; the world goes down to unbreakable Rootrock at about Y −104. Ores sit in veins, and each kind only appears below a certain depth:

Ore	Where	Pickaxe needed	Drops
Coal	From just under the surface down to Y −60	Wooden	Coal
Copper	Under the surface down to Y −30	Stone	Copper ore (smelt it)
Iron	Under the surface down to Y −95	Stone	Iron ore (smelt it)
Frost crystal	Snowy lands and mountains, above Y −40	Iron	1-2 frost crystals
Gold	Below Y −32	Iron	Gold ore (smelt it)
Dawnspar	Below Y −64	Iron	Dawnspar
Wanestone	Below Y −80	Dawnspar	Wanestone

Below about Y −40 the stone turns to slate, which is harder and drops Cobbled Slate. Below Y −86, basalt and obsidian mix in. Below the wanestone, deeper still, a rarer ore waits for a wanestone pickaxe.

Caves hold the Waned, Slagcasters and Rivenmaws at any hour, and Gloops below Y −20. Under water you have fifteen seconds of air; a ring of bubbles round the crosshair counts it down.

Caves

Under the middle lands the stone is hollow. Tunnels wind down from ravines and pits into caverns, and the deeper you go, the older and stranger the rock becomes. Where a ravine opens to the sky, shafts of daylight fall into the dark.

• Fangs. Rock spikes hang from cave ceilings and rise from floors, thick in some caverns. They never block your way, and a pickaxe breaks them.
• Glowcaps. Mushrooms whose caps glow a cool teal. They grow in patches on cave floors and are often the only light you will find.
• Rivenrock. Below the slate, from about Y −55, the rock darkens to rivenrock, cracked through by the Riving. It mines like slate and breaks into Cobbled Slate.
• Lake chambers. Some caverns hold a still lake under a domed roof, between about Y −16 and Y −40, with water falling into it from a crack in the roof. Far deeper, around Y −70 and below, the lakes are lava, ringed with basalt and magma blocks that burn whoever stands on them.

Wonders

At most one wonder lies in any 96 by 96 blocks of land, and most stretches have none.

• Glowcap gardens. A cavern grown over with moss, its floor thick with glowcaps.
• Geodes. Between about Y −48 and Y −78: a basalt shell around a pale layer and walls of faceted riftstone, hollow inside, with violet riftshards glowing on the floor. A cave that runs through one leaves it cracked open.
• The Firstfolk gallery. Between about Y −20 and Y −42: a long hall of brick and polished stone under a slate vault, with two rows of pillars, some broken. At one end the roof has fallen in. At the other, on the dais, two lanterns still burn.

Coming back up

• Glowcap light keeps creatures from rising within 4 blocks; a torch keeps them off 7. See torchlight.
• Place torches on one side of every tunnel you take: the way back is the side with the light.
• Lava fills the lowest caves, below about Y −86, as well as the deep lava lakes. Dig down beside your feet, never straight under them.
• A block in the way stops anything that follows you.

The Firstfolk Wastes

In the east lies what the Riving left of the Firstfolk homeland: scrap plains and rust-rock mesas under a sky of permanent smoggy dusk, with low ground flooded by black pitch. Broken fallen giants lie across the plains with chests inside them, and ruins hold more. The way there is for you to find.

• Wrights wander at every hour. They keep their distance and fire a laser for 3 shards, and they can miss. They drop iron, sometimes tungsten, and one time in five a Thrumcore.
• Tungsten ore is in the rust rock. Smelted, a tungsten ingot does two things: it makes the second-best tools and armour, and it calms a Wright. Hold an ingot and right click a Wright within five blocks to tame it; up to three follow you, fight for you and travel with you. Press G for squad orders: Follow, Guard (keep watch where you stand) or Collect (bring you dropped items).
• Pitch fuels the thrumpack, and you can drown in it just like water. A bucket carries it.
• Acid lies in small green pools on the dry wasteland. It glows faintly at night and hurts a shard a second while you stand in it (half on Easy, half again in a full set of tungsten armour). Wrights and the Titan wade through it unharmed. It never eats blocks or dropped items, and where it touches water it turns to Rust Rock. A bucket carries it.
• The Titan wakes at raised metal altars with glowing pillars, about one in every 256 by 256 blocks. A held compass points to the nearest altar. See the Keepers guide.

Lens Foundries

One Lens Foundry stands in each 1024 by 1024 block square of the wasteland: a ruined Firstfolk grinding hall, 31 blocks long, with acid channels down its floor and a great cracked lens at its far end. Three Brass Wardens wake as you come near: slow, heavy, and their raised fist means get clear. Draw one more than 20 blocks from its post and it turns back. Beaten, the three return after 10 minutes. In single player, /locate foundry names the nearest.

The vault before the lens stays sealed while a Warden stands. Each player opens it once and keeps their own find: Tungsten Ingots, a Live Heart, sometimes a Recipe Scrap, and in one vault in five the Lensmaker’s Monocle, an earned look. More in the Forests and the Deep update.

The Cinderwrack

Here and there the scrap gives way to the Cinderwrack, where the Firstfolk city burned on the White Night: a crust of black basalt, drifts of ash and glazes of fused obsidian, broken by glowing magma vents that burn whoever stands on them. The city’s towers still stand in it, blackened, a dead lamp in some. Brass Wardens walk it far more often than the open scrap: one roamer in three. In single player, /locate cinderwrack names the nearest.

The Siphonworks

Deep under the wasteland lie the Siphonworks, the halls the Firstfolk cut to draw the Crystal’s light down to their city. An adit climbs from the scrap down to a pump hall around the great siphon, with plated conduits running off it. Most lamps are dead, acid runs in channels down the floors, and Wrights rise in the dark down there. A chest waits at the siphon’s foot, tungsten shows in the conduit walls, and now and then the rarest ore in the hall’s. In single player, /locate siphonworks points to the nearest adit.

Gloomseer Lenses, made with tungsten and a Thrumcore (one Wright in five drops one), are worn in place of a helmet. Within 14 blocks they show the creatures that walk in the dark through the stone between you, as violet shapes: never players, never bosses, and nothing standing in torchlight. A Thrumcore also burns in a Forge as long as three coal.

A compass in your hand deflects half the Wright lasers that hit you, sending half their power back. A full set of tungsten armour makes you immune to them.

The Elemental World

When the Crystal shattered, Water, Fire, Earth and Wind fled into four lands "folded away where no map reaches". Nothing in the game says how to get there; the torn pages hint. Once there, the four lands sit side by side in regions a few hundred blocks wide, each with its own sky, its own monsters at every hour, and one temple at its centre where a Keeper is chained.

Land	Element	What it is like	Roaming monsters
The Frosted Lands	Water	Glaciers, snow ridges over permafrost, ice spikes, frozen lakes, ice caves, ice ruins with chests, rimeiron ore	Rimewaned, Shellbacks, Slagcasters, Water Gloops
The Volcano	Fire	Basalt and volcanic ash, lava lakes, smoking cones; magma blocks burn whoever stands on them	Dustwaned, Slagcasters, Fire Gloops
The Overgrown Jungle	Earth	Moss, giant jungle trees, swampy pools, berries and melons	Rivenmaws, the Waned, Earth Gloops
The Cloud Kingdom	Wind	A sea of clouds you can walk on, skystone islands overhead, and a very long fall below	Shard-Halo Archers, Slagcasters, Wind Gloops

A Shellback’s brow-plate lets only a quarter of a blow through: strike the split in its shell behind, where a blow lands double. A Shard-Halo Archer keeps its distance; when its halo of shards stops turning, it is about to shoot. A Gloop here carries its land’s element in its touch: Water chills, Fire burns, Earth knocks you back, Wind throws you up.

Rimeiron, the gem of the Frosted Lands, needs a Dawnspar pickaxe. Rimeiron tools are among the strongest, and every hit chills (slows) what it strikes. Jungle logs make boards like any other log. Wind Boots, from the Tempest's ore, remove fall damage, which matters a great deal above the clouds.

Each land has its own music, and the Songstone files those songs under "Far lands". The Keepers and their temples are covered in the Keepers guide.

Next: Creatures. All sections: the guides.