# 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 **Robotic World**, the old home of the Vael, 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, the odd oak | Wild carrots and potatoes, pumpkins, melons, cabins | Hollows, Bonewalkers, Crawlers |
| Forest | Dense oak and birch | Hedgeberry bushes, red and brown mushrooms, melons, cabins | Hollows, Bonewalkers, Crawlers |
| Pine woods | Tall pines, cornflowers | Pine logs, hedgeberries, mushrooms, cabins | Hollows, Bonewalkers, Crawlers |
| Desert | Sand over sandstone, cactus | Desert temples with gold in their chests | Mostly Dust Hollows, which do not burn by day |
| Snowy lands | Snowy turf, frozen lakes, drift snow | Igloos, snowberries, frost crystal ore | Mostly Frostbitten, whose hits chill |
| Mountains | Bare stone peaks, snow and hard ice on top | Exposed ore in the cliffs, frost crystal ore | Hollows, Bonewalkers, Crawlers |

![A forest in the middle lands from above: dense oak and birch, and a cabin among the trees.](https://riventale.world/guides/img/biome-forest.webp)

*A forest. Cabins hide among the trees, with chests inside.*

![Snowy lands in the middle lands: snowy turf and tall pines under a blue sky.](https://riventale.world/guides/img/biome-snow.webp)

*The snowy lands. Drift snow is soft, and standing in it too long starts to freeze you.*

**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.

### Places with chests

- **Cabins** (plains, forest, pine woods): food, seeds, torches, a stone pickaxe now and then.
- **Desert temples:** gold ingots, copper, sometimes Dawnstone 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 Dawnstone, 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

![A Vael Reliquary on open grassland: pale pillars capped in brass round a stair down.](https://riventale.world/ui/whatsnew/reliquary.webp)

*A Vael Reliquary. The stair leads down to a sealed vault.*

- **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, string, iron, driftwood, often a Recipe Scrap, and in one Cutter in three a Live Heart.
- **Vael 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 moonstone or Dawnstone, 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 heart for good, filled at once and kept when you die, up to five (15 hearts; Earth Leggings still add 10 on top). Live Hearts sit at the end of your heart row with a gold rim. 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 Worldstone 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) |
| Dawnstone | Below Y −64 | Iron | Dawnstone |
| Moonstone | Below Y −80 | Dawnstone | Moonstone |

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 moonstone, deeper still, a rarer ore waits for a moonstone pickaxe.

Caves hold Hollows, Bonewalkers and Crawlers at any hour, and **Gloops** below Y −20. Bring torches to see, and wall off side tunnels you are not exploring. Under water you have fifteen seconds of air; bubbles above the hunger bar count it down.

## The Robotic World

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

- **Robots** wander at every hour. They keep their distance and fire a laser for 3 hearts, and they can miss. They drop iron, and sometimes tungsten.
- **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 robot. Hold an ingot and right click a robot 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).
- **Oil** fuels the jetpack, 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 heart a second while you stand in it (half on Easy, half again in a full set of tungsten armour). Robots 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 Robot 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](https://riventale.world/guides/keepers/#the-robot-titan).

A compass in your hand deflects half the robot 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, glacite ore | Frostbitten, Bonewalkers |
| The Volcano | Fire | Basalt and volcanic ash, lava lakes, smoking cones; magma blocks burn whoever stands on them | Dust Hollows, Bonewalkers |
| The Overgrown Jungle | Earth | Moss, giant jungle trees, swampy pools, berries and melons | Crawlers, Hollows, Gloops |
| The Cloud Kingdom | Wind | A sea of clouds you can walk on, skystone islands overhead, and a very long fall below | Bonewalkers |

Glacite, the gem of the Frosted Lands, needs a Dawnstone pickaxe. Glacite 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](https://riventale.world/guides/keepers/).

Next: [Effects and food](https://riventale.world/guides/effects/). All sections: [the guides](https://riventale.world/guides/).

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