Welcome to Bordercraft: Expanded!

Bordercraft: Expanded is a large expansion of the 1.21.5 data pack, Bordercraft by NomisJonas made for 1.21.11+. Bordercraft: Expanded is also heavily inspired the 1.19.4 map, Border Hoarder by SimonDMC. I encourage players to check out both of these iterations of the concept if they're interested in the game.

So, what is Bordercraft: Expanded?

Bordercraft: Expanded is a data pack in which the player, or players can load into any world or seed of their choice and once activated, a 1x1 border will form around the player. From here, each unique item, unique advancement, unique mob kill, or unique structure found will expand the border and give the player access to more of their world.

The additions of advancements, mob kills, and structures expanding the border are exclusive to Bordercraft: Expanded and were added to make sure every seed could be played out to it's fullest extent no matter the spawn.

Bordercraft: Expanded has a few built in safeguards to make the experience better for the players. To start, the border will never start the players in any ocean biome, a river, a beach, or a stony shore. These biomes were almost always unenjoyable, or even impossible to play.

Additionally, a 5 item safeguard was added to make more seeds playable in general. When players begin, if the first 6 items they break are either all dirt (related), or all sand, then every single one of these blocks will prompt a border expansion. This allows for desert spawns, or plains spawns to be more frequently playable. If the player breaks their item chain with these blocks, the safeguard is promptly stopped. For example, if the first two blocks the players mine in a new world are both dirt, then these will both expand the border, but if an oak log in mined next, then the players will be unable to get any more free border expansions from the safeguard.

Bordercraft: Expanded Function Commands

To begin your Bordercraft: Expanded world, make sure the data pack is properly installed and enabled, and make sure cheats are enabled (preferably for all players). For those unfamiliar with how to install data packs, here is a video: How To Add Data Packs to Minecraft 1.21+. Once this is done and you've loaded into your world/seed of choice, use the following command to begin:

/function bordercraft:activate

Now that you've begun your Bordercraft: Expanded world, you have a few more functions that you might find useful. The first one to note is the Bordercraft: Expanded UI which can be accessed using the command:

/function bordercraft:ui

The Bordercraft: Expanded UI will tell you what items/mob kills/structures you have and haven't gotten yet and have those categories divided into separate lists (advancements wasn't included since it already has a built-in UI). You can filter Bordercraft: Expanded UI by the unique things you have gotten (Obtained) and the unique things you haven't (Missing) using buttons built into the UI. By default, the UI shows you everything and allows you to scroll multiple pages to see more of your progress.

Multiplayer:

Bordercraft: Expanded Can be played in both singleplayer and multiplayer with as many players as you'd like. The border can only be expanded once from any method, no matter how many players there are. For those playing in multiplayer, I recommend having everyone join the world before the data pack is activated for the first time, but adding new players midway through a world should integrate them smoothly into the gameplay without issue. Additionally, playing in multiplayer gives the player access to the command:

/function bordercraft:leaderboard

This function brings up the leaderboard, which will show the number of unique expansions obtained by each player, as well as the expansions they've obtained in each category.

Categories and Scoreboard:

Bordercraft Expanded includes a global scoreboard that shows how many unique items, unique advancements, unique mob kills, unique structures, and bosses have been achieved by the players. There are currently a total of 1675 unique items that can expand the border, which includes every type, duration, and strength of potion, as well as every enchanted book of every level. This should theoretically be every obtainable item in survival Minecraft. There are currently 125 unique advancements which matches the number of base Minecraft, all of which expand the border. There are currently 62 mob kills which will award the player with expanding the border, which excludes a list of 26 mobs that my girlfriend didn't want to reward a player for killing, so I didn't put them in the base game. However, HYPOTHETICALLY, if someone wanted to include that list of 26 mobs in the game to reward the player when killed, then they can use the command:

/function bordercraft:enableallmobkills

This function will increase the maximum number of mobs that expand the border to the maximum number in the game, so that you get rewarded for killing every unique mob in the game and will have those mobs now show up on the UI so the player can see if they've killed them or not.

As mentioned above, the scoreboard also displays structures found. There are a total of 22 structures that expand the border size, including every unique type of village. Unique structures are different in that they expand the border 10x the amount than any other achievement would.

Last part of the scoreboard is the Bosses. Bosses are unique in Bordercraft: Expanded in that they will always reward the player with a border expansion when killed no matter how many times they've been killed. This theoretically means that players could obtain an infinite Bordercraft: Expanded world, but they can only do it by killing either the Ender Dragon, Wither, or Warden repeatedly.

The last command that players may find useful is

/function bordercraft:percentcomplete

Pretty simply, this function gives the player the percent of unique achievements they've completed out of all of the possible achievements (items/advancements/mob kills/structures).

With that, you're ready to play Bordercraft: Expanded! I hope you have fun and feel free to comment about any improvements/bugs you've found and would like to be resolved. Anyone looking to make content on this is welcome to do so as long as they give credit and provide the link to this page for others to enjoy.

Disclaimer:

AI was used in the creation of this data pack. By no means do I endorse the use of AI to replace the creative process, but it was an integral tool in bug fixing and the writing of many repetitious lines of code.