Risen-Server — Waystone Network Changelog

This update is for a new Waystone datapack that greatly increases Waystone availability. If you don't like them or don't use them you don't need this update. 

Documents non-default values and datapack additions applied to make waystones read as a connected network rather than a sparse utility.

Two separate mechanisms are in play, and both are required — changing one alone does nothing:

1. Biome coverage — a biome must appear in a waystones:has_structure/* tag or no wild waystone can ever generate there. Supplied by the datapack moonlight-global-datapacks/risen_waystone_biomes.
2. Dimension access — a dimension must appear in wildWaystonesDimensionAllowList or it is excluded outright, regardless of biome tags. Supplied by config/waystones-common.toml.

If waystones start feeling too sparse (or too crowded), come here first — these are the dials.

2026-07-31 — Waystone network: biome coverage + dimension access

Root cause of "sparse": it was never the frequency setting. Waystones ships a hardcoded 45-biome allowlist, every entry minecraft:*. Terralith adds 95 custom terralith:* biomes, none of them on that list — so every chunk landing in a Terralith biome generated zero wild waystones no matter how the frequency was tuned. Verified: only the Waystones jar itself provides that tag; nothing in the pack adds modded-biome compat. Raising the rate had been raising it on a shrinking denominator.

Changes

Total biomes added: 122. Source mods at time of authoring: Terralith 2.6.2 (95 biomes), Twilight Forest 4.8.3345 (22), Deeper Dark 1.4.1 (4), Quark 4.1-482 (1).

Already in place before this change (context, not modified here)

Reasoning

• Coverage before frequency. Fixing the biome gap converts dead map into eligible map; lowering the spacing only squeezes the parts that already worked. chunksBetweenWildWaystones was deliberately left at 15 so the two variables don't move at once and UAT results stay readable. If it still reads sparse after coverage lands, 10–12 is the next step — but expect 15 to feel much denser now.
• Style tags are DISJOINT. Verified 0 overlap between the mod's own six tags: a biome belongs to exactly one style. So each of the 122 is assigned to exactly one bucket, not layered.
• Cave biomes were included on purpose. The mod already ships dripstone_caves/lush_caves in its base tag and deep_dark in deepslate, so underground eligibility is the author's own convention. ⚠ This is the most likely thing to want trimmed — some may generate hard to reach. deepslate_waystone.json is self-contained and safe to cut alone.
• Every entry is optional-safe. All 122 use {"id": …, "required": false} and every tag is "replace": false. Removing Terralith / TF / Deeper Dark / Quark later degrades quietly instead of failing datapack load. Precedent in-pack: BOMD ships {"id":"byg:ivis_fields","required":false} and BYG is not installed — server boots clean.

Deliberately NOT changed

• iceandfire:dread_land and irons_spellbooks:pocket_dimension — both generated dimensions, both left out of the allowlist by decision. Pocket Dimension is a small personal space where wild waystones make no sense.
• defaultVisibility = "ACTIVATION" — left as-is. Setting GLOBAL would make every waystone known and usable to all players without discovering it (and would then also render on minimaps via a bridge mod), but that grants free travel across the whole network and removes discovery. Considered and rejected; revisit only as a deliberate fast-travel decision.
• Nether / End coverage — no change needed. Audited all 86 jars: no mod adds a single Nether or End biome. The mod's blackstone_waystone (5) and end_stone_waystone (5) tags already cover both dimensions completely.
• enableCosts / warpRequirements — teleport XP cost untouched. Note this is a separate axis: denser waystones that still cost XP to use won't feel like free infrastructure. That's the [teleports] block, not [worldGen].

Apply mechanism

⚠ Worldgen only affects NEWLY generated chunks. Already-explored terrain is unchanged — testing near an existing spawn produces a false negative.

1. Stop server (datapack tags and TOML both load at startup, not on /reload)
2. Place risen_waystone_biomes/ in moonlight-global-datapacks/
3. Apply the wildWaystonesDimensionAllowList edit — ⚠ waystones-common.toml is a common config, so it must match on server AND client
4. Restart, then travel into virgin terrain to observe

Verification

• Confirm the pack is live: /datapack list enabled should include risen_waystone_biomes. The "Found new data pack" log line only prints on first discovery — its absence on later boots is normal and is not evidence the pack is missing.
• A clean boot shows no Unknown entry / tag-load errors and no rejected terralith: / twilightforest: / deeperdarker: ids.

Rollback (one step)

Delete moonlight-global-datapacks/risen_waystone_biomes and restore waystones-common.toml from dedicated-backups/20260731-waystones/ (local) or dedicated-backups/20260802-waystones-live/ (dedicated).

Deployment history

Useful side-effect worth knowing

Wild waystones are worldgen features, not structures (0 structure entries, 6 placed_features), so /locate and structure-finder mods cannot find them. However, spawnInVillages = FREQUENT activates worldgen modifiers that inject a waystone with forced_count: 1 into village/{plains,desert,savanna, snowy,taiga}/houses — every village of those five types has exactly one guaranteed waystone. Villages are structures, so /locate structure minecraft:village_plains is an effective indirect waystone-finder.