Oka's Better Desert

The desert has always been the emptiest biome in Minecraft. Not anymore.

Oka's Better Desert is a vanilla-friendly mod that turns the desert into a place worth exploring and building with: a full new building palette, cactus wood, cactus plants & food, oases and a deep desert dungeon full of secrets.

Version 2.0 is a complete remake. The mod has been rebuilt from scratch for Fabric and NeoForge, with much more content, better world generation and modpack compatibility in mind.

Old saves could have issues since some blocks have changed.

Building Blocks

Nearly 300 new blocks, all designed to blend with vanilla.

• Terracotta: chiseled, polished, bricks and tiled variants, in all 16 colors plus the uncolored version, with stairs and slabs
• Sandstone & Red Sandstone: bricks, tiled, small tiles, engraved, framed and two kinds of pillars, with stairs, slabs and walls
• Wool: royal and tiled patterns in all 16 colors, with their carpets
• Cactus Wood: planks, stairs, slab, fence, fence gate, door, trapdoor, button and pressure plate

Every variant can be crafted from its vanilla block in the stonecutter.

Desert Life

• Tiny Cactus and Small Cactus now grow naturally across deserts
• Dried Cactus: cook a cactus in a smoker or on a campfire
• Cactus Soup: a hearty meal made from dried cactus
• Jars: decorative pottery you can craft and place anywhere

Structures

Oasis

A small patch of life in the middle of the dunes: water, grass and jungle trees.

Desert Dungeon

Look for a lonely well in the sand. Climb down, and you will find a sprawling underground dungeon:

• Libraries, bedrooms, pottery storerooms, an enchanting room and more
• An archaeology room with suspicious sand to brush
• A puzzle room hiding a secret chamber
• The sarcophagus room, guarding the dungeon's greatest treasure

Ancient jars are scattered everywhere: break them (or shoot them with an arrow!) to find what the old inhabitants left behind.

Compatibility

• Loaders: Fabric & NeoForge
• Requires: Architectury API (and Fabric API on Fabric)

For modpack makers

• All blocks use the vanilla and c: tags (planks, wool, stairs, slabs, walls…), so they work with other mods' recipes
• World generation is controlled by biome tags that you can edit with a datapack:
  • okasbetterdesert:has_structure/desert_dungeon
  • okasbetterdesert:has_structure/oasis
  • okasbetterdesert:has_feature/cactus_patches
• Structures also spawn in modded deserts tagged c:is_desert
• Empty a tag to disable the matching structure or feature (for example, if you already use another oasis mod)

License MIT

Feel free to include this mod in your modpacks!

Found a bug or have an idea? Open an issue on GitHub.