How to get a planet with a nice surface

[truus]

Does anyone have any tips on how to get a nice surface for your sovereign planet?

What biomes and tiers have you selected that turned out really bad?

What biomes and tiers have you selected that went really great together?

I got my first planet and it all came together in a way that basically the entire planet is covered in holes.

My selections:

• T6
• Toxic
• No rivers
• No biomes with holes

Some of the biomes I chose:

• strata slice
• flower field
• mud flats
• rainbow hills
• redwood forest
• gleam lake
• supported hills
• large meteor strike
• ancient temples
• maze 2
• mushroom forest
• island trees
• mount doom

I was hoping with mount doom I would get one of the boundless shrines, unfortunately didn’t.

I got way too much supported hills, and I got a couple surprise biomes I hate - sliced and drains.

Maze 2 is really fun, I might do that again, even though I got like 3+ mazes.

I was also happy with how redwood forest and mushroom forest blended together.

[bucfanpaka]

Biggest mistake one I’ve made is Trench: Avoid!! I made a complete mess of my first planet with that, probably ruined a good 2/3s of it, deathtrap holes everywhere 50 m or so down to lava, and it ruins mining too.

The canopy trees one (I can’t remember the name as much as I’ve selected it!) is a real nice one. First, they’re pretty, but can also combine with Gleam Lake for neat effects - the gleam being layered on top of them.

The “sky” biomes seem safe pics when it comes to ground terrain… I’ll pick ground ones that look safe, and these. Also, Floating Shrapnel + Gleam Lake has gotten me some pretty epic gleam. The one thing seems to be Alien Invasion - I can’t be sure here, but it APPEARS (from my taking it a few times) to also get you a real nasty ground biome too, with very thick twisted trunks everywhere.

The Coral Sea (forget exact name) one is really nice. Though not good for gleam farming, this seems to be the one with gleam in the water - it is quite pretty I think!!

I’ve also been trying for gems on my T6s - with those, kind of want to select based on how gems spawn. For toxic and corrosive, really want a lot of water. Did really great on my last toxic, 285k emerald. Burn, desert seems best for the rubies. Mountain/high terrain for diamond (found deep but need high terrain overhead), sapphire, and topaz.

[Aodyn]

If you want smoother terrain I would recommend picking a lower tier world. The higher tiers are meant to be a lot harder to traverse. I made a T6 blast world and selected mostly flat terrain and it still came out pretty rough.

[Mystfit]

I found the Tundra biomes to be maddeing to traverse and usually came too large. Pity. They look cool in the screen select page. Also, not sure if it really did anything, but the rest of my biomes came out so much cleaner when I got rid of tundra.

[Apt]

use ‘no rivers’ if you plan to select a lot of tall mountain biomes and select some swamps and oceans as water instead. rivers work nicely on a flat terrain, but make oddly placed bland looking cliffs when they carve through a hill

I have a t4 lush, and I selected around 33 biomes. most of which were forests and cliffs ( which is the planet’s theme)
instead of just picking my favourite forest biome for example, I selected 5 more for variety. biome transition areas make the most interesting looking places in my opinion

you can visit the planet : tnt megahub -> pyrr portal in the sov section

downside of this many biomes is that some might end up being just a tiny area not big enough for the distinguishing elements to appear. it’s a bit of a gamble, but it was worth it

[molav]

If you want a ton of redwoods then choose a tier where the t4 biome redwoods is the only one required and other t4 biomes are not needed.

[truus]

All good advice, thank you!

[Lasharana]

I chose the “Stunted Ice” biome for one of my Chill worlds thinking that it was going to create regions featuring a small number of icy trees sprinkled around a pleasant, flat, solid field of ice/glacier. Unfortunately this wasn’t the case…what it did create was endless spiky ice formations packed so tightly together that it was impossible to walk through them at all. One of my grapples decided to break while I was in the middle of one of these biomes during my mapping mission, and I wound up just giving up and going to Sanctum. There are still a few regions that I haven’t gotten to, yet, but I don’t know if I’ll ever go back to that planet for anything. It could be a cool biome to smash some roads through, or to use to surround an ominous Ice Fortress of Doom, but otherwise I’d suggest avoiding it at all costs.

The “Ice Lake” biome generates a number of nice, flat, walkable surfaces which tend to spawn a reasonable amount of Stardrop Plants, as well as attracting a lot of creatures for easy hunting. It’s definitely one of the more useful water biomes, and looks especially nice next to a biome with lots of coniferous trees.

If you choose too many biomes with small/medium-sized trees and bushes, the generator will occasionally combine them into an extremely dense, impassable chunk of forest. This is what happened when I combined “Pleasant Swamp”, “Basket Trees”, and “Bushy Hills” for one of my T4 Lush worlds. It’s a shame, because the planet is gorgeous, if a little boring in spots (wayyy too much “Meadow”).

The yellowish areas in the Store image for “Pleasant Forest” aren’t bushes or trees…they’re mats of sponge, and they will infect your entire planet with their spongy sponginess! Roll the dice just right, and you will have sponge in the trees, sponge on the prairies, sponge on the mountainside…sponge where you thought it couldn’t possibly exist, everywhere and anywhere! Sponges, sponges, and more sponges!

You can’t see them in the image on the selection screen at the Store, but “Sunken Forest” has neat looking Ancient Corruption/Growth/Gleam lanterns sprinkled beneath the trees, which was a nice surprise. This biome blended into the edges of my “Redwood Forest” and looks lovely at night. This isn’t an easy biome to walk through, though, unfortunately, since the lanterns tend to get crammed together a bit.

On a side note, I kind of wish they’d allow us to select fewer biomes for the smaller planets. If you get rivers or any of the larger bodies of water and/or you decide to try out a biome with larger trees/formations or mountains, you can accidentally wind up with some pretty extreme landscapes.

[truus]

Super helpful pictures!

[Mystfit]

Yeah I had to dump pleasant forest because I find that many sponges unpleasant

[SephirothWS]

I’m quite happy with the biome selection that I picked out for Gaia, connected to TNT Norkyna Hub.

Level 6 Coal, No Rivers

Biome Selection

• Level 4
  • Gleam Lake
• Level 5
  • Beaches
  • Gleam Ice Forest
  • Snowy Redwoods
• Level 6
  • Alien Invasion
  • Dome Field
  • Flat Top
  • Island Trees
  • Kong Island
• Level 7
  • Corrupt Trees
  • Gleam Spiral
  • Tiny Islands
• Level 8
  • Lumpy

I do have cliffs and hills, but also a few large flat locations on the planet that I’ll likely build on.

[Honey713]

Are you able to drop biomes off your world you made or are you spending another 10 dollars to get try a new one? I was really hoping for a nice large ocean area with a coastline of flatter earth and I haven’t found just the right spot yet but I haven’t mapped my whole world yet.

[diannetea]

new planet for new biomes

[truus]

No unfortunately you aren’t able to change the biomes of an existing planet.

I’m going to buy another and hope I do better this time.