Unfair Advantage? Jungle and mixed biomes 1449369639546214984

UHC Seed for Minecraft 1.8

1449369639546214984

Diverse woods biomes, including large Jungle area.  Spawning in the jungle could be a big disadvantage.. or possibly a huge melon advantage.  The structures are all on one side.

2 similar Central Savanna Maps -6505837170832228537 and -670278141449929333

UHC Seeds for Minecraft 1.8

-6505837170832228537

-670278141449929333

Savanna Showdown

Both of these seeds offer a similar mix of good ingredients.  2 villages, 1 temple, and a central savanna.  One with smaller raised areas, and one with a larger plateau in the center.   Woods at the edge, with terrain leading to the center.

-6505837170832228537

-670278141449929333

Central Swamp and 3 Villages 932475610972574098

UHC Seed for Minecraft 1.8

932475610972574098

Central swamp surrounded by 3 villages. Mountains on one side, plains and desert on the other.  Plenty of oak but a more difficult terrain.  The swampland in the middle presents a different battle scenario for movement, cover, and visibility.

Balanced map with 2 mountainous areas -4705034784483231674

UHC Seed for Minecraft 1.8

-4705034784483231674

The map appears well balanced, with opposing extreme hills areas, a village on the green side, and two temples on the dry side.  A few dense and mountainous areas and dense nether fortresses.

Use the Customized map option to create more UHC-friendly terrain generation

The customized option in the create world dialog contains an overwhelming set of features.  But with a few tweaks you can make changes that will dramatically change UHC experience.

Detailed information on the customized settings can be found here:
http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Customized

These instructions are for Single Player new world creation, since it is easiest to tweak the settings here, make the world, and then move it into a server.  You can also make changes to the new world generation settings for servers with the server.properties file and a custom string but this is a lot more complicated and harder to play around with.

Step 1:

Remove Unnecessary Structures

Often in UHC, there are tweaks to the game to encourage players to spend less time underground, more time above looking for a fight.  It hardly seems fair for a hermit to win after all others kill each other in battle.  There are several things in terrain gen that can be tweaked to encourage a fair experience and more time above ground.

Villages and Temples are great for encouraging above ground exploration, and reward the first comers with potential game changers. I suggest leaving them in.  However you can select to increase or remove dungeons below ground. More dungeons, more saddles, may encourage exploration. Water Temples and Strongholds are also good candidates to leave off if you choose to make the game more balanced and less solitary.  

Step 2: Ore generation

Caving can sometimes leave players, by luck alone, spending all their time underground just trying to gear up to go out.  This means that tweaking ore generation may be one of the most powerful ways to encourage surface play.   You can also increase the max height of ores and diamond to allow prospecting of open land and cliff faces, however deviating this much from vanilla may be too jarring on the game.

I suggest leaving the spawn heights as they are, and then increasing the spawn tries.  Diamond and gold can be 2x-4x higher than they are now.  Iron would probably be over abundant with anything more than a slight increase.

Step 3: Optional, for rugged terrains

Set Height Stretch to 50 (max)

You can make maps much less rugged by increasing the height stretch.  This setting is also less work for the generator when turned up (and more work, higher terrain if lowered)  It is at 12 by default and when maxed out at 50 the terrain is a lot less severe.  Sometimes new, unmapped villages may appear because Amidst doesn't show some villages due to terrain.

Mesa Bryce Map with Central Lake -5832038334522793048

UHC Seed for Minecraft 1.8

-5832038334522793048

Mesa Bryce Map with Central Lake and Island at 0,0

This map normally wouldn't have made the cut, with just the one lonely village in the plains/forest area, however the central lake surrounded by Mesa/Bryce/Plateau makes this an amazing seed.  0,0 sits on a small island connected to the shore.  

This is quite a dry map, but there are many oak patches scattered atop the plateaus.  Not a lot, but enough.  Fight over hilltops and valleys in the stunning Mesa biome.

3 Villages, 2 Temples, Mostly Desert 4155519082845793722

UHC Seed for Minecraft 1.8

4155519082845793722

A challenging surface of mostly desert, with many rewards for early surface movement; 3 potential villages and 2 temples.  One edge of the map has plains and roofed forest, so the most promising source of apples will be lone oaks in the 3 savanna areas.