Wilderlands Custom Sea Level

Wilderlands Custom Sea Level

(Early phase, use with caution- Stable and seems to have no issues)

Allows full control over world sea level generation in Vintage Story. Configure sea level as a percentage of world height or via a fixed Y value. The mod applies the chosen sea level consistently across world generation, including compatibility (so far) with terrain overhaul mods.

This is an early release focused on core functionality. The system overrides default sea level behavior at key worldgen stages to ensure reliable results.

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Features:

• Configurable sea level (percentage or fixed value)
• Works with modded terrain generators (including river/stream mods) and landform overhauls.
• Applies globally and consistently during world generation
• Compatible with Watersheds as of Watersheds 6.0
• "Works" with Rivers mod, but river generation is spotty and often finds them pathing underground. I don't recommend using with Rivers, but feel free to give it a shot and play around with the Rivers' config file to see what you can get out of it.

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Suggested Use:

Sea Level Behavior & World Impact:

Sea level is highly sensitive and has a major impact on terrain generation.

• Vanilla sea level is ~0.43 of world height
• Raising sea level at all begins to flood terrain (makes sense..)
• Around 0.50, large portions of land begin to flood, resulting in island-heavy worlds
• At 0.60+, most terrain will be submerged, creating a largely oceanic world with scattered landmasses
• Higher terrain scales or extreme landforms may still break the surface, but expect very limited land overall

Small adjustments can dramatically change world composition. It is very easy to unintentionally generate a heavily flooded “water world.”

 

Recommended Settings:

For a flooded island / “water world” experience:

• Use SeaLevelPercentage and set it between 0.45 and 0.60 Anything above the default setting starts to flood the world, so take care tuning this value. 0.6 is going to give you mostly water, with islands widely scattered and somewhat hard to find.
• Increase landcover, upheaval, and landform scale
  • Taller landforms will break the surface more often, creating interesting island chains and formations, depending on how much the sea level percentage has been increased.
• Reduce landcover scale
  • You’ll already have plenty of ocean—spreading landforms out further just reduces usable terrain
• Most of the time, spawning into a "Water World" will land the player in the sea with no land around. This is much more common on worlds above sea level percentage 0.55. I don't know how to fix that yet, and force at least a small island where the playe spawns initially. For now, you'll likely need to switch to creative mode (/gm 2) on first log in, and scout a landmass (or give yourself a boat).

 

For lower sea level (more land, shallower oceans, less underground space), or for locking in normal sea level values on higher worlds:

• Use fixed sea level instead of percentage
• Set sea level to your preferred height

 

Guidelines for Fixed Sea Level:

• Default sea level is 128 on a standard world
• Increasing world height (e.g. 512) while keeping sea level at 128 gives:
  • more above-ground space
  • normal underground depth (and near-vanilla ore distribution)
• Recommended fixed sea level: 100–128
  • Maintains normal caves and underground features
• Going lower (e.g. 50):
  • reduces total underground depth
  • results in fewer ores that depend on deeper rock generation

This behavior is intentional—shallower worlds naturally have less vertical space for ore generation. If needed, separate ore generation mods can help compensate.

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Compatibility:

• As of version 1.0.2, should be fully compatible with Rivers mod.
• Is fully compatible with Watersheds.
• Fully compatible with landform mods that do not touch sea level.
• As of 1.0.2- Is NOT compatible with both Rivers and Watersheds together. This is because Watersheds replaces NewGenTerra in Rivers, so that Rivers and Watersheds are compatible. Watersheds author is working on an update on the Watersheds side of things so that all three mods get along with each other when playing together.

 

Notes:

• Use on new worlds only. Probably will have no effect when loaded to an existing world, but if it does it won't be good.

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Community & Support

If you have issues, suggestions, or feedback:

Please post in the Wilderlands Rustbound thread in Vintage Story's official Discord.

Interested in following development more closely?
Join The Wilderlands Community Discord server.

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Other Wilderlands Modules

• Wilderlands Adjustments
• Wilderlands Behaviors (Rustbound dependancy)
• Wilderlands Block Adjustments
• Wilderlands Caves

• Wilderlands Deposit Scarcity

• Wilderlands Echoes
• Wilderlands Environmental Stability (WIP)

• Wilderlands Ethology

• Wilderlands Forests
• Wilderlands Ground Layers
• Wilderlands Lunarbound (Rustbound dependancy)

• Wilderlands Panning Overhaul

• Wilderlands Spawnbound
• Wilderlands Stonebound (WIP)

• Wilderlands Tweaks (Set of adjustments for Wilderlands servers)

• Wilderlands Waymarkers