StableFairlandsSince 0.2.1-beta

World Progression

Ore is scarce near world spawn and abundant far from it, so distance from home becomes a resource you can spend.

World Progression: the reasoning

Vanilla: Ore generates at the same density everywhere. Whether you dig under spawn or ten thousand blocks out, the yield is identical, so there is never a material reason to leave.
Problem: On a multiplayer server this collapses the map. Everyone strip-mines near spawn, the shared area becomes swiss cheese, and the rest of the world is scenery. Exploration has to compete with convenience, and convenience always wins.
Fixed by Design: Within 2000 blocks of world spawn only 45% of ore veins generate. Between 2000 and 6000 the density ramps back to normal. Past 6000, every vein has a 10% chance to spawn a second one nearby.

What changed

Ore density is a function of horizontal distance from world spawn.

Distance	Vein density
0 to 2000 blocks	45%
2000 to 6000 blocks	Ramps linearly from 45% to 100%
Beyond 6000 blocks	100%, plus a 10% chance of a bonus duplicate vein

The ramp is linear, so there is no wall to hit. Every hundred blocks you move outward is a small, real improvement.

The area around spawn stays intact because mining it is a bad deal. Roads, rails and campfire flight corridors become worth building, because the reason to travel is now measured in diamonds rather than sightseeing.

It also gives a shared world a shape. There is a near zone where people build, a middle zone where they mine, and a far zone worth an expedition.

Only the eight vanilla ore families are affected: coal, copper, iron, gold, redstone, lapis, emerald and diamond. Nether and End ores are untouched, as are ores added by other mods.

Verifying it

Operators can run /fairlands_debug world_progression to print the distance, vein percentage and far-bonus percentage for their position, an arbitrary coordinate, or a set of sample rows. Adding count physically scans every block in a chunk radius and prints the real per-ore totals, so the curve can be checked empirically rather than trusted.

Gamerules

Gamerule	Default
`world_progression`	true
`ore_progression_inner_radius`	2000
`ore_progression_inner_vein_percent`	45
`ore_progression_normal_radius`	6000
`ore_progression_far_bonus_percent`	10

Details

Inner radius: 2000 blocks, 45% of vanilla vein count
Normal radius: 6000 blocks, where density reaches 100%
Far bonus: 10% chance of a duplicate vein beyond 6000 blocks
Scope: Overworld only, the eight vanilla ore families, nether and end untouched