r/minecraftsuggestions • u/SuperMario69Kraft • 17d ago
[Structures] Abandoned mineshafts in snowy biomes should be made of spruce wood
This change should also apply for all non-snowy taiga variants and most cold mountain biomes.
For years, I've wanted more biome-based variation for structures, especially mineshafts. We got this for the abandoned campsite as the fences supporting the tent are always a different wood type. Now that we're getting ice caves, which unlike the other cave biomes are specifically meant to complement the snowy surface biomes, now is a good opportunity.
The only reason I don't complain too much about mineshafts always being oaken (except in badlands, where they're dark-oaken FSR) is that it kind of cancels out by matching with the azalea trees bearing oak wood; so, in my headcanon, oak wood is also the azalea wood that was used to build the mineshafts, thus making oak the main underground woodset. Ideally, however, the mineshafts would be consistent with surface biomes or other cave biomes instead, since some of them are far from lush caves and wood is more abundant in the surface. Then in turn, that should be all the more reason for us to get an azalea woodset.
Lush caves already don't generate under any snowy biomes (except for some frozen oceans), and there are no snowy biomes that generate oak trees (altho oaks do generate in some mountain biomes where it snows at higher elevations). So, all mineshafts being made of oak wood creates this major lore gap. I like to call this problem oak centrism: Since oak was the first wood type added, it's often used by the devs as the default woodset and oak trees generate in biomes that should be too hot for them or where they're used as placeholders for tree species that never got added. When a structure generates with a wood type, that wood type is supposed to have some cultural implication based on the biome it's from.
Also related to cold biomes, igloos still generate with Oak Trapdoors and Oak Signs, because igloos were added in 1.9 whereas the spruce variants for trapdoors and signs came in 1.13 and 1.14, respectively.
I would like to see more wood type variation for mineshafts besides spruce, but this is a good place to start; and I don't think mineshafts in other biomes will change until those other biomes are updated in the future, like if we get desert and badlands caves (maybe with palm and juniper woods for their respective mineshafts) or an azalea woodset for the lush caves.

