Hardcore winter

Hardcore Winter 1.2.0 — Sled & Wildlife Update

Two big additions in this release: a craftable Sled for traversing the snowfield, and a complete overhaul of how wildlife inhabits the world.

❄️ New: Sled

A wooden sled built for the frozen wastes. Craft, place, ride.

• Recipe: 1 spruce boat + 2 iron ingots
• Slides on snow & ice with boosted friction values (0.95–0.98 depending on surface)
• Climbs 1-block steps so small drifts don't stop you
• Speed-capped to keep momentum honest in a survival setting
• Custom item icon and in-world entity texture

The sled isn't just a toy — it's the answer to the new wildlife system. Read on.

🦊 Wildlife overhaul

Animals are now part of progression — you need cows, chickens, and rabbits for leather, feathers, eggs, milk, and rabbit hide. But this is still hardcore winter, so they're deliberately rare. The old biome spawn lists weren't producing variety in ice spikes (most creatures silently failed vanilla placement, leaving only goats and wolves). Rebuilt the system to give the player a path forward without breaking the lonely-tundra atmosphere.

• Wolves & goats remain dominant in ice spikes — they belong here
• Custom spawn layer adds rabbits, foxes, polar bears, cows, and chickens at controlled rates
• Cold variants for all spawned animals: snow rabbits, snow foxes, cold-biome cows & chickens
• Population caps near each player: 2 rabbits, 1 fox, 1 polar bear, 2 cows, 2 chickens
• Spawn rate: ~3% chance per 5s — encounters are genuine events, not background noise
• Pigs removed from the ice spikes spawn list — they don't belong in -40°C
• Animals stay where they spawn — once you find them, they're there

🐄 Intended progression loop

The design is: you go out to find animals, and you bring them back. The sled is your tool for this.

1. Explore the snowfield until you find a wandering pair of cows or chickens
2. Breed at your base to build a sustainable stock for leather, eggs, milk, etc.
3. Repeat with a different species. Each found pair is a small victory.

That's the loop. Cows and chickens are scarce on purpose — you're meant to earn your livestock, not stumble into a free farm.

🛠️ Notes

• No worldgen breaking changes — safe to update an existing world
• The sled is purely additive; existing boats are unaffected