Trail Ruins worth digging up

Better Trail Ruins replaces the vanilla trail ruins — those few buried blocks most players never notice — with procedurally generated lost settlements half swallowed by the forest: buried hamlets with plazas and dry wells, broken watchtowers you can see from afar, stepped terracotta temples and abandoned archaeologists' dig sites. Every one is different, and every one is full of suspicious gravel to brush.

It only changes world generation: server-side, no dependencies, vanilla archaeology loot (sherds, armor trims, the Relic disc), and it works with every mod that knows what trail ruins are.

At a glance

Four kinds of ruin

🏘️ The Buried Hamlet — a paved plaza with broken columns and a dry well choked with gravel, streets running out into the trees, and the stumps of up to a dozen buildings along them: houses (some with a hidden cellar under a hatch), a pottery workshop lined with decorated pots, a pillared hall with a mosaic floor and an altar, a shrine with stained-glass windows, a storehouse — and often a watchtower.

🗼 The Watchtower — a tower up to 30 blocks tall, one side collapsed and its stones strewn down the slope. Climb the stair along the inside, or dig down: there is a vaulted crypt under the floor with an altar, an ossuary niche and the rarest finds. Around it, the remains of a ring wall, a gate, huts and a well.

🛕 The Sunken Temple — a stepped temple banded in coloured terracotta, half buried, with a grand stair up to a small shrine on top. A shaft leads down into the pillared sanctum — or find the dug-out side entrance. In front, a processional way lined with columns and two obelisks.

⛏️ The Dig Site — the archaeologists got here first and left in a hurry: a terraced excavation pit with ladders and a plank walkway, foundations and a mosaic floor laid bare, suspicious gravel everywhere, a spoil heap, and their camp — tent, campfire, finds table and their chest.

Under the grass: what a buried hamlet looks like once the earth is cleared away.

Four biome styles

The forest decides the look:

• Taiga — mud brick and cobblestone, spruce beams, warm orange and brown terracotta
• Snowy taiga — stone and mud brick under the snow, white, cyan and blue terracotta
• Old growth birch forest — stone bricks and calcite columns, white, yellow and lime terracotta
• Jungle — mossy stone overgrown with vines and moss, green and lime terracotta

What makes them feel alive

• Real archaeology: buildings are buried to different depths and choked with gravel and earth; dig spots sit in the sediment (many show at the surface), on excavated floors, in middens outside the houses and deep in crypts and sanctums
• Rare finds where they belong: altars, shrines, crypts, sanctums and wells hold the trail_ruins_rare loot (pottery sherds, Wayfinder / Raiser / Shaper / Host armor trims, music disc Relic)
• Ruined, not random: walls broken to jagged heights, fallen columns, rubble, collapsed floors, roof beams that still span the walls
• Trails: worn paths and marker stones lead from the ruins into the forest
• Stained glass windows, coloured terracotta bands, glazed terracotta mosaics, candles on altars, decorated pots, carpets, moss and vines
• Follows the terrain: every building finds its own ground level on slopes, with foundations down to the real ground

Configuration

config/bettertrailruins-common.toml

Changes apply to ruins generated after the change (existing chunks are not touched).

Commands (for builders and screenshots)

• /bettertrailruins place <hamlet|watchtower|temple|dig_site> [taiga|snowy|birch|jungle] — builds a ruin around you
• /bettertrailruins info — which ruin you are standing in
• /bettertrailruins test — plans every variant in memory and checks them

Gallery

More screenshots in the Gallery tab.

Which file do I download?

Pick your loader and Minecraft version on the Files tab. Every file was tested on a real server before upload.

More files (NeoForge 1.21.1 and 1.20.x, Forge 1.20.1, the remaining Fabric versions) are being uploaded.

FAQ

Do I need a new world? Only for new chunks: trail ruins that already exist stay as they are. Explore new taiga, birch or jungle forests (or start a new world).

Where do I find them? Where vanilla trail ruins spawn: taigas, snowy taigas, old growth taigas, the old growth birch forest and jungles. /locate structure minecraft:trail_ruins works.

Do I need a brush? For the suspicious gravel, yes (a stick and a feather). The chests just need opening.

Does it work on servers? Yes, and only the server needs it: it only changes world generation.

Is it compatible with biome mods? It uses the vanilla tag #minecraft:has_structure/trail_ruins, so ruins spawn wherever those mods allow trail ruins, and pick a style from the biome's name.

Can I use it in my modpack? Yes. MIT licence.

Forge? Yes, see the table above. On 1.20.1 one file works on both Forge 47 and NeoForge 1.20.1.

Fabric? Yes, every version from 1.20 to 26.3. Install Fabric API too.

More from the same author

• Better Bastions — the Nether bastion overhaul: huge procedural piglin fortresses
• Better Shipwrecks — full-size procedural sunken and beached ships