Nature Overhaul Minecraft Mod
What if plants in Minecraft had a mind of their own? What if they
planted themselves? What if they spread o'er the face of your world,
growing wherever they could? Find out by installing Nature Overhaul.
Nature Overhaul is a mod that empowers nature to take back what is
hers. Instead of the natural world being something passive that has
to be painstakingly farmed by hand, with the Nature Overhaul mod,
nature takes matters into her own hands and starts growing wherever
she can. This means a more dynamic world for you to play in.
The most immediately obvious and useful feature of the mod is the fact that hitting a tree with an axe cuts the whole tree down in one blow. No more painstakingly chopping every single part of the trunk individually. No more having to scale tall trees and clamber amongst the leaves to get every last bit of wood. Just one whack and all the wood is yours. (Though you may occasionally have to wait for leaves to decay so that the wood trapped atop them can fall.) The sapling drop rate appears to be significantly lower than normal however, although the saplings will grow on their own if they happen to land somewhere that they can grow.
Another bonus that comes with this mod is the fact that, depending on the biome, trees will either drop apples or coca beans. That means more food than you can handle if you tweak the settings just a wee bit. There are a vast number of options that can be accessed through the mod options interface and allow you to change how the mod operates. Bumping the options up to fast gives you a glimpse into what earth might look like if plants weren't quite so slow to grow. (Spoiler: It's terrifying, now hurry up and eat your lettuce before it ends you.)
There's food and wood everywhere in the world with this mod, which I for one, love. It's very easy to get inundated though, so you might want to turn the settings down when you get sick of your inventory being full of fruit and candy.
Installation and Warnings
Installation of the Nature Overhaul mod requires prior installation of Mod Loader and the Mod Options API if it is to work. Neither of these mods are particularly troublesome to install and I found that the process went very smoothly. Once installed however, be careful of bumping up too many settings to quickly. It is quite easy to slow your frame rate to a crawl if you get over-ambitious, and it won't return to normal. Warning: This mod has the dubious honor of being the first mod to ever bork one of my save files. Back up your saves.
