Famine Lands

Long ago your people lost a war and were banished to an area surrounded by an impassible magical barrier.  Things went well for a time and a new village was built.  But the area within your prison was too small.  The land was not fertile enough.  There was too little mineral wealth.  The population grew too large.

The forests receded as more and more wood was cut.  Wildlife was hunted to the point where it could hardly be found anymore.  Overgrazing and the relentless hunt for seeds laid waste to the plains.

Then things got really bad.  The harvest failed twice in row.  The flocks and herds perished. The theocratic rulers of the village made some unwise management decisions and trusted too much to their faith and too little to logic and hard work.  Before anyone realized what had happened, important food crops had gone locally extinct.  Prices rose higher and higher.  People began to starve to death and the graveyard started filling up quickly.  A few hardy souls desperately attempted to cross the magical barrier with predictably tragic results.

The barrier was not exactly impassible.  Your people could not get out, but monsters and evil men could get in to prey upon the people of the village in their darkest hour.  Maintaining the stone wall around the village became a big priority at the same time that maximum effort to obtain food was required.

In short, your people are about to die off.

One morning you wake up in your house and realize that you only have enough wheat left to make three loaves of bread.  Your meager life savings of 10 emeralds will not buy much food or anything else.  You need to take action now, venture beyond the safety of the village walls, gather resources, and work hard to rebuild the agricultural system before it is too late for everyone.

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The main point of this map is to have resources be scarce and to make it so you have to struggle to avoid starving.  Standard Minecraft is way too easy. Careful people never starve to death.  They get so rich that they can't figure out what to do with all their treasure.  It gets boring.  Trading with villagers is pointless because you can get the things they sell on your own more easily than you can get the emeralds to buy them.  Selling stuff to them to get emeralds seems useless because there is nothing you really need to spend them on.  So you just horde them in a chest and look at them.

But this map is different.  You really could starve if you are not careful or if you make bad decisions.  Being able to trade with villagers can be a matter of life and death.  Here are the challenges you face:

(1) Your village is imprisoned inside a magical barrier and the resources inside have been depleted.

(2) There is pretty much no grass and no seeds.  So wheat farming will be difficult.

(3) Animals ar