In worlds with custom-generated terrain and biomes, the /place command often places structures in incorrect locations, or fails to place structures.

How to reproduce:

1) Extract, download, and open the attached world.

2) /tp @s -3790 80 2334

3) /place structure desert_pyramid ~ ~ ~

4) /place structure pillager_outpost ~ ~ ~

5) /place structure village_desert ~ ~ ~

6) /place structure igloo ~ ~ ~

Results:

The desert pyramid does not appear ("failed to place structure"), and the pillager outpost generates at bedrock level (cutting through the bedrock), despite the fact that that the area is a desert biome at y level 80.

The village also glitches out - the paths generate normally, but the buildings are at bedrock level. However, igloos generate normally despite being in a desert.

This is possibly caused because even though the biome is desert and the terrain altitude is above sea level, the world is technically a superflat void world and the /place command interprets biome and terrain based on the world seed.

Changing the world type to "default" doesn't fix it, however, as structure placement still depends on the world seed, regardless of the actual height of the land or local biome. For example, structures placed with /place can generate at y=120 when the actual terrain is around y=90.

Note: even though the terrain is generated using Worldpainter, a third-party program, the results are in vanilla Minecraft Java Edition 1.20. If custom terrain is built by hand it experiences the same problem. The bug also exists in previous versions such as 1.19.4.

The problem could potentially be fixed by using the actual biome and heightmaps to place structures rather than the world seed.