hi! i made a terrain using diff texture coordinates like this, but i want to make the hills/valleys be part of the actual mesh. is there a way to apply the heights from the material to the mesh? thank you!
Not from the shader but you can bake an image texture from the input of the displace node (the last mix node). Plug that node straight into the surface of the the material output node and bake “Emit”.
The you can get rid of the displacement in the material and use the image in a displacement modifier instead. The modifier does actually shift the geometry. You can apply the displacement modifier to make the geo permanent.
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Bake the displacement map as per @DNorman opinion.
Large displacements can be made using displacement modifiers and small displacements can be given from the material. 
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why would i bake with emit rather than normal?
Because the height input of the displacement modifier you are using is a height map, it is not normal data, it is a grayscale map.
In Blenders bake options there is not an option to bake the height input of a displacement modifier. That is why you need to plug the output of that colour mix node directly to the shader surface output and bake emit.
When you plug nodes that are not a BSDF (shader node-green) into the surface output they default to Emit.
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