Mob Trap: A triumph for Hardcore Buckets

[utakataJ6]

Browsing through the forums recently, I've seen a recent trend. It seems that many of us choose to play BTW without either hardcore spawn or hardcore buckets, both of which I feel are almost mandatory for the BTW experience. Personally, I enjoy hardcore buckets in part because I really enjoyed the former add-on of FC's called Better Then Buildcraft...

...Anyway, I've heard quite a few times that people would use HCB except for "mob traps" and "fountains" and things. So I decided to tackle the former on my survival world.

TL;DR - You can make a fully functioning mob grinder in Survival mode without placing a single water or lava source block. I did it in under 5 hours on a relatively new world.

A preview:

Requirements:
1 water source from above
1 water wheel, or 1 Windmill from above
8 saws
5 hoppers
Cobblestone, Gearboxes, Axles
Knowledge of BTW

It was quite fun learning how to adjust a basic design for Hardcore Buckets, but for those who would prefer a more detailed view (or just some proof), check out my video on the subject at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cz_BergbS_g

[WiduX]

I just wanted to let you know that the link provided is to YouTube's video upload page. You should replace that link with either a link to a video or your channel, otherwise we can't get to it easily.

EDIT: I see you fixed it now.

[Pucc]

Pigs, Chickens and Cats are great in mob farms now that FC has kindly introduced the aggro features on zombies and spiders. They have an aggro range of about 16 blocks I think. They even run straight into saws if the pigs and chickens are placed above or behind them so you can make almost waterless mob farms with them. The only problem is getting the skeletons where you want them to go.

Edit: you can use snow golems for skeleton aggro its just preventing them from being shot at is the hard part.

[Blazara]

I don't think I've ever played without hardcore buckets since it became on by default. I adore the challenge and ingenuity it inspires; slapping down an infinitely flowing stream of water from a bucket just feels wrong now I'm afraid.

(Thanks again for the wicked feature FC)

[Mr_Hosed]

Definately a different take. I've never seen a mob trap that didn't use canals, even with HCB enabled.

The common designs seem to be simple drop traps for early game and either ocean based or water tower fed canal designs for late game. Mid level traps usually use a flushing system on the pads driven by sticky pistons and a water splitter tower to push the mobs into a killing canal.

I am curious about the bottom floor below the vine trap checkerboard and above the final killing floor, what I'm calling the canal floor. It looks like all the mobs drop down onto the cobble pads, with a few making it into the water streams, but most left to wander. Does this work? I would think most mobs would die from the fall and the ones that don't would just get trapped on the canal floor never making it into the killing channels.

[Six]

Yeah, I've always played with all the default settings, so water source blocks have always felt like a precious resource to me and where you build is dictated in a large part by them. Of course, this doesn't mean you can't use the Minecraft water spreading mechanics to your advantage.

When building my recent mobtrap, I found a good kink in a river and started out by spreading it like so:

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Then laid out the lowest spawning floor to work out what shape I wanted:

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Then finally I built around the canal area at the bottom, leaving only the source blocks I wanted, and made them flow to the bottom here, where I have a killchamber:

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So you can still use water a lot, you just have to be more inventive.

[utakataJ6]

...but most left to wander. Does this work? I would think most mobs would die from the fall and the ones that don't would just get trapped on the canal floor never making it into the killing channels.

Actually that is something I should have mentioned in detail. The first set of canals, in the plus sign, is not for the mobs at all, just to spread water.
With exactly two spaces between each vine-cobble floor after the first, all the mobs survive the falls and essentially no endermen spawn. It's quite crucial to the overall effectiveness of the trap - when I had three spaces between, the efficiency was about 1/5. Pretty drastic.

Six's advice

That's also a pretty interesting way to look at it - I could have used this tactic well since I spawned in a swamp biome. Also, I love your wall design!

[Peter5930]

This is one of my hardcore buckets mob traps, and my most sophisticated mob trap to date. It's not quite finished; I've still to add vine traps to the central pit, get rid of any cul-de-sacs that mobs can get flushed into, and fill up the spaces where no flushing occurs, but it's working as-is.

Water gets pumped from a nearby pond and is split into four streams which are released every couple of minutes by sticky pistons into vertical shafts with a pump on each level for each shaft, which floods a quarter of the spawning area on that level and flushes mobs towards the central pit, where they fall into a killing and loot collection chamber that uses a separate source of water to send them into a trio of saws and sends the loot onwards to my hoppers.









I'd never tried building a mob trap before playing BTW with hardcore buckets, so all my attempts have been hardcore bucket designs.