Incredibly useful early-game builds

[FlowerChild]

I tend to think that mob-traps aren't really useful early game. I suspect you will invest far more time and effort into them than they are worth, at least until you get a crucible.

Otherwise, you really just end up with a shit-ton of fishing bait. Way more than I think anyone needs.

[Stormweaver]

Normal ones aren't worth the effort; spawner ones can be though.

While inherently more dangerous (accidentally know off a torch? gg.) to build, Zombie traps are...useless, unless you're ready for kibble, but skeleton traps have the blessedly useful arrows and bones, and you can never have too much string. Prep yourself with an inventory of axes and you can put a vMC enchanter to use as well.

[jkievlan]

Back to the actual topic:

What's the absolutely earliest mob-trap one could build that's useful?

A dark room, 2 blocks high, with one wall fenced in by dirt slabs along the floor and ceiling. The room will stay dark, and you can hit mobs through the gap without getting hit back. It's not automatic, but it works great without any danger to your Steve.

Spoiler

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EDIT: Plus...mushrooms :)

[TheAnarchitect]

As far as walls go, I find two cobble stairs make a great wall. The first is rightways up, the second is inverted on top. It's a spider ledge that doesn't provide shade for the undead to hide in, and visually caps a wall nicely.

[Gormador]

As far as walls go, I find two cobble stairs make a great wall. The first is rightways up, the second is inverted on top. It's a spider ledge that doesn't provide shade for the undead to hide in, and visually caps a wall nicely.

Oh man, you've always had that gist to make things simple and effective.

[DaveYanakov]

One of the early game alternatives to walls that I use is the ha-ha. It saves a huge amount of material compared to a wall and you can use the excavated dirt for other things like slabbing over your base area. As a bonus it can be handy for keeping iron bearing mobs where you can get at them once the sun has done it's job.

[johnt]

This is probably a dumb question, but once you build your wall, how do you get in and out without having to replace your door all the time?

[Thalarctia]

A piston, or a ladder that you have to jump to reach both work fine for that purpose.

[johnt]

I probably should have said 'without pistons' because that is kind of not early game.

[eternal8phoenix]

Want access to your cow fields but don't want to gate it for fear of the undead? No problem. Get your animals penned in. Then replace the gap in the fences with a 2 high tower- material of your choice - and on the sides facing the fences place ladders. Congratulations, you now have a stile, or as close as you can get in MC. Just jump at the diagonal and climb over.

Always used this design as I'm paranoid about animals/zombies being able to climb ladders. Not sure if they actually can, but this method has never lost me a cow. It can also be adapted for chickens. As an added bonus, no fear of the rascals running out behind you.

[TheAnarchitect]

Trap door drawbridge.

Theoretically, Zombies cannot stand in front of the folded up trap door to pound on it, on account of the pit.

At least, I haven't lost one yet. I haven't extensively tested zombie reach.

[tedium]

given the value of roaming early game, i think the most valuable thing i've built so far was probably my boat.

my game style so far has been to roam, gathering wood and killing animals by day, burrowing into a hill and mining stone by night. once i reached an ocean i realised i could use boats to harvest animals from far away places, while also not exposing them to hostile mobs. the trick is to go sailing along the coast at night, and wait until morning to land. and remember what you pass, and light you base up nice, perhaps with a big tower. this way you can also watch the sea floor while sailing, and where you see light, you know there's an entrance to a mineshaft or ravine. meanwhile, get a hemp farm going at your main base on the beach, maybe trap a few animals. by this point you'll be starving for cobble, so perhaps carve out an underground room in anticipation of a mushroom and/or chicken farm. let some hemp grow, get ready to invest in the wood age of btw. even then, the only semi-automated thing i might consider building is a chicken farm that is fed by the seeds from a pumpkin farm. as pointed out by others, you're looking at either a lot of hemp to get to hoppers, or a lot of iron to get your stewing pot. and you'll still be manually trigerring the feeding mechanism in the best of circumstances.

the only really useful build concepts i can think of are using reeds as a material due to their ease to farm and harvest, and raising your buildings, using ladders only accessible by jumping to reach them. until you can afford to invest in both a windmill and a portal to the nether, you might as well be a nomad with a trail of simple shelters trailing you.

[jkievlan]

If you need to clear a sizable chunk of jungle: start a forest fire or two (flint and steel). They'll burn out fairly quickly but not before they clear out a decent chunk to build on.

[jkievlan]

Trap door drawbridge.

Oh man. That's clever. I like it :)

[Sarudak]

Trap door drawbridge.

O_O

That is genius!

[brab]

Trap door drawbridge.

O_O

That is genius!

What would such a thing look like? (English is not my native language.)

[heypaint]

Trap door drawbridge.

O_O

That is genius!

What would such a thing look like? (English is not my native language.)

Make a trench two blocks wide and put one trap door on the far side and one the near side. Close them to cross and open them to secure the base. My trench is only two deep and sometimes zombies fall in and tear the trap door off simply out of spite. <gollum voice>Nasty zombies I hates them to pieces!</gollum voice>

[Feliponius]

I just did a couple tests with drawbridges and zombies and found some interesting stuff.

In order to keep any mobs out you only need to place a drawbridge above (not at the top) a 3-deep hole set directly in front of your base entrance which should be one or two blocks wide. I found that 3 deep the zombies that fell in did no damage to the trapdoor. It should be noted that you will hear a bang when they fall into the hole as they hit the trapdoor on the way in, and then superficial bangs that do not appear to do any damage for a bit afterwards.

Some of the more interesting things I noticed was that even if you left your trapdoor down and forgot to raise it back up mobs have trouble pathing over trapdoors placed over holes as long as there is an open block to the side of the trapdoor. Presumably this is because they still recognize it as a hole and immediately avoid it. This does not, however, last forever as eventually (sometimes without hesitation) they catch the edge of the trapdoor and promptly rush over to the other side, shortly after executing a spin to celebrate :P

It was a fun little experiment and seems pretty handy for those trying to protect various entrances.

[Ethinolicbob]

I used a trapdoor drawbridge quite a lot in my last playthrough. Staircase up to the trapdoor drawbridge and a little container with a murder hole.
Only problem is when a creeper and skelly get stuck in it and whilst using the bridge, the skelly shoots and hits the creeper and *boom*

[brab]

Make a trench two blocks wide and put one trap door on the far side and one the near side. Close them to cross and open them to secure the base. My trench is only two deep and sometimes zombies fall in and tear the trap door off simply out of spite. <gollum voice>Nasty zombies I hates them to pieces!</gollum voice>

Thanks a lot, this is a great idea indeed!

[milkmandan]

2 deep moat on either side of base/cave/tunnel exit, trapdoor drawbridge optional. Avoids those ambushes from the sides by creepers. Later, top the exit with a wall of some sort that the mobs can't jump over so no more death from above surprises either.

Obviously this doesn't deal with the spiders but they're not too bad when you don't have them paired up with other mobs.

[TheAnarchitect]

As far as I can tell, Monsters don't recognize trapdoors as valid paths. Which sucks because you can't use them in, you know, TRAPS. Of course I might be entirely wrong: I haven't run extensive tests or checked the code. I simply have never observed a monster stand on a trap door in my entire Minecraft career.

[Mr_Hosed]

If I remember correctly, Mojang removed the ability of mobs to recognize trap-doors as valid paths specifically because when they removed signs as paths people switched over to doors in their vanilla mob traps. Another example of Mojang activily destroying the gameplay that was actually fun in vanilla.

If I recall correctly (I may be wrong), FlowerChild said he left that removal as-is because he viewed vine-traps as the intended method of building mob-traps.

[brab]

As far as I can tell, Monsters don't recognize trapdoors as valid paths. Which sucks because you can't use them in, you know, TRAPS. Of course I might be entirely wrong: I haven't run extensive tests or checked the code. I simply have never observed a monster stand on a trap door in my entire Minecraft career.

So this mean that one can left the drawbridge in place at all times and mob won't go across?

[Feliponius]

As far as I can tell, Monsters don't recognize trapdoors as valid paths. Which sucks because you can't use them in, you know, TRAPS. Of course I might be entirely wrong: I haven't run extensive tests or checked the code. I simply have never observed a monster stand on a trap door in my entire Minecraft career.

So this mean that one can left the drawbridge in place at all times and mob won't go across?

Not necessarily. I tried to find a configuration that the zombies wouldn't be able to path over, couldn't find one. I found that if you had the drawbridge in front of a 1x1 passageway with 3 open blocks on the other sides the zombies would take a few tries to path over it, but eventually they'll get across.

It looks like this: (o=trapdoor, -=open space, x=impassible barrier

- - -
- o -
x - x