Much puzzlement over Mob Farms/Grinders...

[Minecraftgeek70]

Hi,

firstly apologies if this has been covered elsewhere.. a quick scan couldn't turn up anything of relevance. Also, apologies if I'm missing something incredibly noobish here.

I have in my flat lands creative test world a number of experimentation builds. When perfected these get built on my BTW SMP server and my friends get to enjoy the fruits of my labours.

Anyway one of my server friends was asking about "end game" enchants using the infernal enchanter set up. I said I'd look into it and see how feasible it is.

in Single player, flat world.. I built a MASSIVE ground to sky limit 40 x 40 mob spawner and sawmill grinder to ..ahem.. "harvest" the required materials (namely Arcane scrolls)

Perhaps I'm missing something so incredibly fundamental here but even after running this machine.. on hard mode.. for a couple of hours I have managed to find ONE Arcane scroll of smite! I have, however gathered enough rotten flesh to choke an Arcturian Megadonkey, enough bone to build my palace of torment (actually.. can we have a bone aesthetic block please ;p hehe) , enough gunpowder to make the death star look like a cherry bomb etc.

now I'm not complaining. I know FC wanted it to be "hard" and that's fine.. but this spawner would be infeasible to build on an SMP server. for one thing it would take too long (I used *cough* SPC to stack mine many times over) and it would no doubt consume much of my servers resources would it not?

and that's just Zombies, Skellies, Spiders and Creepers.. it says nothing about grinding/farming other mobs such as blazes , zombie pigmen, villagers, slimes etc..

I can't see how this is feasible.. or am I being as dense as the matter from a neutron star here?

Difficult? yes.. but then as Sir Anthony Hopkins once said

"This is not mission difficult, Mr. Hunt, it's mission impossible. Difficult should be a walk in the park for you."

;)

[Mason11987]

On my single player world I built a 3 levels high, 3 (3x3) platform wide mob tap with two vine traps between each platform. I have probably 30 or so arcane scrolls.

The most likely scenario is you didn't design it correctly, you probably should have gotten a few more then you got. Could you show us some pictures of your spawning area, how they fall, where they are collected, and the saws?

Are mobs just spawning on the surface all around you? Cause you have to stop that too.

and that's just Zombies, Skellies, Spiders and Creepers.. it says nothing about grinding/farming other mobs such as blazes , zombie pigmen, villagers, slimes etc..

)

Blazes have no real use being farmed now, since FC took away their arcane scroll (since they could only be farmed from spawners). Zombie pigman farms are a significant commitment as it requires a true terraform of the nether, but the gold could be worth it.

Villagers have their own farm which is unique but not all that complicated once you find some examples to start from (there's a simple one in the builds topic.)

Slime farms are even simpler, they spawn only in certain chunks and thanks to BTW only on certain materials, which makes it fairly easy to farm them once you find a chunk.

[Minecraftgeek70]

The most likely scenario is you didn't design it correctly, you probably should have gotten a few more then you got. Could you show us some pictures of your spawning area, how they fall, where they are collected, and the saws?

Fo' shizzle... (slaps self.. I cannot believe I just said that ! )

hope this works.. hold onto your pantyhose!

entire album here -> http://imgur.com/a/pzRg3/embed

(can't get the embedding to work.. quelle surprise !)

I'm getting adequate spawnage.. and sufficient drops. I mean I'm drowning in bones, rotten flesh and the such.

I just thought that I'd be getting more "rare" drops than what I seem to be achieving at the moment.

[Mason11987]

Your mob trap spawns endermen but doesn't kill them, they're either all stuck in there or teleported somewhere else. If the ceiling was only two high you could avoid them spawning. Redesign with that in mind then try again.

Also I don't see torches around your mob trap, that likely means too many enemies are spawning in the ground around your mob trap and you aren't getting sufficient enemies inside.

Also, if that hopper is all you've gotten so far, you haven't gotten enough drops to match with many scroll drops. I don't know the odds but I have like a full chest of bones at least before I got smite.

Considering my 20 or so scrolls I have probably 6 or 7 double chests of bones/rotten flesh.

[duartemad]

I dont think it is the enderman, my bet is that he is using signs instead of vine traps.
Also the torches bit, that I agree

[Minecraftgeek70]

I'e not seen Endermen in there.. the spawn platforms are 8x8 and have a 2 block head clearance above.. as far as I'm aware Endermen won't spawn in the water itself.. and they cannot spawn on the 2 high platforms.

As for using vinetraps over say signs etc.. well, this is a mob trap design that works well in Vanilla. I know the new mob AI doesn't let mobs blindly walk off edges any more and you need a sign/vinetrap to "trick" them into taking that fateful last step to their inevitable doom.

I'm getting LOADS of mobs. the saws are busy busy busy.. and that chest was empty about 10 mins or so prior to me starting the trap again.

as I'm on Single player.. I use the Single player commands to keep it day all the time.. therefore ensuring that the only place the mobs can spawn in inside the spawners. And being a flat world.. there's no caverns underfoot (just a few layers of dirt and one of bedrock) in which for them to spawn.

it's not a huge problem. am cheating my derrière off in Single player to make this "work" and as it stands it's not going to work as is on my SMP server anyways. I only have about 5 or 6 players on my server and none of them are that far up the tech tree yet. We're not big on the full automation stuff. XD

Thanks for the advice so far anyway.

[DaWhiskers]

As mentioned, replace the signs with Vine Traps, mobs no longer try to walk on signs, so you are hurting the output of the trap.

Scrolls are meant to be rare, so you will get scrolls faster by killing more mobs quicker (not sure if FC ever released the % chance of scroll drops, but you can bet its damn low).

[duartemad]

I'e not seen Endermen in there.. the spawn platforms are 8x8 and have a 2 block head clearance above.. as far as I'm aware Endermen won't spawn in the water itself.. and they cannot spawn on the 2 high platforms.

As for using vinetraps over say signs etc.. well, this is a mob trap design that works well in Vanilla. I know the new mob AI doesn't let mobs blindly walk off edges any more and you need a sign/vinetrap to "trick" them into taking that fateful last step to their inevitable doom.

I might be mistaken but I hear signs do not work now to fool mobs.

[Thalarctia]

I don't believe the scrolls are even meant to drop in creative mode, which would explain the non-existant drop rate.

It is also possible that you have a mod conflict, seeing as you mentioned SPC. SPC, while it appears to work on the surface, replaces a number of btw classes (or the other way around), which would cause loss of functionality and possible crashes.

So, a quick checklist for you to see why you might not be getting drops:

Are you in creative mode?
Do you have ANY other mods installed than BTW?

Those two will likely give you the culprit.

[Poppycocks]

You could try testing the map in a non-SPC installation on survival. Just light up the space before testing as you won't be able to keep the game day. I'm interested in how that' will work out.

[Mason11987]

I think the best bet is to keep the map as is, then uninstall everything but BTW and run the map again and test the output. That'll verify that it isn't an issue with SPC.

[Thalarctia]

Since you insist on making it more complicated than it is, have a link and a quote:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4870&p=79710&hilit= ... ive#p79710

-Removed Arcane Scroll drops in creative mode.

[KittenToaster]

Agreed that scrolls are dam rare, but I think that's intended and is a good design decision on FC's part. However you are correct in what you said about Pigmen / Villagers & Iron Golems etc as they are much harder to farm efficiently due to the huge area that needs to be terraformed to do so. So they are even more of a PITA to acquire their scrolls. I'd rather play Brockian Ultra Cricket than terraform the Nether. :/

I see 66 spider eyes in the last screen shot of your chest, I'm curious how the hell are you killing spiders in that spawner, or is that what is clogging it up? (Cacti in the roof of each spawning level are you friend in a platform spawner to splat spiders due to their climbing mechanic.)

As said in above posts - definitely play with and add vine traps.

Since the Bane Scrolls from spiders are practically useless you should perhaps try piston spawners, which will provide you with just Creepers / Skeletons and Zombines.



Mobs have a pathetically short life span of about 1 second (drop fall damage) and if your world is lit up correctly they hammer out mobs like there is no tomorrow. I've ran out of redstone / snow / and netherbrick - so it looks a bit fuggly but it works, spent most of Thursday working on the piston reset switch due to the poverty of Mojangs code, that took 1980 redstone to complete. ;)

I have in my flat lands creative test world a number of experimentation builds. When perfected these get built on my BTW SMP server and my friends get to enjoy the fruits of my labours.

Schematic is here - http://www.mediafire.com/?pf9wa6bj5g7986q Have a play, and tweak it a little. ;)

EDIT: Why has this thread gone into the issue of mod conflicts?

I have managed to find ONE Arcane scroll of smite!

So things are working, correctly however the throughput of mobs and the rarity of scrolls are the issue here it seems. I don't know much about creative mode item spawning or mod conflicts, but if the OP stated that one dropped, then something is a little weird here..

-----

Minecraftgeek70 you've got me listening to HHGttG again :3 Favorite quote;

Arthur: Everywhere I touch it hurts.
Ford: Then don't touch yourself, you've sprained your wrist!

[Thalarctia]

I'd rather play Brockian Ultra Cricket than terraform the Nether. :/

That's what Nether Groth is for ;)

EDIT: Why has this thread gone into the issue of mod conflicts?

I have managed to find ONE Arcane scroll of smite!

So things are working, correctly however the throughput of mobs and the rarity of scrolls are the issue here it seems. I don't know much about creative mode item spawning or mod conflicts, but if the OP stated that one dropped, then something is a little weird here..

One dropped in several hours, where thousands of mobs were killed. In my rather modest survival mobtrap, I get one scroll drop approximately every 5-10 minutes, meaning that everything is definately not alright here. Since it is in the official changelog that Arcane Scrolls do not drop in creative mode, I do not see how continuously claiming the opposite does anything to help. If it really was an issue that arcane scrolls do not drop at all from hours of grinding in a massive tower, I am sure that it would have been reported as a bug long ago and FC would have rushed a release to fix it.

Problem exists between mod download and desktop chair, in this case with the users choice of creative mode and/or additional mods conflicting.

[Minecraftgeek70]

Problem exists between mod download and desktop chair, in this case with the users choice of creative mode and/or additional mods conflicting.

unfortunately the area between keyboard and chair did actually READ the flowerchild change log etc BEFORE I wrote my initial post. and which is why I stated I use single player commands to do the building without ACTUALLY resorting to creative mode. if I didn't make that clear then I apologise as profusely as is humanly possible without sacrificing the soul of my 1st born! XD

And since posting I've found 2 smite's , 1 blast protection and one looting (after I wired up an array of vanilla dispensers to a timer and crammed them full of villager eggs!) ! so PEBKAC or ID-10-T errors I've accounted for.. must just be the laws of averages I guess. 1 in 1000 for skellies, 1 in 500 for villagers

Thanks to all the helpful comments above.

EDIT

just to clarify..



the top selected is the world I use.. a non-creative world. with cheats enabled using Single player commands to allow world-edit commands to facilitate building , cloning and duplication of builds

[FlowerChild]

I'd rather play Brockian Ultra Cricket than terraform the Nether. :/

That's what Nether Groth is for ;)

Hehe...was wondering when someone would mention that. I was about to myself :)

[Thalarctia]

Hi,

firstly apologies if this has been covered elsewhere.. a quick scan couldn't turn up anything of relevance. Also, apologies if I'm missing something incredibly noobish here.

I have in my flat lands creative test world a number of experimentation builds. When perfected these get built on my BTW SMP server and my friends get to enjoy the fruits of my labours.

I have in my flat lands creative test world a number of experimentation builds. When perfected these get built on my BTW SMP server and my friends get to enjoy the fruits of my labours.

I have in my flat lands creative test world

creative

The only time, apart from my posts, where the word "creative" has been mentioned in this thread. So you start out saying you build in a creative world, then retort with sarcasm when someone points it out as the most likely cause of your problems...

I'm glad to see you got it working somehow though.

[Minecraftgeek70]

The only time, apart from my posts, where the word "creative" has been mentioned in this thread. So you start out saying you build in a creative world, then retort with sarcasm when someone points it out as the most likely cause of your problems...

I'm glad to see you got it working somehow though.

Appy-polly-Logies. Terminology differences.. When I say "creative" I mean.. well.. I mean "Cheating" XD As opposed to building legit.. Perhaps a better term would have been "Non-legit" building (but that's just a polite way of saying I'm a Cheating son of a cardsharp scumbag XD)

And as for the tongue in cheek sarcasm.. that's the problem with online social interactions. the end recipient can't always determine the spirit in which it was said.. this was "sarcasm with tongue in cheek and a wink in the eye" in response to your amusing "problem exists between chair and keyboard statement" .. I meant no disrespect , only joshing with you in the manner you seemed to be indulging in yourself :D

And yes.. it's working now. it was always working just not very well.. As I said I guess it was just lousy laws of averages on my behalf. However, I played around with KittenToasters EPIC spawn towers and got MANY items and scrolls so perhaps my design does need some.. How do you say... Refinement

take everything I say with a pinch of salt.. followed quickly with a bite of lime and a quaff of Tequilla ! XD