How-to: early game mushroom/mob farm

[jkievlan]

After browsing the forum for a bit, I've seen several people asking about early-game mob farms and mushroom farms. I have a solution to both that I use on a regular basis, and I thought people might be interested to hear about it.

Here's how it works. First, light can't pass through half-blocks. Second, it seems that mobs won't attack if they can only see your legs. Using both those facts, you can build an early-game combination mushroom farm and mob farm in the following way:

Dig out a large 2-block-high room with one open side (I usually do about 7x10 with a 10-block side open). Plant mushrooms inside with 2-3 blocks between each mushroom. On the open side, pave both the floor and ceiling with half-blocks (so between them, a full-block-tall gap spanning the whole side of the room). Dig down one block just outside your half-block "wall" and also pave that with a half-block (i.e., make a half-block "dip" in the floor just outside the room).

At this point your mushroom room should be fully dark, since no light will pass through the half-block "wall" into the room. Your mushrooms will grow, and mobs will spawn inside. When the mobs spawn, they can't escape and they won't attack (and creepers won't blow up). To bring them close to the wall where you can hit them, step into the half-block dip you made earlier outside the wall. They'll see you immediately and run to you, even skeletons. Step out before they attack and stand next to the wall, hitting the poor helpless bastards in the feet through the gap until they're all dead. Then dig out an opening, go grab their stuff, and pick any new mushrooms that have grown. Close it back up, go do some stuff, and come back later for more mob drops and mushrooms.

One warning: spiders can escape the room! Be careful. If there are spiders inside you'll have to fight them and risk getting killed before you can kill the other mobs and collect your shrooms.

Umm...it strikes me that the part about mobs not attacking through the gap may seem gamey to FlowerChild and others (though honestly, it doesn't seem any more gamey to me than using half-block paving to prevent mob spawns). If so, I do apologize and I won't complain if this gets axed in future BTW versions. Nevertheless, at the moment it's extremely useful, especially for collecting fish-bait drops in the "oh my God I'm gonna starve" part of the game.

[Gilberreke]

Cool idea, but mushrooms don't need to be in the dark to grow. They don't grow faster in the dark either, so I just light up my mushroom farms.

[MaxAstro]

Actually still kind of a cool (if risky) idea if for some reason you have limited space and need to use it efficiently.

[jkievlan]

Actually still kind of a cool (if risky) idea if for some reason you have limited space and need to use it efficiently.

Right, that's why I specified that it's an early-game build. You'd use it when you have very little to build with but you need to collect stone anyway (so you're getting some use out of that giant room you're cutting out), and you need to have renewable food resources before your meat stock (or whatever emergency food you started with) runs out. You get an easy way to trap and kill mobs, plus a mushroom farm that takes very little to build (just a big square room and some dirt slabs).

Of course, later in the tech tree there are much better ways to build both mob farms and mushroom farms. But for early-game survival I haven't yet found a better method -- though for all I know somebody here is about to school me :)

Cool idea, but mushrooms don't need to be in the dark to grow. They don't grow faster in the dark either, so I just light up my mushroom farms.

Yeah but then you don't get all those nice monsters to kill :) It's much better than running around outside waving an axe. More importantly, torches are extremely valuable in the early game. Why waste any if you don't have to?

[FlowerChild]

Cool idea, but mushrooms don't need to be in the dark to grow. They don't grow faster in the dark either, so I just light up my mushroom farms.

Yikes...what? Did this change at some point?

What I had assumed to be the risk/reward of creating a mushroom farm by having to put some thought into building it in the dark was definitely a consideration in how I was balancing them.

[Magick_Miner]

Yikes...what? Did this change at some point?

What I had assumed to be the risk/reward of creating a mushroom farm by having to put some thought into building it in the dark was definitely a consideration in how I was balancing them.

As long as the light level is 12 or below the growth rate does not seem to be affected.

[Six]

Cool idea, but mushrooms don't need to be in the dark to grow. They don't grow faster in the dark either, so I just light up my mushroom farms.

Yikes...what? Did this change at some point?

What I had assumed to be the risk/reward of creating a mushroom farm by having to put some thought into building it in the dark was definitely a consideration in how I was balancing them.

The lighting restriction was changed back in 1.8 beta (I think) and it has remained as a long standing Minecraft Myth. They can actually grow fine up to a 1 block gap between them and a torch, so long as they can't see the sky.

This also seems to have some effect with mushrooms in swamps, growing out to a bunch under each tree, although that might have something to do with them growing at night and not getting any updates when it gets light again during the day.

[FlowerChild]

K...taking a note to look into that, as that's pretty frigging dull. I've been having some fun with mushroom farms, but that's almost exclusively because of what I thought to be the low light level requirements.

[FlowerChild]

They can actually grow fine up to a 1 block gap between them and a torch, so long as they can't see the sky.

No, that's wrong, or at least only partially correct. I've dug into the code for that one, so I know precisely how it works.

Any more than 3 mushrooms within a volume (5X5X3 I think) around a mushroom will prevent them from growing anymore. Thus, spacing them out is necessary to prevent "jams" where no new mushrooms will grow.

[FlowerChild]

Just check in the code. The volume I mentioned above is 9X9X3 (up to 4 blocks away horizontally from the mushroom). If there are 5 or more mushrooms total (including the one being tested itself, so any more than 3 others in the surrounding area), any given mushroom will not grow.

If the light value of a block is 13 or higher, the mushroom can also not grow, and existing ones will "pop" off. The light value used is the maximum light value at any time of day for the block in question, so if the block can "see" the sky, then the daytime light value is used for that, which is why mushrooms outside will only grow under trees.

So there you go. That's precisely how mushrooms currently work in MC.

[Gilberreke]

Yikes...what? Did this change at some point?

I thought they were always able to grow in light level 12 and that the darkness thing was just a myth that somehow got around.

They were like that at least as far as when swamps were introduced, hence the billions of mushrooms under swamp trees, where it's still pretty light.

The thing is that they can't grow in full light, so people assumed they needed to have no torches near at all. Most people don't really know how the lighting levels work, so for them, it's either a torch or no torch.

[FlowerChild]

Have mushrooms ever changed in terms of lighting levels? I thought they were always able to grow in light level 12 and that the darkness thing was just a myth that somehow got around.

Yeah, I think they did. I distinctly remember mushroom farm builds from before then that relied on absolute darkness, but then the growth parameters were changed to prevent their uncontrollable spread through the nether or something. I think that's when the light values also got adjusted. Mushroom growth has been such an obscure aspect of MC for so long, that I can see how these myths would be perpetuated.

There just wasn't any real reason to build them, so I never bothered, and really, there's still no reason to build them in vanilla, so in this case I have no issues with reworking their growth parameters despite the build breakage potential, as really this is mod specific functionality, and something that was introduced rather recently as well.

Correct me if I'm wrong there and anyone has a huge mushroom production facility they'd hate to lose, but I don't anticipate it being a major issue.

[jkievlan]

The lighting restriction was changed back in 1.8 beta (I think) and it has remained as a long standing Minecraft Myth. They can actually grow fine up to a 1 block gap between them and a torch, so long as they can't see the sky.

Interesting. I guess I fell prey to the myth. I liked it better the other way anyway...mushrooms *should* grow in the dark. I don't know why they changed it...maybe too many people complaining about how hard mushroom farms are (they're not, they just take some thought).

[Pucc]

Doesn't Mycelium remove the light restriction anyway i.e. allowing them to grow in full sunlight regardless?

[Graphite]

Correct me if I'm wrong there and anyone has a huge mushroom production facility they'd hate to lose, but I don't anticipate it being a major issue.

Probably would break my current mushroom farm (unless you want to be driven insane by spiders), but it should be refittable for the most part. Just hope I can cram the new floor-layout into the old building, as it's sorta wedged in between a bunch of others :P

[SterlingRed]

Correct me if I'm wrong there and anyone has a huge mushroom production facility they'd hate to lose, but I don't anticipate it being a major issue.

I've got a pretty decent sized automated farm on the server, and in ssp. But the designs should be adaptable with some tweaking to whatever changes.

[Gilberreke]

Yeah, I think they did. I distinctly remember mushroom farm builds from before then that relied on absolute darkness, but then the growth parameters were changed to prevent their uncontrollable spread through the nether or something. I think that's when the light values also got adjusted.

I just looked it up and mushrooms have always had the same lighting restrictions as far I can tell. At least as far as Alpha 1.0.1 (Secret Friday Update 3), which was the second Alpha release or so. I can't test Infdev, to see how far back it goes, but Alpha always had the 12 lighting level restriction.

[FlowerChild]

I just looked it up and mushrooms have always had the same lighting restrictions as far I can tell. At least as far as Alpha 1.0.1 (Secret Friday Update 3), which was the second Alpha release or so. I can't test Infdev, to see how far back it goes, but Alpha always had the 12 lighting level restriction.

It's possible, as like I said, I never bothered building one back in the day. Doesn't really matter either way though.

[Gilberreke]

It's possible, as like I said, I never bothered building one back in the day. Doesn't really matter either way though.

Sure doesn't. I just think it's an interesting part of MC history that so many people made videos, threads, etc about it, without actually making sure that was actually necessary.

It's also important to me, since it's probably my first "farm" and it was mushrooms, not redstone that brought me to BTW.

The weird part is, I used to love the mushroom infested caves. Finding one of those was awesome. It kinda explained how mushroom biomes came to be, and if I were Mojang, I would've ran with that. Infectious mushrooms running rampant just sounds like it would be fun.

[Six]

The weird part is, I used to love the mushroom infested caves. Finding one of those was awesome. It kinda explained how mushroom biomes came to be, and if I were Mojang, I would've ran with that. Infectious mushrooms running rampant just sounds like it would be fun.

And run rampant they did:

Spoiler

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[CycloneSP]

O.o looks like the vanilla version of the groth.