I've been working on hollowing out a 100x100 space for a mob trap. Originally it was going to have a centralized grinder. One for each side with a centralized Item drop point. Now I wonder if it would be more efficient to have multiple grinders; I'm thinking four four sided ones. In this case how would I manage the area between the grinder's inlet flow?
As far as item collection goes you can either setup a canal system or have the items drop in multiple places onto a minecart track and setup the carts so they boost you back and forth while you go afk.
Lastly, you can use the sign glitch to make canals bigger then 2 wide. Basically you place a sign then place a sign on the edge of the one you just placed. It's rather quirky but I use it for my chicken coup, I got the idea from watching etho make his mob elevator in his lets play series.
Have you done any experiments with alternative killing methods (lava namely, but possible fire as well) to compare the item/hour rate? Also, Sinstrite noted that his trap saw an increase in items/hour when he added rooms. Have you tried adding rooms to your spawning floor?
I have, the original way the trap worked was with lava, I decided to try a cactus approach because 1. cacti are easier to find and transort than lava, 2. they are considerably less dangerous to work with, and 3. they don't give off light, which allows me to shrink the trap by putting the grinder closer to the spawn area.
I did play with the lava approach a bit.
It is possible that adding more rooms might add some performance, but I am pretty much fine with 6000/h. And if I made it too much larger, it would be too impractical to be legit. I have gotten together a few friends and we are going to attempt to build a full scale copy in a fully legit world (unfortunately, the world is not mine and is closed and private, so you can't help us <sadface>)
using mocreatures and humans+.. i learn that after 15 minutes ALL the chests are filled with food/iron/diamonds/diamond armour/CAKE. and that occasionally you get a creeper hole because the humans fight the creepers, so theres constant explosions..
Have you done any experiments with alternative killing methods (lava namely, but possible fire as well) to compare the item/hour rate? Also, Sinstrite noted that his trap saw an increase in items/hour when he added rooms. Have you tried adding rooms to your spawning floor?
I have, the original way the trap worked was with lava, I decided to try a cactus approach because 1. cacti are easier to find and transort than lava, 2. they are considerably less dangerous to work with, and 3. they don't give off light, which allows me to shrink the trap by putting the grinder closer to the spawn area.
I did play with the lava approach a bit.
It is possible that adding more rooms might add some performance, but I am pretty much fine with 6000/h. And if I made it too much larger, it would be too impractical to be legit. I have gotten together a few friends and we are going to attempt to build a full scale copy in a fully legit world (unfortunately, the world is not mine and is closed and private, so you can't help us <sadface>)
I might try to play around with some designs that allow lava to be used close to the spawning floor without light pollution, but I don't expect anything revolutionary to come of it.
When I mentioned adding rooms, I didn't mean expanding the trap but literally building walls on the spawning floor, so that mobs can't wander about as much. As for the size, I think it is surprisingly small, and a room of a much greater size could easily be built or hollowed out without hacks. The spawning floor in my currently non-functional mob trap is at the very least 5x as large, and probably more. It wasn't too hard to do, as I merely idled over several nights to collect a bunch of gunpowder when I had a much smaller spawning floor (and a functional grinder, which I am currently lacking).
As for the canals, it seems it should be possible to cut down on their sizes. Instead of bringing several canals out to almost the collection point and then merging them, what if the canals fed into a centralized canal that began under the trap? That way only one canal would have to reach out to the collection point. I'm also thinking of using some of the oddities of water to create a completely flat canal that can go as far as I need it to (a method was demonstrated in a thread a few days back).
OK, I managed to build a fully legit cactus spawning trap (same spawn area, slightly different canals) on an smp server with 1 other person. It took maybe 5 hours to get the trap itself done, and it will take some more time to fill the surrounding caves with torches.
Edit - the most practical way to build it, i've found, seems to be underground, starting with choosing a site, measuring out the dimensions, then building the spawning floor (with torches), then the grinder pits, then testing to make sure you compensated properly for the southwest rule (I had to reverse all of my traps because I did it wrong first), then adding cacti and water, then adding the item canals, then removing all of the torches.
I used a stone-transparent texture pack while building. Otherwise, fully legit.
It matters in the cactus grinder -
if you have a cactus on a sand, above ground level, like such:
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if you walk into the sand/cactus without jumping, you will only take damage if you approach from the south or west. (I think? its probably south and west but I never bothered to check which directions. I do know for a fact that it only works in 2 directions. The sample trap in the world you downloaded is inert and will do no damage because it is rotated backwards.
So we built your design on our server. (one of the 2 spawning rooms). We built it completely underground and under water to prevent animal spawns. But somehow we dont really get that much items.
Is it important that all the water trenches are built with glass?
Did you make sure to light the surface and all caves within the area needed around the trap? And how many players are on the server when you test it? If it's a few then you need to only have 1 to get a full test or have everyone stand in the room with you so all the mobs spawn in the trap.
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Quote from Scartail »
also here's a sentence so this isn't a one-word post
With other people around (1-3) We get about 1k/hr. We lighted up every cave we could find. Is there any trick how to find more caves? Because thats pretty much the only thing that could explain the low item gain.
Sorry for the late reply, I was busy with some assignments. I'm not a major player on servers, I barely ever get on, you might want to ask someone that's more experienced with them. If possible, see if you can get the map on MCEdit or another program where you can look everywhere for caves and double check to see if you missed a few. If that doesn't work just make sure that you have all of the lighting done far enough away, other then that, my guess is it's just something to do with being constructed on a server itself, there's possibly different ways mobs and spawning work for traps on there - I have no idea - hope someone more experienced with servers browses over this.
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Quote from Scartail »
also here's a sentence so this isn't a one-word post
With other people around (1-3) We get about 1k/hr. We lighted up every cave we could find. Is there any trick how to find more caves? Because thats pretty much the only thing that could explain the low item gain.
Download an x-ray texture pack. I having the same issue as you with a trap i'm tweaking. The texture pack I am using is called wireframe, but there are others as well. This will help you find the caves very easily. I can confirm it works on SMP and works just like a normal texture pack.
Another (totally legit) way to find nearby caves is to listen for cave noises - they indicate a dark cave is nearby. See the wiki for more info: http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Ambience
However, there is a strange problem going on. If I walk under the trap, then back to the collection point, the mob spawning rates become MUCH lower (going from ~100 items per minute, down to ~10 items per minute). I gave it time to warm up (over 10 minutes) once I returned to the collection point. What could be the cause of this?
I'm really liking both traps. However, on a practical side i'm going to go with the cactus trap. Never done one before. Going to go legit on an SMP server that I do with a coworker.
Question though. How well would it work up in the near the very very top? Thinking about building this up in the sky above my diamond mine.
Hey Sinstrite, I built a compact mob grinder/spawner...the spawning floors were 10x10. I barely got any monsters...how are you getting consistent spawns on such small spawning floors?
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Quote from A Minecraft Forum User »
OH THE INHUMANITY! PLEASE LOCK THIS THREAD NOW! DARUDEBOI CAN'T HOLD THE TROLLS BACK ANY LONGER! [iapprove]
A question: How high up must a mob fall from to kill it? 10-15 blocks?
fall damage doesn't reliably kill mobs. its a shame it reliably kills players...
but yeah, I built a fall damage based trap once. mobs frequently survived the 60 block fall. Kinda ruined that one...
Sorry, online classes have the better part of my day. Pretty much to sum it up, there's two main rules I guess people need to keep on their list when making and testing traps:
Rule1 - Area lighting is the key to forcing mobs where you want them.
Rule2 - Gravity is not the answer to effective item farming.
By the way, I was in a Minecraft-mood (romantic, eh?) last night and did some stacking and condensing a bit on the 17k/hr trap and managed to get just over 21.1k items an hour. Since the focus is more about vertical building instead of horizontal now - Almost a cube design, honestly - I'm going to focus on that design combined with the 17k/hr design and pretty much see if I mix it with the design apocalypse_r did, and make something worth a calling practical and effective.
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Quote from Scartail »
also here's a sentence so this isn't a one-word post
As far as item collection goes you can either setup a canal system or have the items drop in multiple places onto a minecart track and setup the carts so they boost you back and forth while you go afk.
Lastly, you can use the sign glitch to make canals bigger then 2 wide. Basically you place a sign then place a sign on the edge of the one you just placed. It's rather quirky but I use it for my chicken coup, I got the idea from watching etho make his mob elevator in his lets play series.
screenie
I have, the original way the trap worked was with lava, I decided to try a cactus approach because 1. cacti are easier to find and transort than lava, 2. they are considerably less dangerous to work with, and 3. they don't give off light, which allows me to shrink the trap by putting the grinder closer to the spawn area.
I did play with the lava approach a bit.
It is possible that adding more rooms might add some performance, but I am pretty much fine with 6000/h. And if I made it too much larger, it would be too impractical to be legit. I have gotten together a few friends and we are going to attempt to build a full scale copy in a fully legit world (unfortunately, the world is not mine and is closed and private, so you can't help us <sadface>)
[FAQ] Extremely Common Problems
[OFFICIAL] Dragon Cave Thread
I might try to play around with some designs that allow lava to be used close to the spawning floor without light pollution, but I don't expect anything revolutionary to come of it.
When I mentioned adding rooms, I didn't mean expanding the trap but literally building walls on the spawning floor, so that mobs can't wander about as much. As for the size, I think it is surprisingly small, and a room of a much greater size could easily be built or hollowed out without hacks. The spawning floor in my currently non-functional mob trap is at the very least 5x as large, and probably more. It wasn't too hard to do, as I merely idled over several nights to collect a bunch of gunpowder when I had a much smaller spawning floor (and a functional grinder, which I am currently lacking).
As for the canals, it seems it should be possible to cut down on their sizes. Instead of bringing several canals out to almost the collection point and then merging them, what if the canals fed into a centralized canal that began under the trap? That way only one canal would have to reach out to the collection point. I'm also thinking of using some of the oddities of water to create a completely flat canal that can go as far as I need it to (a method was demonstrated in a thread a few days back).
[] []
[] []
Also for the item canals have you guys tried the flat conveyor trick.
It has a topic somewhere here in the forums.
Edit - the most practical way to build it, i've found, seems to be underground, starting with choosing a site, measuring out the dimensions, then building the spawning floor (with torches), then the grinder pits, then testing to make sure you compensated properly for the southwest rule (I had to reverse all of my traps because I did it wrong first), then adding cacti and water, then adding the item canals, then removing all of the torches.
I used a stone-transparent texture pack while building. Otherwise, fully legit.
[FAQ] Extremely Common Problems
[OFFICIAL] Dragon Cave Thread
if you have a cactus on a sand, above ground level, like such:
[] []
[] []
if you walk into the sand/cactus without jumping, you will only take damage if you approach from the south or west. (I think? its probably south and west but I never bothered to check which directions. I do know for a fact that it only works in 2 directions. The sample trap in the world you downloaded is inert and will do no damage because it is rotated backwards.
[FAQ] Extremely Common Problems
[OFFICIAL] Dragon Cave Thread
Did you make sure to light the surface and all caves within the area needed around the trap? And how many players are on the server when you test it? If it's a few then you need to only have 1 to get a full test or have everyone stand in the room with you so all the mobs spawn in the trap.
Sorry for the late reply, I was busy with some assignments. I'm not a major player on servers, I barely ever get on, you might want to ask someone that's more experienced with them. If possible, see if you can get the map on MCEdit or another program where you can look everywhere for caves and double check to see if you missed a few. If that doesn't work just make sure that you have all of the lighting done far enough away, other then that, my guess is it's just something to do with being constructed on a server itself, there's possibly different ways mobs and spawning work for traps on there - I have no idea - hope someone more experienced with servers browses over this.
To find caves, I just did a google search and found this:
http://wn.com/How_to_find_a_Caves_in_Minecraft
It requires using cartograph with cave mode, so it is cheating in a way.
If you want to do it without cheating, I saw this diagram that someone made:
Download an x-ray texture pack. I having the same issue as you with a trap i'm tweaking. The texture pack I am using is called wireframe, but there are others as well. This will help you find the caves very easily. I can confirm it works on SMP and works just like a normal texture pack.
http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Ambience
However, there is a strange problem going on. If I walk under the trap, then back to the collection point, the mob spawning rates become MUCH lower (going from ~100 items per minute, down to ~10 items per minute). I gave it time to warm up (over 10 minutes) once I returned to the collection point. What could be the cause of this?
Question though. How well would it work up in the near the very very top? Thinking about building this up in the sky above my diamond mine.
Venit, quessit, induravit.
fall damage doesn't reliably kill mobs. its a shame it reliably kills players...
but yeah, I built a fall damage based trap once. mobs frequently survived the 60 block fall. Kinda ruined that one...
[FAQ] Extremely Common Problems
[OFFICIAL] Dragon Cave Thread
Rule1 - Area lighting is the key to forcing mobs where you want them.
Rule2 - Gravity is not the answer to effective item farming.
By the way, I was in a Minecraft-mood (romantic, eh?) last night and did some stacking and condensing a bit on the 17k/hr trap and managed to get just over 21.1k items an hour. Since the focus is more about vertical building instead of horizontal now - Almost a cube design, honestly - I'm going to focus on that design combined with the 17k/hr design and pretty much see if I mix it with the design apocalypse_r did, and make something worth a calling practical and effective.