I just followed this tutorial on making a squid ink farm: It's not much of a tutorial, actually, but I downloaded the world download and copied from that. I am not getting any spawns at all. I placed it in a desert biome about 200 blocks in every direction from any above-ground water. I am more than 24 blocks below the farm when I sat there watching for squid as shown in my picture. Note all these pictures have the coordinates in them. Does anyone know what I did wrong? I'm running on friend's SpigotMC server running 1.12.1.
Thanks for any help,
-LambdaCube
-edit- After AFKing here for about 30 minutes, and writing this post, I have gotten *some* ink. 17 in about a half hour. This is *way* less than the tutorial suggested I'd get still. So I must have something wrong. But it's vital information that it's not literally zero, like I thought.
What's your render distance set to? It has to be 10 or more, or you'll end up with fewer spawns.
Being a server, are you noticing this lack of squid at times when you're the only one on or is it happening only when others are on as well? The more players logged in, the more likely there will be less mobs around you.
What plugins does the server have installed? Some of them are designed to manipulate spawns and do other things to reduce lag. I believe there are also config settings that do similar.
The sign in the linked video @~0m44 shows both "6000 items/minute" and "About 60 squid/minute".
In vanilla MC squid drop 1-3 ink sacs or an average of 2/squid.
"About 60 squid/minute" >> ~120 items a minute (NOT 6000) — or about 7200/hr.
Based on my unscientific experience, 60 squid a minute seems high, but not wholly unreasonable, and 6000 drops/hr would be 100/minute or about 50 squid which might well be possible…
[This video published by docm77 seems a fairly similar size and design and claims only 4400/hr (~73drops/minute).]
Should the claim not turn out to be a mistake, in addition to the questions DuhDerp asks;
It looks like the lowest water in the farm is @~y=48, the highest water @~y=63 or 64 and you AFK location @~y=21; while this places you >24 from the bottom of the water columns, you are considerably more than 32 from the tops of the columns (This means squid spawning in the top ~10 levels rapidly cease to move.)
[It might be better to AFK 25 to one side of the water column array to keep as many spaces as possible with the 32 block freeze limit.]
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Why does everything have to be so stoopid?" Harvey Pekar (from American Splendor)
WARNING: I have an extemely "grindy" playstyle; YMMV — if this doesn't seem fun to you, mine what you can from it & bin the rest.
The sign in the linked video @~0m44 shows both "6000 items/minute" and "About 60 squid/minute".
In vanilla MC squid drop 1-3 ink sacs or an average of 2/squid.
"About 60 squid/minute" >> ~120 items a minute (NOT 6000) — or about 7200/hr.
Based on my unscientific experience, 60 squid a minute seems high, but not wholly unreasonable, and 6000 drops/hr would be 100/minute or about 50 squid which might well be possible…
[This video published by docm77 seems a fairly similar size and design and claims only 4400/hr (~73drops/minute).]
Yeah their claims might be grand and only work in a perfect, creative world with no other blocks literally anywhere. But my farm is considerably less. In one 8-10 hour session AFKing, I got 273 ink sacs. That's 27 per hour. Two orders of magnitude off from any of these numbers.
Should the claim not turn out to be a mistake, in addition to the questions DuhDerp asks;
It looks like the lowest water in the farm is @~y=48, the highest water @~y=63 or 64 and you AFK location @~y=21; while this places you >24 from the bottom of the water columns, you are considerably more than 32 from the tops of the columns (This means squid spawning in the top ~10 levels rapidly cease to move.)
[It might be better to AFK 25 to one side of the water column array to keep as many spaces as possible with the 32 block freeze limit.]
I will definitely try moving my AFK spot to be 24 blocks horizontally from the nearest water location. Thanks, that's a good idea and I'll try that tonight when I AFK.
What's your render distance set to? It has to be 10 or more, or you'll end up with fewer spawns.
Render distance is 12.
Being a server, are you noticing this lack of squid at times when you're the only one on or is it happening only when others are on as well? The more players logged in, the more likely there will be less mobs around you.
My numbers are from AFK sessions when I was alone on the server. It's a small server, so there are plenty of nights when no one is playing (we're mostly in the same time zone) and no one is AFKing either (no one on the server is all that hardcore). So though people come and go, often, I was able to get plenty of data on times when just I am on the server. That being said, I have noticed that when other players are on with me, the farm is 100% inoperable and produces nothing. This makes perfect sense since those players are all near tons of water and the squid that spawn near them are never killed. So they immediately grab a few of the spawns and never release them. I'm fine with this farm not working when others are on line. I think even folks on Hermitcraft have had that issue.
What plugins does the server have installed? Some of them are designed to manipulate spawns and do other things to reduce lag. I believe there are also config settings that do similar.
The only plugin the server has is "no spawn chunks" which prevents the area in the spawn chunks form being loaded 100% of the time. You need players to be present in order to load chunks.
A 50% drop in rate between an empty superflat or void world and a survival world wouldn't greatly surprise my, but the <1% you're seeing seems out-of-line.
[I'm not familiar with LaDesda (that's the only video uploaded to the youtube channel) but docm77 last a longstanding good repiutation…]
Two other possibilities occurred to me:
Have you double checked your collection system? (It might be worth the effort to spam a couple of stacks of seeds on the collection floor just to verify the system.)
In your OP you state the farm is "placed it in a desert biome about 200 blocks in every direction from any above-ground water"; how much checking have you done for underground water between y=46 & y=63? (This doesn't seem like it should be a problem, but squid have a very low mob cap [5] so if even a few blocks of spawnable water were with 32 of your AFK point they might generate squid which would not despawn as long as you remained.)
Also a question:
Is the rate of drops constant across your AFK sessions? or does it decline (or rise) with time?
(If your hourly rate drops during a session, this could indicate the slow accumulation of non-despawning squid.
A test where you compare two 1-hour sessions where you move 200 blocks (enough over 128 to despawn anything near the farm) in between with a 2-hour session might prove informative.)
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Why does everything have to be so stoopid?" Harvey Pekar (from American Splendor)
WARNING: I have an extemely "grindy" playstyle; YMMV — if this doesn't seem fun to you, mine what you can from it & bin the rest.
I just did another over-night AFK at the squid farm. In about 7 hours I got only about 2 stacks of ink sacs. This time I moved my AFK location to Y54 and 24 blocks back from the first water column as suggested in this thread. It hasn't really helped, sadly.
My server is on easy mode. Could that be an issue?
Difficulty mode has no bearing on anything regarding what type of mob can spawn. You will have the same chances of spawnage and the same mob caps for each mobs in every difficulty mode that allows spawns. What difficulty mode does affect (whether directly or indirectly) relative to spawning is:
1)the armor and weapons that zombies spawn with
2)the armor that skeletons spawn with
3)the size of the slime (for example, easy difficulty will not allow the spawning of big slimes and hard mode will not allow the spawning of small slimes)
4)the number of pigmen that spawn in the overworld
Difficulty also affects other things unrelated to mob spawning, such as whether zombies can break down wooden doors or whether the player can die of starvation.
Being Spigot the spawn rates for squid is by default set too low. You will need the owner to modify the Spigot Config file to increase the amount of squids that will spawn.
I had the same issue on a server I used to admin and I had to increase the mobcap of water animals to a higher number. I can't remember the exact numbers I used as it was a couple of years ago now.
Thanks for the tip. I imagine SpigotMC has something to do with the issues. But if the mob cap is low, shouldn't I still see somewhat reasonable rates because the squid are all more or less dying immediately? Seeing rates as low as a 10th or 100th of that of the tutorial's output doesn't seem to match up with a mob cap that's only a few lower. The squid mob cap in the default server is 5. I just looked it up. Even if my server is 1, that seems like it should have either not much effect (since it's a mob cap not a change in how frequently they spawn) or something closer to 20% through put. Plus I'm certain our mob cap is not 1 for squids. Out in the ocean I've seen at least 3 at once minimum. I forget if I've seen 4, but I think I have.
In other news, I used Xaero's mini map to investigate if there were any squid in caves near by. There don't seem to be any in the 128 block radius I've mapped out around my farm. Still, the rates are dismal.
quote=LambdaCube
I imagine SpigotMC has something to do with the issues. But if the mob cap is low, shouldn't I still see somewhat reasonable rates because the squid are all more or less dying immediately? Seeing rates as low as a 10th or 100th of that of the tutorial's output doesn't seem to match up with a mob cap that's only a few lower. The squid mob cap in the default server is 5. I just looked it up. Even if my server is 1, that seems like it should have either not much effect (since it's a mob cap not a change in how frequently they spawn) or something closer to 20% through put. Plus I'm certain our mob cap is not 1 for squids. Out in the ocean I've seen at least 3 at once minimum. I forget if I've seen 4, but I think I have. [Emphasis added]
This may be important: in vanilla "out in the ocean", I regualrly see dozens (too many for an easy count) and the usual spawn group is 4.
From the wiki "Because the caps are only checked at the beginning of a spawn cycle, they can be dramatically exceeded when a large number of mobs spawn in a single cycle. This happens often with squid, which have a fairly low cap (5 in single player) but can spawn in the hundreds in a single cycle, in an area with lots of water." LINK
If you think you may have seen four at once, this suggests that squid spawning on this server is greatly reduced. [It may not technically be the mob cap that is changed, your server may also only be spawning mobs up to the mob cap (ie. the server spawn algorithm checks more frequently than "only … at the beginning of a spawn cycle") or something similar.]
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Why does everything have to be so stoopid?" Harvey Pekar (from American Splendor)
WARNING: I have an extemely "grindy" playstyle; YMMV — if this doesn't seem fun to you, mine what you can from it & bin the rest.
also, quoting from the wiki:
''The level of light is not important. However, they will only spawn if their spawning block (the solid block underneath the water) is between Y (vertical) level 46 and 62[/b], inclusive.''
Don't think the wiki is correct about the part in bold. Yes, the spawn range is 46 to 62, but you don't need to have a solid block in any part of that range. Or at all, for that matter (strictly for the purposes of spawning, obviously you need something for the drops to land on and the squid to smash their faces on).
alternatively you could use magma blocks, or a water collection area that drops them into another pit.
Squid are able to completely ignore flowing water, so a water collection area is beyond pointless. What makes a squid farm actually work is forcing the squid to swim out of the water enough that they start falling. Doing this as quickly as possible means it will rain squid pretty much as fast as Minecraft will attempt to spawn them, at which point it's just a matter of providing enough blocks of water (flowing or otherwise) to avoid failing spawn attempts.
The ideal number of streams seems to be around 8 to 10 or so, after that you're just wasting a ton of space that sits completely idle most of the time.
Hey everyone,
I just followed this tutorial on making a squid ink farm: It's not much of a tutorial, actually, but I downloaded the world download and copied from that. I am not getting any spawns at all. I placed it in a desert biome about 200 blocks in every direction from any above-ground water. I am more than 24 blocks below the farm when I sat there watching for squid as shown in my picture. Note all these pictures have the coordinates in them. Does anyone know what I did wrong? I'm running on friend's SpigotMC server running 1.12.1.
Thanks for any help,
-LambdaCube
-edit- After AFKing here for about 30 minutes, and writing this post, I have gotten *some* ink. 17 in about a half hour. This is *way* less than the tutorial suggested I'd get still. So I must have something wrong. But it's vital information that it's not literally zero, like I thought.
What's your render distance set to? It has to be 10 or more, or you'll end up with fewer spawns.
Being a server, are you noticing this lack of squid at times when you're the only one on or is it happening only when others are on as well? The more players logged in, the more likely there will be less mobs around you.
What plugins does the server have installed? Some of them are designed to manipulate spawns and do other things to reduce lag. I believe there are also config settings that do similar.
The sign in the linked video @~0m44 shows both "6000 items/minute" and "About 60 squid/minute".
In vanilla MC squid drop 1-3 ink sacs or an average of 2/squid.
"About 60 squid/minute" >> ~120 items a minute (NOT 6000) — or about 7200/hr.
Based on my unscientific experience, 60 squid a minute seems high, but not wholly unreasonable, and 6000 drops/hr would be 100/minute or about 50 squid which might well be possible…
[This video published by docm77 seems a fairly similar size and design and claims only 4400/hr (~73drops/minute).]
Should the claim not turn out to be a mistake, in addition to the questions DuhDerp asks;
It looks like the lowest water in the farm is @~y=48, the highest water @~y=63 or 64 and you AFK location @~y=21; while this places you >24 from the bottom of the water columns, you are considerably more than 32 from the tops of the columns (This means squid spawning in the top ~10 levels rapidly cease to move.)
[It might be better to AFK 25 to one side of the water column array to keep as many spaces as possible with the 32 block freeze limit.]
Yeah their claims might be grand and only work in a perfect, creative world with no other blocks literally anywhere. But my farm is considerably less. In one 8-10 hour session AFKing, I got 273 ink sacs. That's 27 per hour. Two orders of magnitude off from any of these numbers.
I will definitely try moving my AFK spot to be 24 blocks horizontally from the nearest water location. Thanks, that's a good idea and I'll try that tonight when I AFK.
Render distance is 12.
My numbers are from AFK sessions when I was alone on the server. It's a small server, so there are plenty of nights when no one is playing (we're mostly in the same time zone) and no one is AFKing either (no one on the server is all that hardcore). So though people come and go, often, I was able to get plenty of data on times when just I am on the server. That being said, I have noticed that when other players are on with me, the farm is 100% inoperable and produces nothing. This makes perfect sense since those players are all near tons of water and the squid that spawn near them are never killed. So they immediately grab a few of the spawns and never release them. I'm fine with this farm not working when others are on line. I think even folks on Hermitcraft have had that issue.
The only plugin the server has is "no spawn chunks" which prevents the area in the spawn chunks form being loaded 100% of the time. You need players to be present in order to load chunks.
A 50% drop in rate between an empty superflat or void world and a survival world wouldn't greatly surprise my, but the <1% you're seeing seems out-of-line.
[I'm not familiar with LaDesda (that's the only video uploaded to the youtube channel) but docm77 last a longstanding good repiutation…]
Two other possibilities occurred to me:
Have you double checked your collection system? (It might be worth the effort to spam a couple of stacks of seeds on the collection floor just to verify the system.)
In your OP you state the farm is "placed it in a desert biome about 200 blocks in every direction from any above-ground water"; how much checking have you done for underground water between y=46 & y=63? (This doesn't seem like it should be a problem, but squid have a very low mob cap [5] so if even a few blocks of spawnable water were with 32 of your AFK point they might generate squid which would not despawn as long as you remained.)
Also a question:
Is the rate of drops constant across your AFK sessions? or does it decline (or rise) with time?
(If your hourly rate drops during a session, this could indicate the slow accumulation of non-despawning squid.
A test where you compare two 1-hour sessions where you move 200 blocks (enough over 128 to despawn anything near the farm) in between with a 2-hour session might prove informative.)
I just did another over-night AFK at the squid farm. In about 7 hours I got only about 2 stacks of ink sacs. This time I moved my AFK location to Y54 and 24 blocks back from the first water column as suggested in this thread. It hasn't really helped, sadly.
My server is on easy mode. Could that be an issue?
Difficulty mode has no bearing on anything regarding what type of mob can spawn. You will have the same chances of spawnage and the same mob caps for each mobs in every difficulty mode that allows spawns. What difficulty mode does affect (whether directly or indirectly) relative to spawning is:
1)the armor and weapons that zombies spawn with
2)the armor that skeletons spawn with
3)the size of the slime (for example, easy difficulty will not allow the spawning of big slimes and hard mode will not allow the spawning of small slimes)
4)the number of pigmen that spawn in the overworld
Difficulty also affects other things unrelated to mob spawning, such as whether zombies can break down wooden doors or whether the player can die of starvation.
Thanks for the tip. I imagine SpigotMC has something to do with the issues. But if the mob cap is low, shouldn't I still see somewhat reasonable rates because the squid are all more or less dying immediately? Seeing rates as low as a 10th or 100th of that of the tutorial's output doesn't seem to match up with a mob cap that's only a few lower. The squid mob cap in the default server is 5. I just looked it up. Even if my server is 1, that seems like it should have either not much effect (since it's a mob cap not a change in how frequently they spawn) or something closer to 20% through put. Plus I'm certain our mob cap is not 1 for squids. Out in the ocean I've seen at least 3 at once minimum. I forget if I've seen 4, but I think I have.
In other news, I used Xaero's mini map to investigate if there were any squid in caves near by. There don't seem to be any in the 128 block radius I've mapped out around my farm. Still, the rates are dismal.
quote=LambdaCube
I imagine SpigotMC has something to do with the issues. But if the mob cap is low, shouldn't I still see somewhat reasonable rates because the squid are all more or less dying immediately? Seeing rates as low as a 10th or 100th of that of the tutorial's output doesn't seem to match up with a mob cap that's only a few lower. The squid mob cap in the default server is 5. I just looked it up. Even if my server is 1, that seems like it should have either not much effect (since it's a mob cap not a change in how frequently they spawn) or something closer to 20% through put. Plus I'm certain our mob cap is not 1 for squids. Out in the ocean I've seen at least 3 at once minimum. I forget if I've seen 4, but I think I have. [Emphasis added]
This may be important: in vanilla "out in the ocean", I regualrly see dozens (too many for an easy count) and the usual spawn group is 4.
From the wiki "Because the caps are only checked at the beginning of a spawn cycle, they can be dramatically exceeded when a large number of mobs spawn in a single cycle. This happens often with squid, which have a fairly low cap (5 in single player) but can spawn in the hundreds in a single cycle, in an area with lots of water." LINK
If you think you may have seen four at once, this suggests that squid spawning on this server is greatly reduced. [It may not technically be the mob cap that is changed, your server may also only be spawning mobs up to the mob cap (ie. the server spawn algorithm checks more frequently than "only … at the beginning of a spawn cycle") or something similar.]
Don't think the wiki is correct about the part in bold. Yes, the spawn range is 46 to 62, but you don't need to have a solid block in any part of that range. Or at all, for that matter (strictly for the purposes of spawning, obviously you need something for the drops to land on and the squid to smash their faces on).
Squid are able to completely ignore flowing water, so a water collection area is beyond pointless. What makes a squid farm actually work is forcing the squid to swim out of the water enough that they start falling. Doing this as quickly as possible means it will rain squid pretty much as fast as Minecraft will attempt to spawn them, at which point it's just a matter of providing enough blocks of water (flowing or otherwise) to avoid failing spawn attempts.
The ideal number of streams seems to be around 8 to 10 or so, after that you're just wasting a ton of space that sits completely idle most of the time.