For the quartz blocks you can desaturate and change the lightness of the blocks with an image editor such as GIMP or Photoshop. That may address your needs while keeping the feel of the block
That is very strange. I have no idea why that is. You´re not on peaceful (obviously), and your platform is also made off solid blocks? Not of glass or any other transparent block, or half-slabs? What version are you playing? Maybe they changed something that i´m not aware off? I´m in 1.8.1
This is what i got in 1 hour, tested just now. Not astronomical, but pretty decent. There are of course designs for farms whith much higher rate. I build the X79 by ImpulseSV in another world and that one had higher rates. (but no ghast tears of course)
As you can see, i´m filtering out the magma cream, since i can get enough of that by just killing a few magma cubes, as well as the golden swords, because i obviously don´t need those. I did this because the minecart only has 5 slots, and swords do not stack, so it will fill up with swords quickly leaving all the good stuff behind. I choose 5 items: golden nuggets, golden ingots, flesh, tears and gunpowder.
I'm playing on 1.8.3. The platform is made of stone brick blocks. I've been around long enough to know that slabs and glass don't spawn mobs on them.
I think it may have to do with the recent(ish) nerfs of all sorts of automated farming but I would not have expected those changes to be responsible for this level of change. Also, those changes, I believe, took place prior to 1.8.1 so they would have affected you as well.
Oh yeah, they sure do! I made a simple mob farm originally designed by Etho and Docm77, 220 layers above the nether. I get tons of gold, even ghast tears and gunpowder and rotten flesh. It uses iron golems to kill the mobs and the loot is collected by a hooper minecart. Simple yet effective. I can even get the XP if i want.
Here´s a series of pictures of the construction and the final farm.
Setting up suplies
Building the framework and the first pigman already spawned
Magma slimes also spawn
It´s getting busy!
The tedious task of placing the rails for the hopper minecart. Pigs are constantly in the way
Ghasts also start spawning. Here you can see the scaffolding i used to place the levers to power the rails
Rails finally done. It´s getting dangerous now
This is rare!
Starting the spawning floor.
Building the floor is going to be a problem with all those pigs inside. I figured a way though. Just aggro´d one of them where they can´t reach me and started slashing.
Excuse me? Do you mind? I´m trying to make a floor here!
Floor finally done! This is from my AFK point
Building the glass cage
Simple minecart unloading system with a comparator connected to a hopper that empties the minecart. When there are items in the hopper, the rail is unpowered. When the hopper is empty, the rail is powered again, sending off the minecart
Iron golems in place and the fun begins
Iron golems don´t attack ghasts, but sometimes they´re in the way for the pigment, so they get hit and so the farm produces tears and gunpowder as well
Also XP. I made a door to be able to collect the XP if i want (and if there are no ghasts inside)
Here a test for the floor, first done in my test world
Now i have to build an elevator. I´m thinking of a minecart elevator with minarets placed 3 or 4 blocks distance up along a pillar, where you right-click upwards, into each next minecart. I have to wait for a bit more iron though, because all the rails and golems took a big pile from my stock...
The platform appears to be 33x33,
How much gold/tears/gunpowder do you tend to collect per hour?
If you still need a flat, expansive place to build, you can create a layer of smooth stone on top of any body of water by using lava buckets and letting the lava run over the water. Infinite land, only one bucket of lava (but I recommend having several to speed up the process).
Perhaps a sort of quarter dome that starts at the edge of the building then curves inward and downward, creating a sort of cave beneath the corner. This would help give some texture, as well as give it some feeling that its standing on something solid other than support beams, like a buttress (still my favorite architectural term).
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For the quartz blocks you can desaturate and change the lightness of the blocks with an image editor such as GIMP or Photoshop. That may address your needs while keeping the feel of the block
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I enabled creative mode to punch through.
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I'm playing on 1.8.3. The platform is made of stone brick blocks. I've been around long enough to know that slabs and glass don't spawn mobs on them.
I think it may have to do with the recent(ish) nerfs of all sorts of automated farming but I would not have expected those changes to be responsible for this level of change. Also, those changes, I believe, took place prior to 1.8.1 so they would have affected you as well.
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The platform appears to be 33x33,
How much gold/tears/gunpowder do you tend to collect per hour?
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Which is a very nice castle
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I would suggest stone brick at this point, but in the end it's up to you.
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