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[Malacodor]

Check out my improved XP farm, too!

Here comes the mob trap 'Wheel of Madness™': The mobs inside it turn mad and jump into the water channels because their blocky brains can't understand the wheel's overwhelming roundness. Then they are transported to their doom, a vicious suffocation machine which leaves them alive with minimum health. So they can be smashed easily with bare hands. Alternatively they can be brutally slain with lava stolen from the blacksmith taken directly from the Nether, but their remains can still be looted. You'll get over 3,300 items per hour!
Of course the 'Wheel of Madness™' comes with a shut-off mechanism and an easy to use record farm mode. Order your personal mob trap now - for only 99998 Emeralds!*

*Or use the blueprints and build it yourself for free.

Edit: Never open the fence gates manually, only use the lever (like you can see in the second picture)!
Edit 2: Also have a look at the upgrade post.

World download

Pictures:

Spoiler:

View from above (vines not included)


Collection point with nearly dead mobs (outdated due to a redesign)


Kill mode


Record farm mode (skeleton shoots creeper)

Table of contents

1. Introduction
2. Material list
3. Building site
4. Blueprints
5. Operation manual
6. FAQ


1. Introduction

While I was optimizing my old mob trap in beta 1.8 I tested the 1.9 pre-releases and found out that everything I planned didn't work anymore. My old design could produce 48,000 items/h in beta 1.8 but it went less and less with every pre-release. So I restarted from scratch and after some failures I finally came up with a new design. Unfortunately all my attempts to include spiders and endermen were unsuccessful. Redstone is required but with the blueprints even total redstone noobs should be able to build it.


2. Material list

~ 9200 stone blocks
~ 850 glass blocks
~ 330 redstone dust
~ 160 ladders
~ 100 signs
~ 100 torches
- 31 redstone lamps
- 26 half blocks
- 4 pistons
- 4 sticky pistons
- 2 trap doors
- 2 fence gates
- 2 buckets of water
- 1 bucket of lava (handle with care, keep away from children and do not drink)


3. Building site

The spawn floor (layer 6) must be at least 144 blocks above the ground (surface/ocean floor) and below Y=240. No specific biome is needed but ocean is recommended due to the high risk of falling during the building process. The Nether and the End aren't suitable building places.
Up in the blueprints must be north or east unless record farm mode isn't used. Otherwise the fence gates will open to the wrong side and must be adjusted manually.
Edit: Redstone circuitry might not work properly when up in the blueprints is east or west.

4. Blueprints

Spoiler:

Layer 1

Spoiler:

Build a high enough pillar with a ladder up to this layer.

Layer 2

Spoiler:

Pay attention, it's not symmetric! You can use stone instead of glass if you want, in the other layers, too.

Layer 3

Spoiler:

Layer 4

Spoiler:

Layer 5

Spoiler:

Layer 6

Spoiler:

The redstone stuff is only needed for the shut-off mechanism.

Layer 7

Spoiler:

The redstone stuff is still only needed for the shut-off mechanism, replace lamps with stone when you don't need it.

Layer 8

Spoiler:

Layer 9

Spoiler:

The sticky pistons (and redstone stuff around them) are only needed for record farm mode, if you don't use it you can also replace the fence gates (layer 8) with signs.

Layer 10

Spoiler:

Don't replace the single glass block near the upper right corner of the platform.
It's possible to attach the lever in this layer to its block from below, swapping it with sign 8.

Layer 11

Spoiler:

These sticky pistons are for XP farm mode.

Layer 12

Spoiler:

Don't replace the single glass block next to the repeaters.

Layer 13

Spoiler:

Layer 14

Spoiler:

These pistons control the lava blades.

Layer 15

Spoiler:

Layer 16

Spoiler:

The two stone blocks in the center are needed to protect undeads from the sun.

Layer 17

Spoiler:

Finally, the most important part!

5. Operation manual

There's a safe zone around the player where mobs cannot spawn and mobs don't move when they are too far away. The spawn room of the Wheel of Madness™ perfectly fits in the area between the safe zone and the non-moving zone (as long as the user stands exactly on the collection point). The spawn pads are designed to prevent spider spawning since spiders always cause problems. The mobs fall into the water channels and are transported to the two suffocation shafts. There they get damage until they have only a half heart left. Then they are dropped near the collection point, so the user can safely punch them and collect XP orbs and loot. Sometimes a mob slips through unharmed, so when a mob doesn't die after two hits use a sword.
In 12w30b mobs sometimes seem to fall through but still take suffocation damage or seem out of place. It looks like they are lagging, even when in single player mode. I hope this will be fixed in 1.3. It's still there in 1.3.2 1.4.5.

Mob spawning lever: Controls the light based shut-off mechanism.
Mob grinder lever: Controls the suffocation grinder, must also be on when lava blades are used.
Lava blade lever: Control the lava blades, activate to automatically kill the mobs for loot, no XP can be farmed this way. Edit (1.4.5): Items can no longer be farmed this way since they don't fall fast enough to get through anymore.
Record/XP farm mode lever: Switch to record farm mode and go next to one of the shafts. Stick to the back wall, when you are too close creepers may explode. If you did everything right present skeletons will attempt to shoot at you. Since you can't be hit more than once at a time you shouldn't get hurt too much, at least in an iron armor. Mobs hit by skeleton arrows will die and in case it's a creeper it'll drop a record.


6. FAQ

Q.: Why are there so little mobs?
A.: Make sure you stand at the collection point, the trap isn't shut off, the spawn floor is below Y=240 and don't play on peaceful. Maybe you need an antenna. And check for invisible light sources.

Q.: Do I really need that much glass?
A.: No, all the glass that isn't part of a redstone circuit can be replaced by stone, see comments in the blueprints.

Q.: Help, I don't have that many redstone lamps!
A.: The lamps on which levers are attached can be replaced with stone without loss of functionality. Replacing (not removing!) the other lamps is possible, but will disable the shut-off mechanism. You won't need the wires and repeaters at layer 6 and 7 then. Glowstones is also buyable from villagers since 1.3.

Q.: Is there a version without redstone?
A.: It is possible to operate the trap in lowtech mode. Kill mobs with the lava blades to get loot or kill them on your own for XP. Remove the trap doors.

Q.: I have the lava blades on but I don't see any items?
A.: Activate the mob grinder lever, due to the compactness of the circuitry it's impossible to switch off the pistons permanently.


Edit: Added world download and items/h.

Edit 2:
Updated the blueprints:
- Layer 6: Added missing blocks to support some redstone wires and repeaters at layer 7 which were hanging in the air before.
- Layer 9-13: Redesigned lava blade control.
- Layer 10: Added missing torch.
Adapted the manual to fit the changes.

Edited by Malacodor, 01 December 2012 - 05:45 PM.

[FrenchFry]

O.o That's amazing...

[Shadow2hel]

....Totally blew my mind o-O

[Softpotatisify]

Any chance that we can have a download? I dont understand blueprints..

Looks amazing anyway!

[Boundegar]

Amazing.  Thanks for this!

[GriizDevelopment]

OH MY GAWD.

[Taco_Austin]

Will diamonds do instead of emeralds?
Awesome mob trap! But looking at the requirements... this would be practically impossible to do legit, or it would take a very long time.

[nethervvoid]

Wow super thorough guide. I really need to make one of these.

[Mr_Taco_Guy]

ill pay the 99998 emeralds... *uses invedit*

[Dan10105]

9200 block is 143 stacks of cobble, the equivalent of filling up the inventory 4 times with just cobble.

Looks like I've got some more digging to do.

Btw, how fast is this farm? I'm guessing you don't know exactly or you would have put it in the description, but is it at least better than 3,000 an hour?

[picklebobdogflog]

World download??? Btw this deserved to be bumped. It's awesome!!!

[boothesecond]

This is awesome! I would prefer if you uploaded a map of it instead of giving us blueprints. Makes it much easier.

[Malacodor]

Can someone tell me where I can upload files without registration?

Dan10105, on 24 July 2012 - 09:23 PM, said:

9200 block is 143 stacks of cobble, the equivalent of filling up the inventory 4 times with just cobble.
Btw, how fast is this farm? I'm guessing you don't know exactly or you would have put it in the description, but is it at least better than 3,000 an hour?

Yes, it should be doable in an acceptable amount of time. I'll test tomorrow how many items/h the wheel produces. For a test of XP farming I have to wait for 1.3, since this update will change a few things.

[DontStealMyBacon]

Malacodor, on 24 July 2012 - 11:54 PM, said:

Can someone tell me where I can upload files without registration?


Yes, it should be doable in an acceptable amount of time. I'll test tomorrow how many items/h the wheel produces. For a test of XP farming I have to wait for 1.3, since this update will change a few things.

The only one I've used is media fire. It is free and I would like to see it

[Heisenberg]

Oh Mal, how I love your toys.

[Malacodor]

Dan10105, on 24 July 2012 - 09:23 PM, said:

Btw, how fast is this farm? I'm guessing you don't know exactly or you would have put it in the description, but is it at least better than 3,000 an hour?

In item farm mode it's 3,300 items/h (tested with 1.2.5), in XP farm mode it depends on how fast you click.

Softpotatisify, on 24 July 2012 - 07:44 PM, said:

Any chance that we can have a download? I dont understand blueprints..

picklebobdogflog, on 24 July 2012 - 09:28 PM, said:

World download???

boothesecond, on 24 July 2012 - 09:35 PM, said:

I would prefer if you uploaded a map of it instead of giving us blueprints. Makes it much easier.

Here you go: http://www.mediafire...y5taclqc54lcreo

[rodabon]

Just looking at it I probably would have went with 'Saucer of Doom' as a moniker.  As usual a unique and well thought out approach Malacodor.  Perhaps someone can make a video tour of this thing.

[KooalaBear123]

Looks awesome...How did you come up with this? Nice Job!

[Keyl10]

Looks like the perfect xp farm for my current world.  I do happen to have a couple dozen chests of cobble lying around.

[Malacodor]

KooalaBear123, on 26 July 2012 - 08:45 PM, said:

How did you come up with this?

I started with a hollow sphere and tried to fit in spawn floors. I decided to try making two ring floors with maximum radius. In the first version I had many dropshafts with a piston controlled water brake. In kill mode the mobs died pretty fast, but in XP mode some mobs had more than a half heart while some others still died. There were a vertical mob elevator and an item elevator in the center. Transporting the mobs took much time and the item elevator was rather complicated. Then I thought why not transporting the mobs horizontally and vertically at the same time by making water slopes. And since a suffocation mechanism seemed still simpler and cheaper than the item lift I started developing one. The prototype was much bigger than the current version and I had to compactify it a lot. With the new design I saved ressources from the dropshafts, both elevators and the control circuitry for the water brakes. After some tests I found out that two floors aren't really more effective than a single one - more ressources saved. Originally the redstone lamps were part of the roof of the lower floor, so they could light the upper one, too. After removing the second floor I moved the lamps down to increase their range since glowstones are hard to get. It took a while to make sure every single block is lit. With a lot of testing and fine tuning I finally reached the release version and here it is. Now I'll build it in my survival world. I haven't seen any slimes yet, but in a jungle temple I found three sticky pistons, which was better than the actual "treasure".