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I have spent the past few nights working on a gigantic mob spawner/grinder. Finally I got it finished, and I switched off peaceful. I was anxiously awaiting the plethora of bounty my setup would bring me in my collection area, and even after waiting over half an hour, all I get is a slow trickle of 90% string and other items here and there.

My build is alternating floors of 4X4 pads stacked with three spaces between each. The bottom floor is a system of water cascading towards a final 4X4 hole for the mobs to fall into then a lava blade grinder. What I have noticed by standing in a safe spot on my collection floor is that nearly all of the mobs spawning are spiders!

The spawning pads are almost all plank blocks, but a few floors are made of cobblestone. The machine is located about sea-level and builds up to the highest block possible. There is NO light inside of the spawning area. Each floor lines up with the floor above it so that the holes of one floor line up with the platforms of the next. I will do my best to illustrate below. It almost seems like so many spiders are spawning, no other mobs can spawn because the chunks hit their limits full of spiders.

Any ideas on why I am mostly getting spiders in this thing?

x = block
= no block

Floor A:

xxxx xxxx xxxx
xxxx xxxx xxxx
xxxx xxxx
xxxx xxxx
xxxx xxxx xxxx
xxxx xxxx xxxx


Floor B:

xxxx xxxx
xxxx xxxx
xxxx xxxx xxxx
xxxx xxxx xxxx
xxxx xxxx
xxxx xxxx

hmmm. they should spawn right. your design is awfully strange looking when trying to explain it like that. i know what you did but it just looks so weird planted out like that. but i built one not to long ago kinda like that and all mobs spawned equally usually.

thanks for all of the good ideas. the trap is entirely above ground so i need not worry about the surrounding area so much. I will try the 3x3 with half slabs. Do mobs spawn on half slabs?

Quote from cyborggold

thanks for all of the good ideas. the trap is entirely above ground so i need not worry about the surrounding area so much. I will try the 3x3 with half slabs. Do mobs spawn on half slabs?

Yes, you do need to worry about the surrounding space, which includes unfortunately underground. Any caves within 128 blocks of your position will be spawning mobs if they are dark enough, which they usually are unless you illuminate them. I tried to minimize this problem in my spawner by building it over the ocean, and up about 27 blocks. Then I wait for spawns near the full height of the map. But I still ended up finding spawns underground, and lighting up a massive cave system. This dramatically improved the resources yield from the spawner.

I dont know a whole lot about the spawning mechanics of mobs. But i do have a working mob spawner that gets me about 730 items per hour. I could show you my design if you'd like?. xGod of drifTx shoot me a friend request if you want to see it. leave a message too.