I have generally ignored villages since playing minecraft until recently but notice a lot of talk about them and the benefits of iron golem farms. I have looked at a few threads and the wiki but just wanted to clarify a couple of points.
Firstly, is there a limit on how many villagers you can have in one game?
Can a village be anywhere, ie. does it have to be in a particular area designated by the seed (as with slime chunks) or can you build your own village anywhere on the map as long as spawn requirements are met?
If the above is true, could you therefore build a platform with a ring of 'houses' to spawn villagers and in the centre have an area where the golem will spawn, as apparently golems spawn in the centre of the 'village'.
I am also excited about TU14 and the possibility of trading so I am keen to learn as much about villages as possible from other players experiences.
The ZipKrowd crew are awesome when it comes to game mechanics!! If there's a problem they can find a solution.... even if there isn't a problem they'll just create a solution you didn't even know you needed....
Had a quick blast this morning with my village and used some of the design ideas and it worked really well. Also set up a survival test area and started building their design for the golem farm. It works really well. I like the way they move villagers around too.
The big problem here is that we are limited to just 50 villagers, and its gona REALLY hurt us as the new few updates lands (not counting bug fixes). Lets examine this closely.
So the standard iron golem farm which DocM uses (invented by JL2579 of ZipCrowd) uses 16 villagers and 21 doors per platform to spawn 1 iron golem roughly every 6 minutes.
DocM's video uses 4 of those and thus a total of 64 villagers is needed to run the system as is to get a spawn roughly every 1:15 seconds on average.
So as we can see at most right now we can only support 3 platforms, which is fine for now as there really isn't much more use for villagers but the next update changes all that. For the sake of the argument lets say our world is running 3 platforms as well, giving us a decent iron golem spawn rate.
Now lets say the update is out, and that it landed yesterday, we now have 2 uses for villagers, trading and managing our iron farms, so we defiantly want to take advantage of this trading, hell we would be nuts not too after all you can get alot of good stuff from them, some of which we can't even get in creative such as a 'pig spawner'.
The problem with trading is that we need to go through ALOT of villagers to get good ones, and the perfect trades can take ages to get, so the first thing we'll likely need to do is setup a merchant hall that will house a number of villagers, which will allow us to quickly and easily kill off the ones which are no good to us, and is hooked up to a infinite breeding cell to keep new villagers flowing in to replace the ones we kill off.
So we start by removing a platform, our iron rates will go down but that's ok we still have 2 left. This will give us 18 villagers to play with, sounds good right? On average 12 to 15 will be stuck in the infinite breeding cell as it requires a certain number in there to push out others. More or less what we are doing in this infinite breeding cell (IBC), is causing the villagers to keep breeding in a small room, when the room is so full it will begin pushing villagers to the outside walls which will be extracted from the system and brought to our merchant hall. This is pretty standard, and actually pretty small breeding cell. This leaves us with 2 to 3 at most villagers to trade with, defiantly not enough, so we remove another platform.
Thus we are reduced to 1 platform in order to have a good trade hall. I seriously think we need a higher villager count, at least x2 of what we currently have.
Granted there are other iron golem farms out there by tango tek, both of which work on the 360, however the Iron trech requires a 'manual' setup and thus is not for the feint of heart, as well this is way overkill for the amount of iron we need on most 360 worlds. The iron foundry again works, and again is way way way way more iron then we need, and again village chaining must be done manually, which is pretty complex, and very tedious.
I apologize about the long read, and I hope that when the update lands, that if the villager counter hasn't been increased that everyone rally's and lays it to 4j in order to get our count increased. If enough of us cry about it, its bound to get uped. And before anyone says that the 360 can't manage that many villagers, they are wrong as before the most recent TU was implemented villages often went into a infinite breeding state. One of my worlds had just that happen with over 250 villagers on it, and the lag wasn't that bad.
Well, after playing around in creative with this set-up, I am impressed with the design. Upon reflection though, whilst it was fun to do in creative and I learned a few techniques for moving golems, controlling lava, etc., i can't ever imagine making this in survival as the time and effort required far outweighs the rewards, it's easier to go mining!
I've got a single column 2-level iron farm and it lets me work on other projects like my sugar cane tower (you better believe I'm getting paper ready for trading -- Dunder Mifflin style). The only issue I have is having to run back every 30 min to kill all the golems that accumulate in the collection area and put the iron in a chest.
Thanks for your support HernDiddy, really appreciate it. Caving is ok, but eventually resources start running out, and there are plenty of other farms that needs to be managed so we can't cave 'all the time'. When hoppers do eventually land, and even somewhat anvils your going to find that your going to burn through Iron at a MUCH faster rate.
Once you've built the iron farm a few times it really does not take that long to setup, and the resources it needs is fairly small. You also do not need to keep running back every 30 mins. I usually load the chunk and leave for hours on end with only 2 village platforms running. Now usually when I enter the area again there is a burst of lag because there are a pile of iron golems in the kill chamber, which usually gives me about 2 and a half stacks of iron, and half a stack of red roses.
I added a way to turn mine off and on, more or less by adding a couple of pistons at the end of the weakener that prevents the iron golems from leaving the lava and thus killing them. This prevents the iron golems from piling up so to speak, and obviously the iron dropped just despawns in about 5 mins.
Maybe when the update comes and you find that your burning through iron quite fast because of anvils you might look at iron golem farms a bit more with favor. Keep in mind that an anvil costs roughly 30 iron ingots, and has about 24 uses before they break. If your only 1 player thats not too bad, but with multiplayer suiting everyone in iron, and anvils == big big iron costs.
Agreed, definitely have one on the go if we get hoppers. I actually have a problem with the one I built. It all works except for the kill chamber. The piston pushes out and doesn't finish them off. I tried adding pistons from the side and I had pistons crushing from every direction but the golems just seem to glitch in and out of them without taking damage. I have followed the tutorial to the exact block. Is this sometimes an issue?
Agreed, definitely have one on the go if we get hoppers. I actually have a problem with the one I built. It all works except for the kill chamber. The piston pushes out and doesn't finish them off. I tried adding pistons from the side and I had pistons crushing from every direction but the golems just seem to glitch in and out of them without taking damage. I have followed the tutorial to the exact block. Is this sometimes an issue?
It's better to use lava as a weakener or even to kill the golems because they are notorious for glitching through stuff. Just be sure to not have lava at the feet of the golems. Go about head level to make sure you don't burn up your drops!
I have a simple straight drop where the golems collect and then I use dispensers to kill them with lava so I can suck the lava back up to let the golems accumulate again.
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Firstly, is there a limit on how many villagers you can have in one game?
Can a village be anywhere, ie. does it have to be in a particular area designated by the seed (as with slime chunks) or can you build your own village anywhere on the map as long as spawn requirements are met?
If the above is true, could you therefore build a platform with a ring of 'houses' to spawn villagers and in the centre have an area where the golem will spawn, as apparently golems spawn in the centre of the 'village'.
I am also excited about TU14 and the possibility of trading so I am keen to learn as much about villages as possible from other players experiences.
Check out that video and it'll teach you a whole lot.
Docm77 has great videos on all the Minecraft mechanics.
Actually, this video would probably be more to your needs....
So the standard iron golem farm which DocM uses (invented by JL2579 of ZipCrowd) uses 16 villagers and 21 doors per platform to spawn 1 iron golem roughly every 6 minutes.
DocM's video uses 4 of those and thus a total of 64 villagers is needed to run the system as is to get a spawn roughly every 1:15 seconds on average.
So as we can see at most right now we can only support 3 platforms, which is fine for now as there really isn't much more use for villagers but the next update changes all that. For the sake of the argument lets say our world is running 3 platforms as well, giving us a decent iron golem spawn rate.
Now lets say the update is out, and that it landed yesterday, we now have 2 uses for villagers, trading and managing our iron farms, so we defiantly want to take advantage of this trading, hell we would be nuts not too after all you can get alot of good stuff from them, some of which we can't even get in creative such as a 'pig spawner'.
The problem with trading is that we need to go through ALOT of villagers to get good ones, and the perfect trades can take ages to get, so the first thing we'll likely need to do is setup a merchant hall that will house a number of villagers, which will allow us to quickly and easily kill off the ones which are no good to us, and is hooked up to a infinite breeding cell to keep new villagers flowing in to replace the ones we kill off.
So we start by removing a platform, our iron rates will go down but that's ok we still have 2 left. This will give us 18 villagers to play with, sounds good right? On average 12 to 15 will be stuck in the infinite breeding cell as it requires a certain number in there to push out others. More or less what we are doing in this infinite breeding cell (IBC), is causing the villagers to keep breeding in a small room, when the room is so full it will begin pushing villagers to the outside walls which will be extracted from the system and brought to our merchant hall. This is pretty standard, and actually pretty small breeding cell. This leaves us with 2 to 3 at most villagers to trade with, defiantly not enough, so we remove another platform.
Thus we are reduced to 1 platform in order to have a good trade hall. I seriously think we need a higher villager count, at least x2 of what we currently have.
Granted there are other iron golem farms out there by tango tek, both of which work on the 360, however the Iron trech requires a 'manual' setup and thus is not for the feint of heart, as well this is way overkill for the amount of iron we need on most 360 worlds. The iron foundry again works, and again is way way way way more iron then we need, and again village chaining must be done manually, which is pretty complex, and very tedious.
I apologize about the long read, and I hope that when the update lands, that if the villager counter hasn't been increased that everyone rally's and lays it to 4j in order to get our count increased. If enough of us cry about it, its bound to get uped. And before anyone says that the 360 can't manage that many villagers, they are wrong as before the most recent TU was implemented villages often went into a infinite breeding state. One of my worlds had just that happen with over 250 villagers on it, and the lag wasn't that bad.
4J........ villager limit...... +
Must... have... hoppers....
Once you've built the iron farm a few times it really does not take that long to setup, and the resources it needs is fairly small. You also do not need to keep running back every 30 mins. I usually load the chunk and leave for hours on end with only 2 village platforms running. Now usually when I enter the area again there is a burst of lag because there are a pile of iron golems in the kill chamber, which usually gives me about 2 and a half stacks of iron, and half a stack of red roses.
I added a way to turn mine off and on, more or less by adding a couple of pistons at the end of the weakener that prevents the iron golems from leaving the lava and thus killing them. This prevents the iron golems from piling up so to speak, and obviously the iron dropped just despawns in about 5 mins.
Maybe when the update comes and you find that your burning through iron quite fast because of anvils you might look at iron golem farms a bit more with favor. Keep in mind that an anvil costs roughly 30 iron ingots, and has about 24 uses before they break. If your only 1 player thats not too bad, but with multiplayer suiting everyone in iron, and anvils == big big iron costs.
It's better to use lava as a weakener or even to kill the golems because they are notorious for glitching through stuff. Just be sure to not have lava at the feet of the golems. Go about head level to make sure you don't burn up your drops!
I have a simple straight drop where the golems collect and then I use dispensers to kill them with lava so I can suck the lava back up to let the golems accumulate again.