I know I am not the first to think of this. Half of you have probably already done this, but I figure I will share will you anyway.
As you already know, cobblestone can not be destroyed by ghast fireballs. The first thing most people probably do after entering the nether for the first time is build a cobblestone shelter around the portals they arrived in. Since the ghast fireballs rapidly erode away the crumbly netherack around the shelter, most people probably build a cobblestone terrace in the area around said shelter.
Anyway ... I decided to take it to the final step -- Pave Over the Nether!
I haven't reached my goal yet, but with the massive amount of cobblestone I have been getting from my branch mining I am simply covering everything over that I can. Right now I have vast flat cobblestone areas much like those parking lots for Disney theme parks. Now when ghast spit their fireballs at me they do no damage to the landscape, and the fires they set go out after about a minute instead of burning forever on the netherack.
Also: In one area I have been building up a series layers with about an eight block space in between them. The arrangement sort of resembles a large downtown parking garage. It is an anti-ghast experiment. The worst thing about ghasts (besides the fireballs) is their tendancy to fly up high, making it difficult to shoot them with my bow, but if a ghast spawns inside one of the layers of my "parking garage", it is trapped. It can move around and spit fireballs, but it can not fly upwards, making it an easy target. If I had made my layers slightly shorter (6 blocks tall instead of 8 blocks tall), then the spawning ghast would not only be trapped between the levels, but completely imobilized, and at my mercy. (Note: The reason I chose 8 blocks between layers instead of 6 was 8 blocks works out evenly with the spiral staircase I built to climb between levels.)
Sorry I don't have any screen shots to show you. Does anybody know how I can take screen shots and save them to a flash drive?
A lot of work, but sounds intriguing nonetheless. Do many ghasts actually spawn in your garage area? I have a large nether brick platform that I've built in between sections of my nether fortress (hoping to make a safe landing spot for ghast drops that I shoot with my bow. However, it seems to me that the ghasts no longer tend to spawn over the patio area, but are now spawning more frequently on the other side of my fortress, which is over the lava lake at the base of the nether.
Yes. Ghasts do spawn in the garage area, although more of them spawn in a large open area adjacent to it.
If a ghast spawns on a level below me, I only know it is there from hearing that funny baby/cat sound it makes, but if it spawns on a level above me, its tentacles hang down through the floor and are clearly visible from underneath.
Usually the ghasts that spawn in the garage area can still move around within the level in which they spawned (and sometimes they escape out the side of the structure, which is still open), and I still have to shoot them with my bow (although I can easily sidestep their fireballs almost effortlessly and can shoot them fairly easily), but occasionally one will spawn sitting right on the floor of its level and will be imobilized. The imobilized ghast still shoots back, but it can not move at all, and it is actually possible for me to walk up to it and kill it with my sword. I have done this three or four times, albeit only once in the garage so far. (The other times were in other places in the nether where ghasts spawned in tight spaces and were imobilized.)
You are also quite right about it being a lot of work. I have been doing a lot of branch mining to find as many minerals as possible. I mine all the way from a main tunnel (roughly 1/3 of the world distance away from the edge of the overworld map) out to the edge of the map and then back to the main tunnel again every time I make a trip into the mine. I obtain a lot of ore, but roughly 3/4 of my inventory is filled with cobblestone. After dumping my gold and iron ore into one of my furnaces, and the rest of the stuff into chests, I head straight for the nether to get rid of all of that cobblestone. It is indeed a lot of cobblestone, but it has already taken at least a couple dozen trips into the nether to get to where I am now, and it will take many many MANY more trips before I am done.
Thanks for responding to my question... at least I now know they will spawn over top of blocks other than netherrack and lava... so, they should spawn over top of my nether brick patio. They probably just prefer to spawn over the lava, so I may have to extend another patio out over the lava on the other side of my fortress. I don't mind sniping them with my bow from a distance so I don't have to trap them between layers... but I HATE losing all their drops in the lava beneath them.
As a note on those imobilized ghasts, they don't appear to drop anything. I assume it may be because the drops appear at or near the bottom of the mob, and since the bottom of the imobilized ghast is probably inside the floor, the drops can't spawn.
Sorry for the double post. I just wanted to post a couple of screen shots of the "parking garage" area.
Since MCX360 only sends screen shots to Facebook, and since I do not have Facebook, I had to resort to photographing my TV screen. Sorry for the poor quality.
Here is a view of a paved area looking towards the "parking garage" area. Since my earlier post I added a decorative fence on the levels to prevent the ghasts from getting out. (I was using the fantasy texture pack when I took this shot.)
Ghasts are trapped if they spawn between the levels of the "parking garage" and can not fly upwards. It is possible to walk up to a ghast and kill it with a sword. In an earlier post I said I only did it once in the "parking garage". Today I did it several times. (City texture pack used here.)
Because of the relatively short height between floors, ghast tentacles frequently hang down through the ceilings, alerting me to their owners' pressence.
Looks like quite a structure. Since we last talked, I expanded my netherbrick patio by quite a bit (I'm working in survival, so gathering the netherrack to make the nether bricks has been quite a little chore.) Ghasts are spawning regularly over the patio and I've been able to snipe quite a few with my bow or kill them by returning their blasts back to them. I haven't lost anymore of their tears and gunpowder to the lave lake since.
Eventually, I might try making part into a garage to see if I can get them with a sword.
I am using a diamond sword enchanted with Sharpness III and Knockback II. It is able to take down a ghast in a single hit. I imagine other swords might need two or three hits, but I don't think it would be much of a problem.
Do you have any screenies of your patio? I wouldn't mind seeing them. If that whole Facebook thing is a problem for you too, then you can always just take photos of your screen like I did.
(I am curious why you are using netherbrick for your patio when branch mining in the overworld generates an insane amount of cobblestone to get rid of.)
I am using a diamond sword enchanted with Sharpness III and Knockback II. It is able to take down a ghast in a single hit. I imagine other swords might need two or three hits, but I don't think it would be much of a problem.
Do you have any screenies of your patio? I wouldn't mind seeing them. If that whole Facebook thing is a problem for you too, then you can always just take photos of your screen like I did.
(I am curious why you are using netherbrick for your patio when branch mining in the overworld generates an insane amount of cobblestone to get rid of.)
Basically, it's just a platform extension of my nether fortress; so I wanted it to match the style that was already there.
My fortress's bridges were arranged in such a way that there was a square open area in the center. (about 25 blocks x 25 blocks) However, much of it was straight down to the lava lake at the bottom of the nether. I could snipe the ghasts out the "fenced" holes (just by removing the nether brick fences), but I was losing the drops in the lava. So, I started by filling in that square area with a layer of nether brick (and I call it my patio). Then I found that the ghasts seemed to be spawning on the other side of the fortress bridges rather than over the patio... so I was thinking that maybe they didn't spawn over nether brick. So, after reading your post, I've just extended another platform out that other side of the bridges a ways with a nether brick fence around it similar to the style of the small balconies that spawn naturally with the fortress. It's not quite finished (I want to enlarge it, but I need to smelt more netherrack into brick), but now I can sniipe ghasts out the "fence" windows on that side as well and most of their drops land on the platform and I can just run out a window and grab them.
I don't have Facebook... and it's not really worth a picture.
I took a peek at the wiki, and it says ghasts will spawn over any block EXCEPT a block that is part of a nether fortress.
That appears to be the source of your problem. I assume if you extend your patio out beyond the area designated as part of the nether fortress, then you will start getting ghasts spawning out there.
Meanwhile, I have continued expanding the parking garage. I am not sure what its width is (I will say about 50+ wide, although I really do not know), but it pretty much extends along its length all the way from one bedrock wall all the way to the other (albeit with several interuptions from large netherrack formations), and from the lava sea all the way up to the massive formation of netherrack that pretty much spans the entire upper area of the nether in this world.
The parking garage reached a point where I could clearly see the nether fortress, so I contructed a cobblestone walkway out along the surface of the lava sea to the base of a large grouping of structures basically merged together as one building. I then proceeded to hollow out the nether fortress, turning the solid mass into a series of floors I hope to be able to use as a base. The bad news is I added nether fence windows the same as the existing ones in the fortress to every floor, but instead of looking bad ass, I ended up making the nether fortress look like an apartment building.
Darn.
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As you already know, cobblestone can not be destroyed by ghast fireballs. The first thing most people probably do after entering the nether for the first time is build a cobblestone shelter around the portals they arrived in. Since the ghast fireballs rapidly erode away the crumbly netherack around the shelter, most people probably build a cobblestone terrace in the area around said shelter.
Anyway ... I decided to take it to the final step -- Pave Over the Nether!
I haven't reached my goal yet, but with the massive amount of cobblestone I have been getting from my branch mining I am simply covering everything over that I can. Right now I have vast flat cobblestone areas much like those parking lots for Disney theme parks. Now when ghast spit their fireballs at me they do no damage to the landscape, and the fires they set go out after about a minute instead of burning forever on the netherack.
Also: In one area I have been building up a series layers with about an eight block space in between them. The arrangement sort of resembles a large downtown parking garage. It is an anti-ghast experiment. The worst thing about ghasts (besides the fireballs) is their tendancy to fly up high, making it difficult to shoot them with my bow, but if a ghast spawns inside one of the layers of my "parking garage", it is trapped. It can move around and spit fireballs, but it can not fly upwards, making it an easy target. If I had made my layers slightly shorter (6 blocks tall instead of 8 blocks tall), then the spawning ghast would not only be trapped between the levels, but completely imobilized, and at my mercy. (Note: The reason I chose 8 blocks between layers instead of 6 was 8 blocks works out evenly with the spiral staircase I built to climb between levels.)
Sorry I don't have any screen shots to show you. Does anybody know how I can take screen shots and save them to a flash drive?
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Stay fluffy~
If a ghast spawns on a level below me, I only know it is there from hearing that funny baby/cat sound it makes, but if it spawns on a level above me, its tentacles hang down through the floor and are clearly visible from underneath.
Usually the ghasts that spawn in the garage area can still move around within the level in which they spawned (and sometimes they escape out the side of the structure, which is still open), and I still have to shoot them with my bow (although I can easily sidestep their fireballs almost effortlessly and can shoot them fairly easily), but occasionally one will spawn sitting right on the floor of its level and will be imobilized. The imobilized ghast still shoots back, but it can not move at all, and it is actually possible for me to walk up to it and kill it with my sword. I have done this three or four times, albeit only once in the garage so far. (The other times were in other places in the nether where ghasts spawned in tight spaces and were imobilized.)
You are also quite right about it being a lot of work. I have been doing a lot of branch mining to find as many minerals as possible. I mine all the way from a main tunnel (roughly 1/3 of the world distance away from the edge of the overworld map) out to the edge of the map and then back to the main tunnel again every time I make a trip into the mine. I obtain a lot of ore, but roughly 3/4 of my inventory is filled with cobblestone. After dumping my gold and iron ore into one of my furnaces, and the rest of the stuff into chests, I head straight for the nether to get rid of all of that cobblestone. It is indeed a lot of cobblestone, but it has already taken at least a couple dozen trips into the nether to get to where I am now, and it will take many many MANY more trips before I am done.
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(Of course I could be wrong.)
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Since MCX360 only sends screen shots to Facebook, and since I do not have Facebook, I had to resort to photographing my TV screen. Sorry for the poor quality.
Here is a view of a paved area looking towards the "parking garage" area. Since my earlier post I added a decorative fence on the levels to prevent the ghasts from getting out. (I was using the fantasy texture pack when I took this shot.)
Ghasts are trapped if they spawn between the levels of the "parking garage" and can not fly upwards. It is possible to walk up to a ghast and kill it with a sword. In an earlier post I said I only did it once in the "parking garage". Today I did it several times. (City texture pack used here.)
Because of the relatively short height between floors, ghast tentacles frequently hang down through the ceilings, alerting me to their owners' pressence.
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Eventually, I might try making part into a garage to see if I can get them with a sword.
Do you have any screenies of your patio? I wouldn't mind seeing them. If that whole Facebook thing is a problem for you too, then you can always just take photos of your screen like I did.
(I am curious why you are using netherbrick for your patio when branch mining in the overworld generates an insane amount of cobblestone to get rid of.)
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Basically, it's just a platform extension of my nether fortress; so I wanted it to match the style that was already there.
My fortress's bridges were arranged in such a way that there was a square open area in the center. (about 25 blocks x 25 blocks) However, much of it was straight down to the lava lake at the bottom of the nether. I could snipe the ghasts out the "fenced" holes (just by removing the nether brick fences), but I was losing the drops in the lava. So, I started by filling in that square area with a layer of nether brick (and I call it my patio). Then I found that the ghasts seemed to be spawning on the other side of the fortress bridges rather than over the patio... so I was thinking that maybe they didn't spawn over nether brick. So, after reading your post, I've just extended another platform out that other side of the bridges a ways with a nether brick fence around it similar to the style of the small balconies that spawn naturally with the fortress. It's not quite finished (I want to enlarge it, but I need to smelt more netherrack into brick), but now I can sniipe ghasts out the "fence" windows on that side as well and most of their drops land on the platform and I can just run out a window and grab them.
I don't have Facebook... and it's not really worth a picture.
That appears to be the source of your problem. I assume if you extend your patio out beyond the area designated as part of the nether fortress, then you will start getting ghasts spawning out there.
Meanwhile, I have continued expanding the parking garage. I am not sure what its width is (I will say about 50+ wide, although I really do not know), but it pretty much extends along its length all the way from one bedrock wall all the way to the other (albeit with several interuptions from large netherrack formations), and from the lava sea all the way up to the massive formation of netherrack that pretty much spans the entire upper area of the nether in this world.
The parking garage reached a point where I could clearly see the nether fortress, so I contructed a cobblestone walkway out along the surface of the lava sea to the base of a large grouping of structures basically merged together as one building. I then proceeded to hollow out the nether fortress, turning the solid mass into a series of floors I hope to be able to use as a base. The bad news is I added nether fence windows the same as the existing ones in the fortress to every floor, but instead of looking bad ass, I ended up making the nether fortress look like an apartment building.
Darn.
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