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The room was a dark room the mobs were supposed to spawn in, then randomly walk into the doorways, where a pressure plate would then shut both sides off with iron doors. Once a mob was inside I would be able to look down thru the trap door to see what it was, and kill it if it was a mob, or cure it if it was a villager.

As it turned out, not a single mob ever spawned inside the dark room. More spawned on top of it than in it. *sigh*

So I tore the whole thing down and just left a dark patch of solid blocks surrounded by 2 deep holes that I could lure mobs into. It has been a royal pain actually using, but I have managed to send up a couple more villagers using this method at least.

As for the smart sorter, I uploaded a pic a while ago, but I'm not certain if it's the most recent version or not. I'll double-check tonight. Right now I can't connect to Realms because my tablet is updated to the new version, but the server isn't.

I do know that the slab on the left needs to be a solid block in line with the redstone lamp, and redstone dust needs to go across the whole line of them. The design is tileable. Most of this is the standard sorter system. My only addition was the config on the left of chests and lamp.

I do believe the left half of this is wrong, btw. I'll post a current pic tonight if I'm able.

Okay, I was right. That left side was extended too long. Here's a better screenshot:

The top hopper is your filter. Put 4 stackable unique items in the right 4 slots (I named stacks of sticks Stick 1, Stick 2, Stick 3, Stick 4), then up to 41 of the item you want to sort out into slot 1.

Ok, I think I have a door trap system for mobs designed now.

Goal: Mobs will spawn in a dark area and make their way to a door. When they enter the doorway, it will close shut, trapping them. Once trapped, I can examine them to see if they're a Zombie Villager I can cure and ship up to the iron farm village. Once cured, I need to be able to set them free and guide them to the water lift.

This is the circuit:

Description: There are two inputs; the pressure plate and the wall switch. Standing on the pressure plate sends a signal around (view of circuit below). This signal allows the redstone torch to turn on and extend the piston. Flipping the wall switch forces the torch to be off, regardless of signal from the pressure plate.

Use: The fence gate is closed by default. The mobs enter from the iron door side. Standing on the pressure plate closes the iron door and extends the piston, locking the mob in. From there I can look at it and either kill it or cure it. If I kill it, the pressure plate will release and the piston will retract. If I cure it, flipping the wall switch will retract the piston and opening the fence gate will allow the villager to get out of the trap.

Reverse View:

The redstone underneath will get covered, obviously. The pressure plate feeds into the repeater, which flips the torch. The torch powers this redstone:

Turning off this redstone allows the piston torch to power and extend the piston.

Okayyyy... very weird redstone effect. Opening the fence gate retracts the piston.

So my thought was, if opening the fence gate depowers and retracts the piston, I can make a shorter redstone circuit that doesn't include the block with the lever on it! Wheee!!!

And I'll give you three guesses how that turned out. And the first two don't count.

Yeah... NOPE! The fence gate only depowers the piston in that one configuration. *grump* So the longer circuit it is. I'm building up the wall around the mob zone now, trying to make a large enough area for them to spawn in. Spiders will be a problem, since they won't fit through the door. I can either let them escape over the walls and have to deal with frequent spider attacks, or put a lip on the walls so they can't get out, and have to deal with the spiders staying in the zone and eventually filling it up. Ooo... I think I may have just had a thought on a way to slowly weed them out. Put a tall pillar in the middle for them to climb. They'll keep climbing it and falling off, and eventually just batter themselves to death on the floor.

The zombies aren't walking in the doorways to get trapped. *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk*

I am beginning to build up a *serious* loathing for villagers. I've cured a cleric and a librarian and another villager (won't let me trade, so not sure what kind it is - nitwit maybe?). And they are totally refusing to be herded into cubbyholes I've built for them. I'm about to break out the rails and minecarts, which is a serious matter - I don't have enough iron to make many minecarts. Rails I've got already, looted from abandoned mineshafts.

Yeah, I had a hard time making them go anywhere too, can't really push them or anything. I ended up putting doors where I wanted them and just waited for night or rain. They seem to run from zombies too.

Sheesh! That was entirely TOO MUCH PAIN. I managed to get them into place without using rails or a minecart eventually.

I'm pretty sure neither of them is the best trading option of their class, but.. meh. I'll work with what I've got for now.

No iron yet from the iron farm, but there are approximately 15 villagers up there now. I'm hoping they'll get to that point soon. I should probably get in and double check that there aren't any stuck golems up there.

OK, there were a few things wrong with the iron farm feeder chute.

Here's issue #1:

I kinda forgot to take out the dirt. *sigh*

Next up, it looks like some of my signs burned up, the lava had reached the water and created stone blocks.

But it's all cleared up now. I tried wooden trap doors, but the iron golems started getting stuck on them. So I swapped back to signs.

The results:

After working on the base this evening, the iron farm has generated another 57 iron, so I'm officially in business now!!

My Librarian will trade emeralds for paper, so I'm moving and expanding my sugarcane farm. I need to work on the redstone circuit a bit - right now it creates a long cooldown timer clock. But it shouldn't be too hard to figure out. Worst case scenario every 15 blocks or so the piston won't fire.

Sugarcane farm is built and operating. It hasn't cycled the pistons yet though, so I'll need to keep an eye on it.

But, now that my iron farm is working, I've traveled to the complete opposite side of the explored world to help one of the other players' get his farm working. His villagers aren't accepting bread. A couple of them accepted beetroots though. And we've traded with most of them. But still no breeding.

I haven't figured out anything yet, but this is my current project.

Hmm... his villagers just aren't breeding. I've gotten the green sparkles after a trade, which is supposed to indicate willing to breed. But no floating hearts anywhere yet. Does anyone know if there's a minimum population size to the village? He does only have 9 villagers in his cubbies. I know 10 is supposedly the minimum for iron golem generation. Is it also the minimum for breeding?

I've torn out all the doors and replaced them with oak doors, just in case, to no effect. My hope was that by tearing out all the doors, it would delete the village, and putting them back would create a new village, with reset happiness. But, again, no breeding. Does anyone know how long you have to keep it with no doors to delete the old village?

And I've also realized that I'm going to have a *very* hard time getting home. I brought a map to get here, but not one to get back.

....

Nevermind. In writing that sentence I realized I just need a compass. That's WHY the base is at the spawn point, so you can always find your way back with an appropriate tool.

I've never had any problem with getting two villagers to breed, once I gave them bread, no other villagers around. But I have noticed, before the villager update, that they can fill up their inventory. Maybe they aren't picking up bread because they've already been given to many other things. If some of the items they have are plant-able maybe if you give them an area to plant (and continuously remove the crops) the farmers will empty some of their inventory. Or, just cure two new villagers and fill them up with bread. I've seen the villagers sharing, so if you introduce the two new ones to the population (full up on bread) maybe they'll get things started.

I read that the green sparkles indicate trading upgrade. They have more trades available after it, but I haven't seen any relation to breeding.

I've waited a day or two to enjoy my 404 User Not Found title before posting again.

Total guesswork, perhaps villagers only eat bread, and these villagers, moved from a village, already had a full inventory, so no room to pick up the bread. My villagers are all cured zombie villagers, and so had an empty inventory. He's going to give them farms to see if that helps any.

I've moved back to my base for now to do some more work there. The iron farm is giving me plenty of iron for my current projects, but now that I have the resource I imagine I'll start doing more iron-intensive tasks. I've already made several shears so I can resume cutting vines in the vine farm.

Also, the sugarcane farm has produced its first crop. 100 sugarcane exactly. For some reason, the cane grew everywhere to its max before it ever covered the Observer block.

I've started placing my villagers next to the farm they'll be servicing, for added convenience.

My Fisherman villager now has NO available trades. Every single one is burned out. I assume there's no way to reset him now? If not, I'll have to move him over to the water elevator and obtain a replacement.

My pumpkin/melon farm isn't working yet. I changed design layout halfway through without realizing it, and it didn't come out right. Oh well. Back to the drawing board.

They're claiming the Blaze Death bug will be fixed in the next release, so Wahooooo! I'll be able to play using my own account again. And safely hunt Blazes - I'm just about out of the few Blaze Rods I had from making Ender Chests.

Also, now that I have a regular source of iron, I'll be able to expand my Storage System on a much more regular basis. Which means I'll need to plan out what my next levels are going to be.

Sorry I haven't much to post. I haven't engaged in any large scale projects lately. There have been a couple minor things, but that's about it.

• I now have a bit of ice and snow. With the snow I built a couple of snow golems on top of a couple of hoppers and mined several stacks of snow. A baby zombie later killed both of them, although it wasn't a tragic loss. They're easy to build new ones.
• I cured a villager zombie who turned out to be a LIbrarian with Silk Touch books for sale.
• I now have a pair of Silk Touch enchanted shears, so I can go fetch some cobwebs.
• I have not yet fixed my pumpkin/melon farm.
• I've started what is supposed to be a villager trading station, but I haven't settled on a design yet, so other than carving out the starting location (on the bottom of the ocean), I don't have anything to show for it.

I have discovered a minor little trick - I have my mob dropper. The mobs don't flood the place, but they trickle in at an okay rate. Well, most of the mobs die when they hit bottom, which is fine. It's more for drops than xp. But! I've found that if I'm quick enough and hit the bodies as they die, I still get the XP from it.