Minecraft Forums

I made this one in my survival world. I don't play in the snapshots, much, but I did just test it briefly and it appears to still be working. They do seem to be glitching through the wall a little bit. Not actually escaping, just a visual glitch, but it's enough to bump into the minecart and stop it dead. I'm not sure if that's because of something different in the snapshot, or just because I don't have OptiFine, but in any case, you might be better off skipping the whole "patented ride-and-grind technology" bit and just running back and forth while you punch at them.

Quote from BozMon

That pic confuses me. Is the spawner off the ground in it? It seems to be an over head and cut away at the same time. I'm gonna keep researching and see what I can come up with.

It's a side-view. is a video that has some great details on making this kind of spawner farm. He builds a whole one on-screen, and also discusses some of the important things to consider regarding the different distances and zones where you or the mobs can and can not be, with helpful diagrams as well.

Quote from creepersgoboominscp

use grass blocks instead. mobs spawn on grass easily

Passive mobs can only spawn on grass. Hostiles don't care, though, they spawn with the same frequency on grass or stone or any other non-transparent block.

Quote from koreyisawesome14

I counted the spawn blocks and each outside ring consists of 44 blocks and the inner rings consist of 20 blocks, take those numbers and times them by 3 because i have 3 spawning levels and that means there are 192 spawning blocks

That's not very many, but it's a start. The more you can make, though, the better it'll be (up to a point.)

Quote from WarPigsLukesWall

Also make sure to put transparent blocks beside the spawn rings to trick mobs in to falling off, if you didn't know that already (Probably did, if so sorry for telling ya what you already know!) Signs will work, some people also use buttons.

I don't think signs do work any longer, actually, and I never knew that buttons did. These days I think open trapdoors are the go-to choice for this. You can also just use tripwire and pistons to push them off as soon as they spawn, instead of waiting for them to wander off on their own. It's a bit more resource-heavy, but it works out better in the long run.

Have you tried it out in other game versions? 1.7.4 has a bug where hostile mob spawns are severely reduced at render distances below 10 chunks.

I used ; it worked out pretty well for me. (I used cobblestone walls instead of nether brick fences, the lighter color makes the wither skeletons a bit more visible in the foreground. Also it adds some variety instead of just the same dark brown all over, and saves a good deal of nether brick so you don't have to cook up as much rack. Wood fences aren't recommended, there's too much fire and explosions in the nether.)

Quote from YeeP79

The original reasoning behind this, was I was trying to find a way to get to other places in the nether without traveling in it.

Yeah, that won't work out very well, unfortunately. Because of the 8:1 difference in scale in the PC version (it's only 3:1 on the Xbox, I believe, which might be why you're not used to it working this way), even traveling a very long distance in the overworld is only going to get you a little ways away in the nether. You can do it the other way around, going a short distance through the nether to end up a very long ways away in the overworld from where you started, but this requires actually going into the nether and traveling through it.

Hoepfully the Nether Fortress. Every time I have played Mincraft on the Xbox, I can find the Nether Fortress in short order. It has been very frustrating traveling around the Nether trying to find the fortress with no luck.

On the bright side, there is no one "the" nether fortress, there is only "a" nether fortress, and another one, and another one, and...you get the idea. There are countless nether forts, spread all throughout the nether. They tend to generate in rough, zig-zaggy "strips" running from north to south, so you're best off not searching in those directions, or else you may be forever stuck between two of the strips, never crossing over one and so never spotting a nether fort. Instead, you should explore either east-west or diagonally; this will ensure that you cross the strips at regular intervals, maximizing your chances of spotting one.

The trick is, the 128 blocks is measured once you get to the other dimension, not before you go. Portals in the overworld need to be more than 1,024 blocks apart to generate a new one in the nether. This is because the nether is 8 times "smaller" than the overworld, and so 128 blocks in the nether (the distance you need to be from your old portal, in order for a new one to be formed) equates to (128 * 8) = 1024 blocks, topside.

(Portals in the nether only need to be sixteen blocks apart, to make 128 in the overworld and have a new one form.)

Yes, they do spawn randomly in jungle biomes, on grass or leaf blocks level y=63 or higher. If you clear-cut a large section of jungle, you should be able to find plenty.

Quote from Divinius

Basically, there's really no reason to ever NOT use v-sync. It just caps the number of rendered frames to the refresh rate of the monitor you're using. Rendering additional frames serves absolutely no purpose that I'm aware of. All it does is make your video card do more work and run hotter, with no difference in the amount of data actually getting to your eyes.

If anyone can explain to me why I'd ever want to turn V-Sync off, please do.

I've heard that setting to anything other than "Max FPS" will reduce your framerate somewhat, even if you haven't reached the specified limit. So say you're getting 30 FPS, for example. You'd think if you set it to "60 FPS" it shouldn't do anything, since that's way more than what you get already, but (from what I've heard), it will actually drop your 30 FPS down to like 25 or something, due to the extra processing required I guess? The common wisdom, as I've heard it, is to only use the framerate setting if you need it for a specific purpose. Use VSync of you experience "screen tearing," or lock the framerate if you're recording (to prevent screen tearing in the final product). Otherwise, go ahead and leave it at max. That's what I've heard, anyhow, and it's always worked out well for me.

I suppose if you actually do get more frames than your monitor can handle, you might turn it on even if you don't see any visible screen-tearing. But for someone like me who only gets 30 or so to begin with, using VSync just slows it down even more.

Quote from SenseiMarshmallow

2.0 isnt out yet but where at 1.8 though

Someone didn't read the OP. "Minecraft 2.0" was an April Fools joke last year. The "official" download links have been removed, but you can still get the files elsewhere, from mirror links found in the wiki.

Quote from dhawk312

I'm playing on the current snapshot. I don't really see why XP farms won't be necessary? It's easier to enchant and less costly to repair items. But it still takes effort to get awesome items.

Because even a level 30 enchantment only actually costs three levels. You hit level 30, you enchant a thing, and you go back down to 27. Now you only need to gain 3 more levels before you can enchant something at level 30 again. You can easily get that from mining or smelting or breeding farm animals or something; unless you plan on enchanting a big batch of items all at once, it might not be worth the trip to your XP farm, if you didn't happen to build your base right at the end portal, or find a nether fortress right near your spawn.

Quote from muck

Is this normal?

PS: on a vanilla normal single survival world

Yeah. Since the new zombie "horde" mechanics were introduced a couple of updates ago, zombies can track you from much farther away, and will also spawn "reinforcements" when damaged. You're supposed to be scared to go out at night, this is supposed to make it just a little bit scarier.

Also, they all seem to be focused on something that isn't you. There must be some villagers up there, where they're looking?

Quote from VCtheDerp

Most of these "facts" can be found on the wiki. I'm fairly certain I can find a topic just like this one but if I don't, the wiki still makes this redundant.

Yeah, I was going to chime in with my "We already have one of these, and it's called 'The Wiki'" but thanks to you, that would be redundant, too

It's no contest, an enderman farm is many times faster, hands down. It's also way more resource-intensive (you need 800-some-odd pistons, with an iron ingot and a redstone dust for each, plus a whole buttload of string) and takes a lot longer to build, but if you have the stuff (or most of it; I did have to afk-farm most of my string at a cave spider spawner to complete mine I built) already, it will reward you greatly. A decent endermen farm can take you from level 0-30 in about a minute, with no AFK'ing necessary. You're simply not going to match that with any kind of spawner farm, not even dual blaze spawners with double XP each. It simply does not spawn enough mobs, fast enough, to match what an enderman farm can do.

The "XPender" by ImpulseSV is a good design, I've built it myself (actually I built docm and Panda's version first, and then retro-fitted it with some of the XPender's features later) and it's the one I would recommend.

'Course, with the changes to enchanting and repairing in the upcoming 1.8 version, XP farms might become a thing of the past. Not that they won't still be possible, it's just they might be unnecessary.

Quote from 100photos

1.7?

In May 2011, I'm pretty sure they meant beta 1.6.

(Although, much to my surprise, it does still work in release version 1.7.4. However obsidian is already infinitely renewable anyway, through auto-generated nether portal frames and the landing platform in the end.)