ChunkShift.com

I was pivoting to address my dwindling food supplies when I realized I was also out of cobblestone. Having built the redstone for the castle gate (see my last post) I knew this well.

But the human mind is a finicky thing.

With a plan to address food supply I started scoping out possible locations and I started a blog post to capture the experience.

It was once the creative process was flowing that my brain decided to bring up the critical fact that I’m out of cobblestone.

Luckily I’ve been chipping away at a creeper farm based on a design I used previously. All I would need to do is put a few final touches on this and I’d be ready to gather more cobble than I’d ever need with a flew clicks of a flint and steel.

The concept

I stumbled into the idea of using snow golems to clear mobs from a spawning platform when building a witch farm in realm 2.

There are a bunch of better ways to clear mobs from a platform depending on the farm type. Snow golems, however, are redstone free, interesting and the intuitive. You don’t need to watch a redstone tutorial to understand the snow golems through snowballs at hostile mobs knocking them backwards.

A couple of challenges worth noting on this concept:

• The knock-back is not significant, so multiple golems are needed.
• They may not all target the same mob, so multiple golems are needed.
• Witches through potions that damage snow golems, so multiple golems are needed.

I think I have 3 sets of 12 golems for each of the 3 levels on this farm. This concept produced adequate redstone before the recent boost on drops from witches. I suspect that for a single player world this design would be a great option. Maybe I’ll revisit it in another season.

I’m very happy with how well the above farm worked. 8 platforms (4 on each side) with 6-10 golems per platform gave good rates. The soul sand needs to be dropped as it does light up the lower platforms and impact spawning. Occasionally the golems target a creeper on the opposite platform slowing how quickly the creeper is removed from the platform.

Is with noting  that I built this farm on a mountain (somewhat high in the world) in a jungle biome. It wasn’t too difficult to light up the caves impacting spawn rates and the thick vegetation of the jungle reduces moon spawns at night. It’s best to sleep, but the farm rates don’t completely collapse.

Season 1; version 1

I thought it would be a good idea to put the farm in the techno cave. I spend time there regularly and there are 2 mob spawners I haven’t discussed next to the chunk I started building in. I could pipe the creepers into a combined killing chamber with two spawners next to it if I wanted xp.

Then I had a change of heart and decided I would it to the surface. I remembered some of the fundamentals of what I wanted. Places to go, reasons for builds to exist.

It definitely had nothing to do with two deaths that cost me every piece of gear I have. And that after these two deaths I was no where near having the caves lit up enough for the farm to work.

Location location location

The second and final location on top of the snowy mountain in the centre of the island eliminated meant there were only 2 medium size caves that would need lighting.

The location on top of the mountain gives a reason to build things and spend time around the farm. Though I will need to light up some more caves if I want the farm to work passively when I’m not on the AFK platform.

This decision sucks to a core premise of this series as I will need to build, maintain and improve infrastructure as I move resources between decentralized locations.

I will still rely on the techno farm for things that need to go up quickly or a temporary early mid game farm.

I wasn’t prepared for the impacts that this height would have on spawning rates. The 3 spawning platforms are at 126, 129 & 132. and rates are bad. There’s often time where there are no mobs in the mob cap and no mobs in my farm. It does work, however, and I’m going to keep it.

The final design

I started with a new design (the picture above) but switched to a design similar to the one I used in Simple. the rates were very bad without the pack spawning mechanic.

If you’re not familiar with with pack spawning it’s a mechanic where if a specific mob could spawn the game checks the surrounding space and may spawn multiple of that mob if the mob spawn conditions are met on the surrounding blocks.

I’m very happy with the view of frozen creeper in the mountain. My gunpowder needs are low right now and hopefully the rates will be enough.

I’m going to need to increase the height of the mountains or find another solution for the AFK platform. As a result I’m going to add some other farms in this area. This will give me more reasons to visit this area and will result in gunpowder while I work on the area.

I have some ideas of farms I might put here but please let me know your suggestions in the comments.

Build stats

These stats are for the mountain top build only. I lost the book with the stats for the building in the techno-cave when I died lightening up the tunnels. I thought I had left it in safe storage to avoid that; so if it pops up again I’ll share those stats.

The mountain top stats achieve what I want by posting these stats though. That is to give an idea of how long or short some of these things can take. My goal is to keep build timelines reasonable and hopefully these numbers will hold me to that and give you an idea if something is reasonable to build in the time you have.

Real life days: 4

Minecraft Days: 22

Time: 7 hours 20 minutes