So, Minecraft.

[DeeBye]

I found a skeleton archer spawner at long last!



I've dug out the spawn area and decided to get fancy by putting in Redstone Lamps so I can toggle on/off the ability for it to spawn mobs from safely outside the spawn area.

I think I want to go with a different style XP farm on this one. I've always used the "water elevator then drop from a high distance" style of XP farm, but I cooked up a piston crusher thing that I think might work.

I was playing around in SP creative and this is what I came up with for the "business end".


The skeletons take a 3 block fall (guided by water) to a killzone. I have a piston that activates above their heads that sticks them in place. I have a way too elaborate repeater setup that activates 2 pistons at body level to crush them. The repeaters keep the pistons activated for a defined time (adjustable by number of repeaters) to not-quite-kill them. I also have a 2nd button that directly activates the bottom piston to harvest item drops.

It works well in SP creative, but I have no idea if it will work in SMP.

[NuurAbSaal]

Very Bond-villain-style .

While I have never played MC (and don't plan on starting), I find your posts highly entertaining. Cheers!

take care
Tarabulus

[kandrathe]

I found a skeleton archer spawner at long last!

I tend to favor the "Lava Blade" as killing device.

[attachment=148]

Lava will flow only a few blocks. If you put a ladder at the end of the flow it will create a lava blade. Then I use the water flow to bring the mobs to their doom. It's very solid state. Mobs will hop in the water, so if you get the flow right, they will bounce up and down right into the blade. But, it will not be enough to burn up the loot.

[DeeBye]

I played around with this idea for a few minutes, but it looks like this type of thing outright kills monsters which isn't what I'm going for. I want to take them down to a sliver of life and punch them to kill them so I get experience as well as the drops.

I might try something like this in conjunction with a dark room for harvesting gun powder from creepers though.

[kandrathe]

I might try something like this in conjunction with a dark room for harvesting gun powder from creepers though.

I also use an elevated field variation of this to farm bacon -- cooked.

[DeeBye]

I also use an elevated field variation of this to farm bacon -- cooked.

You are truly living the dream.

[LennyLen]

I might try something like this in conjunction with a dark room for harvesting gun powder from creepers though.

A single room is pretty inefficient. To obtain a decent amount of gunpowder, you need a multi-floor mob spawner.

I finished building the fortress I was working on:

[DeeBye]

A single room is pretty inefficient. To obtain a decent amount of gunpowder, you need a multi-floor mob spawner.

Depends on how big the room is

I'd start with something smaller just to see how the mechanics work and to tweak the water delivery system, then scale up from there.

I finished building the fortress I was working on:

Impressive.

[DeeBye]

I finished my new skeleton archer spawner XP/item farm with the piston crusher. It works pretty well. If I would change anything, it might be to lessen or even eliminate the 3-block drop to the piston kill area. The mobs take some damage from the fall, but it's not a set amount of damage. I can tweak the piston crusher timer to whatever I want, but no matter what I do I can't find a happy balance. Some mobs die in the crusher outright on one setting, or they are more than one hit kills on another. With the setting I have it on about 1 in 10 mobs die in the crush phase. That's not too bad, but I strive for perfection.

I'm really glad I added the redstone lamps to be able to toggle on/off the spawns as I was tweaking it. It saved me a lot of headaches with unruly mobs running rampant as I was changing things.


I still have the SMP problem of the mobs visually bursting out of the trap like I have with my other XP farms, but I'm hopeful 1.3 fixes that. This is definitely better than my zombie and cave spider XP farms though.

I looked harder into slime spawning, and I'm pretty sure I found an actual slime chunk. I used this tool, and somehow found the world seed from this other tool. I'm not sure if the latter tool is accurate with regard to SMP, but I am hopeful.

I dug out a 16x16x3 area for this suggested slime chunk.


I found this while digging. No matter how often I see this, it always makes me happy.

[DeeBye]

I tend to favor the "Lava Blade" as killing device.

I finally got around to making a passive spawner and a lava blade. My spawn area isn't all that big now (only 2 chunks), but it works and funnels mobs nicely to the blade. I based the design from something Ethos did. This screenshot doesn't show much because I didn't think to take one before I removed all the torches.


Here's the business end of it, disposing of a zombie. Cave spiders are a bit of a problem, because they can slide under the lava and hang around in the collection area. They can't fully escape so they aren't a threat, but it's annoying. I have several thoughts on dealing with this, like a spider separator or just switching out the lava blade to a water column to drown the mobs. I could even over-engineer it and build an elaborate wall of crushing pistons on a long repeating timer.


I also got this enchantment on a diamond pickaxe today. I just about jumped out of my seat when I got it.


I went and found a batch of diamond ore to test it on, and got 16 diamonds from 5 blocks

[kandrathe]

I tend to favor the "Lava Blade" as killing device.

I finally got around to making a passive spawner and a lava blade.

There is a sweet spot with the depth of the water -- and double wide. If the water is deep enough, then the spiders will bounce into the blade.

[DeeBye]

There is a sweet spot with the depth of the water -- and double wide. If the water is deep enough, then the spiders will bounce into the blade.

Yeah, I was playing around with the geometry of the blade today. I lowered the blade by one, and allowed it to extend to 2x2. I also added some glass blocks above the blade so mobs can't try to "swim up" the lava and have their drops burned up.



It also reliably burns spiders, but it also burns spider item drops (not all the time). The drops from tall mobs like creepers and skeletons safely pass under the lava.

It's working a lot better now.

[DeeBye]

So today my son and I started a new world using the latest snapshot. We were really eager to try out all the cool new stuff. We set up base right beside a testificate village, and started building a home. We found tons of clay in the area, so we decided on a red brick house (which IMO looks the best). We found enough clay to build a fairly large house, and there seems to be an abundance of even more clay around us in smallish 1-block deep ponds of water.

We started on our mineshaft. We always use the same design for a mineshaft. We dig a 3x3 tunnel, and go down 1 block for every 2 blocks forward, until we hit bedrock. We branch out from there.

We dug down maybe 10 blocks before hitting an abandoned mineshaft and found 2 spider spawners right in our mineshaft path. I have high hopes for this new world.

My son LOVES the new editable books. He started keeping a journal.


We were silently ambushed by a creeper shortly after busting through an abandoned mineshaft wall.

Is it worth it for me to keep updating this thread with my daily Minecraft stuff? Is it at all interesting to people?

[LavCat]

Is it worth it for me to keep updating this thread with my daily Minecraft stuff? Is it at all interesting to people?

I don't understand much of it, but I enjoy reading and looking at the pictures.

[LennyLen]

I like reading it.

[Kylearan]

Hi,

I love reading stories from other games, even when I don't know them (like Minecraft). Please continue!

The only disadvantage is that my already long list of games that look really cool and which I should really try sometimes gets even longer. There are still games from the '80s on that list.

-Kylearan

[NuurAbSaal]

I don't understand much of it, but I enjoy reading and looking at the pictures.

x2

[LennyLen]

Here's a few pictures of my latest project. I've just finished stage II.













Stage I was building the dome and roof, which I did over a couple of days. Stage II was excavating the chamber underneath, which took about a week. Stage III will be actually building something there.

[DeeBye]

Here's a few pictures of my latest project. I've just finished stage II.

Daaammmnn! I've always wanted to try something like this, but I can't wrap my brain on how to build it underwater and A) not drown, and B) removing all the unwanted water source blocks. Teach me your ways.

Our new little current snapshot home is coming along nicely. In this screenshot, my son is placing stone brick stair pieces for our roof.


Finished roofline. I think it looks like a nice cozy home.


While my son was taking care of the aesthetics of the house, I was taking care of the logistics - namely a wheat and sugar cane farm. I put them at basement level, but since our new home backs onto a sloping grassland I was able to make them above ground. It's exactly the same design as my other wheat/sugar cane farms, but I haven't automated them yet with pistons.


The latest snapshots make gaining experience really easy. In addition to gaining XP from killing mobs, you also get it from using furnaces and mining stuff like coal/redstone/diamonds. This makes enchanting really desirable, but the downside is that books now require leather to craft (for the bookcases to power your enchanting table). We've started a small cow pen beside our house (huge mistake, cows make too much noise), but I suspect an automated cow-killing grinder/cooker will be the best way to go.


Here's our storage/crafting area. Again, I re-used the layout from our previous world but I intentionally made it fit into a smaller space. I can access most of the chests while standing right beside the crafting table.

[LennyLen]

I've always wanted to try something like this, but I can't wrap my brain on how to build it underwater and A) not drown, and B) removing all the unwanted water source blocks. Teach me your ways.

For the not drowning part, it definitely helps to have an enchanted helmet with Respiration. The one I have has Respiration III on it, which gives me nearly two minutes underwater. I also recommend creating a few air pockets around your build site before you begin. Placing two blocks vertically with ladders on the sides works well, or if there are any cliffs more than two blocks high, you can carve two-high, one-deep niches out of them to serve as air pockets as well.

If you run out of air, do not try to make for the surface. For some reason, the game knocks you back toward the bottom each time you take damage from no air, so you won't get anywhere (unless you DO have a respiration helmet, which decreases the rate at which you take damage after running out of air). Instead, dig down three blocks and then dig out two blocks vertically next to you at the bottom. This will create an air pocket you can restore your air from.

To remove the water from under the dome, I swam up form the bottom and filled the top two layers with dirt, then dug them out. This created a two-high air pocket at the top. After that, I just removed the rest one layer at a time by replacing the top layer of water with dirt and digging it form above. I discovered that when I removed the layer from two to three metres above the bottom that the bottom two layers of water drained as well, so you can probably just fill every third layer with dirt and then remove the dirt layers from the top down.