Ender Trap the super basic I need ender pearls but just started my world mob system

[Saice]

Ok this is not the most efficient system in the world. But this should be something you could make in the first hour or two of game play. You can get loads of cobble and usually enough iron for two buckets. If your not into collecting a bunch of cobble by mining you can usually fine at least one block of lava within the first hour if you dig down and could use that to make cobble gen. Obviously this is much easier in modded MC but since everyone keeps asking me how I can get stacks of ender pearls without going to the end I figured I'd share this.

So first how does this work? Well we are going to use endermen argo system to our advantage. Since you can look at them form 128 blocks away and still have come after you that is the effective max range of this build. For this I made it small just so you can get the idea of how it works. You can make this much bigger if you want.

To make this at least some what efficient we do want to max out spawning so take note of ground level (oceans are best for this to be honest) you want to go at least 128 up to remove stuff spawning and taking up mob slots.


Ender Trap by Saice, on Flickr


Ender Trap by Saice, on Flickr

Make sure to ladder this up as you will be using this often to reset the system.


Ender Trap by Saice, on Flickr

Next build a sort of base. Add the water on top for two reasons. We want nothing to spawn here and we want to minimize where endermen can TP to. This also makes you an infinite spring so you will have all the water you need for the rest of the build.


Ender Trap by Saice, on Flickr

Build your kill area. The fences are there just in case and like the base area you want water on top. Note in 1.6 zombies have a HUGE scan range now so the fences are more important in 1.6 also if you have a mod that has ender tots the fences are needed.


Ender Trap by Saice, on Flickr


Ender Trap by Saice, on Flickr

Now to use some basic spawn know how. So we need to take note of our location behind the fences. Nothing is going to spawn 24 blocks form this point so we want to go 24 blocks out and build a spawn pad.


Ender Trap by Saice, on Flickr


Ender Trap by Saice, on Flickr

You don't have to have walls and or course you can make this as big as you want as long as no point is more then 128 from your kill box.


Ender Trap by Saice, on Flickr

As with the rest add water. I like the gap as it makes it easier to spot endermen but you can close it up. With this setup it is only going to work at night. One option if you want the gap for spotting is to make the roof go an extra 14 blocks out on all sides this will make it so SL is 0 inside the box. But I just wanted to get this done with the basics.


Ender Trap by Saice, on Flickr

Ok I know a bunch of folks are going to go Why a bridge endermen can teleport? Well not really or at least not how you think they do. Most of the time they are using normal mob pathing and just zipping along really fast. They can Teleport but there AI does not jump straight to that and unless you want to make this take a lot longer then needed I suggest this bridge as they will run and zip across it.


Ender Trap by Saice, on Flickr

Now you just wait. When Endermen spawn look at them and they will run to you. Kill them and get your pearls.


Ender Trap by Saice, on Flickr


Ender Trap by Saice, on Flickr


Ender Trap by Saice, on Flickr

Now this is not super fast but is also a great time if your using soulshards to get yourself an enderman shard. When to many other mobs spawn or in 1.6 you get a mass of zombies run down your ladder its more the 128 blocks from the bottom of that to the spawn pad so a few moments and everything despawned run back up and the pad is reset. Repeat as needed.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Don't you still get an awful lot of other natural spawns up there as well? Skeletons, creepers, zombies... they should all be spawning in what is effectively your darkroom. How do you get it to be just endermen?

 

[Jakeb]

Wow, thanks Saice. You could have just saved me what could have been hours of enderman hunting or breaking down and installing EE3.

 

[Saice]

Don't you still get an awful lot of other natural spawns up there as well? Skeletons, creepers, zombies... they should all be spawning in what is effectively your darkroom. How do you get it to be just endermen?

They all do spawn but since they are outside of there hunting range they just stand there so you use the look at piss off system of endermen to draw out just the endermen. Then you go down your ladder which makes all the mobs in the box more then 128 away from player and they all despawn.

If you look in the last shots there is some spiders on the pad. There really is no way to stop other mobs from spawning but unless your in 1.6 none of them your notice you or argo on you. And even if they do just go down your ladder and they all poof.

You can make this a little safer by going 32 instead of 24 blocks out form your kill box but since you can reset it at will its not really needed.

 

[Jakeb]

You could also stop spiders from spawning by putting a half slab every other block on every other row.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

They all do spawn but since they are outside of there hunting range they just stand there so you use the look at piss off system of endermen to draw out just the endermen. Then you go down your ladder which makes all the mobs in the box more then 128 away from player and they all despawn.

If you look in the last shots there is some spiders on the pad. There really is no way to stop other mobs from spawning but unless your in 1.6 none of them your notice you or argo on you. And even if they do just go down your ladder and they all poof.

You can make this a little safer by going 32 instead of 24 blocks out form your kill box but since you can reset it at will its not really needed.

How long does it take them to all go poof?

Basically, the strategy is:

• Camp until dusk
• Wait for mobs to spawn in darkroom
• get into staring contests wtih any endermen that spawn
• kill said endermen
• climb down ladder
• climb up ladder
• rinse, wash repeat as necessary

Correct?

 

[Saice]

How long does it take them to all go poof?

Basically, the strategy is:

• Camp until dusk
• Wait for mobs to spawn in darkroom
• get into staring contests wtih any endermen that spawn
• kill said endermen
• climb down ladder
• climb up ladder
• rinse, wash repeat as necessary

Correct?

Yeah that is basically it. And you can skip the dusk thing if you just make your roof 14 blocks longer on all sides then the spawn pad is.

And it only takes a tick or two for them to poof. So really just go down give it a sec and go right back up. Normally I have a small camp at the base and just unload my stuff grab replacement stone sword and food and then go back up and its all reset.[DOUBLEPOST=1374275051][/DOUBLEPOST]

You could also stop spiders from spawning by putting a half slab every other block on every other row.

You can but I find it not really worth it since you can reset the system so easily I'd rather roll the luck on an enderman spawn. Because that also makes the spot dead to anything else.

 

[Bellaabzug21]

Couldn't you quarry out the earth underneath it and then place half slabs at the bedrock to optimize it?

 

[Saice]

Couldn't you quarry

You can do this in vanilla.

And depending on you mod pack and configs a quarry might take more then your first hour or two of play time.

 

[Saice]

Couldn't you quarry out the earth underneath it and then place half slabs at the bedrock to optimize it?

Ok yes you could that that.

If you really want to optimize it the best thing to do working in the idea of first hour or two of play is go find an ocean and build over that since the water is not anyplace a mob can spawn on and being 128 up form the water means that even squids would not spawn.

You could also just cover everything under it in slabs no need to quarry at all.

 

[Bellaabzug21]

Ok yes you could that that.

If you really want to optimize it the best thing to do working in the idea of first hour or two of play is go find an ocean and build over that since the water is not anyplace a mob can spawn on and being 128 up form the water means that even squids would not spawn.

You could also just cover everything under it in slabs no need to quarry at all.

Well yes, but then mobs could still spawn in caves underground.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Well yes, but then mobs could still spawn in caves underground.

Not if you are 128 above ground level

 

[Saice]

Well yes, but then mobs could still spawn in caves underground.

Not if you are 128 above ground level

Shneekey is correct. Nothing in minecraft can spawn outside of 128 blocks from a player naturally.

If you want more in depth on the system minecraft uses to make spawning happen checking out the wiki

http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Spawn

and there is this simple image too that gives you the TL;DR verison

 

[The_Enemys]

As a convenience, later on you could replace the floor with TiC drawbridges, so you could reset by retracting them with a switch in your killbox and dropping the mobs below 128, rather than climbing up the ladder over and over...

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

As a convenience, later on you could replace the floor with TiC drawbridges, so you could reset by retracting them with a switch in your killbox and dropping the mobs below 128, rather than climbing up the ladder over and over...

While this probably wouldn't be able to be done within an hour or two of spawning in, it is a refinement which has merit.

And actually, this gives me an idea for bringing back a classic build back to the forefront: the darkroom mob grinder.

In effect, you build a large room with no lights. In vanilla, you had water in a two-block deep hole to shuttle mobs around (this was before endermen) that would eventually deposit them in either a drop trap or a lava blade. You the player would just stand at the output of that water stream and collect things while afk.

For the advanced version, we need MFR. Same room layout, only you use conveyor belts instead of water. This means no clumsy drops, everything can be on the same level, and it works with endermen as well. It runs mobs into one or more Grinder(s) with output going to AE. Now you have all the mob drops.

 

[Golrith]

Very nice. While I agree with another post of your's about ender pearls being easy (using this system), it's still a lot better then EE3. You have to put a bit of effort into building this and it's manual killing (at the start).

Just to hijack the thread a little, but any ideas why mobs have stopped spawning in the overworld on a server? It's a bit of a "problem" atm on a small server I'm on. Overworld is basically peaceful mode now, but Nether & Mystcraft ages behave as normal. Entity count is always low.
Restarting the server doesn't fix it. I've even tried disabling all mobs via server properties, restarting, and re-enabling mobs (and then giving back via spawn eggs any farm animals).
It's like the world has lost track of it's players and distances.

 

[Saice]

Just to hijack the thread a little, but any ideas why mobs have stopped spawning in the overworld on a server? It's a bit of a "problem" atm on a small server I'm on. Overworld is basically peaceful mode now, but Nether & Mystcraft ages behave as normal. Entity count is always low.
Restarting the server doesn't fix it. I've even tried disabling all mobs via server properties, restarting, and re-enabling mobs (and then giving back via spawn eggs any farm animals).
It's like the world has lost track of it's players and distances.

There is a lot of possable reasons for this and multiple threads with people with the same issue. Saddly no silver bullet fix. I would suggest doing a search for something like "Mobs not spawning"

 

[PoisonWolf]

Very nice. While I agree with another post of your's about ender pearls being easy (using this system), it's still a lot better then EE3. You have to put a bit of effort into building this and it's manual killing (at the start).

Just to hijack the thread a little, but any ideas why mobs have stopped spawning in the overworld on a server? It's a bit of a "problem" atm on a small server I'm on. Overworld is basically peaceful mode now, but Nether & Mystcraft ages behave as normal. Entity count is always low.
Restarting the server doesn't fix it. I've even tried disabling all mobs via server properties, restarting, and re-enabling mobs (and then giving back via spawn eggs any farm animals).
It's like the world has lost track of it's players and distances.

Fly/walk around in a 500 block radius from your base. When this happens to me, I will end up finding a deposit of many wisps (i.e. 50+) that did not despawn.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Alternately, have the admin issue a kill command to wipe all hostile mobs and see if you start getting respawns

 

[Saice]

Alternately, have the admin issue a kill command to wipe all hostile mobs and see if you start getting respawns

I belive that by default does not work that way. And I'm fairly sure the kill command that does do that only kills stuff around active players.