Vanilla mob spawner?

[Defiancey]

Just learner you can move spawners with a diamond dolly. So im making a blaze spawner with dark glass, conveyor belts and some spikes. But i was getting blazes that would spawn outside of the glass sometimes. I put the spawners outside my base, but its too far away from where i spend a good bit of my time to get them to spawn. So im going to build it into my base, but before i do i was wondering?

1. How far from the spawner can it spawn the mobs?

2. Can i place the spawners right next to one another or do they need like 1 block all the way around them?

3. I have been using diamond spikes but have not been getting hardly any treasure bags, should i be using a different kinda spikes?

There was something else i was going to ask, but im getting tired and cant think of it atm.

 

[rhn]

1.

The monster spawner spawns mobs in an 8*8*3 area around it when the player is within 16 blocks of the spawner

http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Monster_Spawner
Make sure you build your spawning room large enough to trap them all. Take notice of the Y-range mentioned is for spawning the mobs feet. You will need additional clearance to ensure their upper body can spawn to ensure maximum spawnrate

2. Place them together. Probably preferable to place them on top of each other (as long as you take the extra heigth of the room into account) to ensure the spawners doesn't block for each other.


Also, isn't there something about placing spawners above Cursed Earth that causes them to work without players being in range?

 

[Cpt_gloval]

Yes, vanilla mechanics are, I believe, 16 blocks or line of sight from the player for vanilla spawner to do their thing. Cursed earth will negate the distance but will not change the rate or amount of spawning.

 

[Inaeo]

I have worked extensively with Blaze Spawners on Cursed Earth on our Infinity Server. At one point, I was producing enough RF for a server of 6 using only Blaze Rods, Mob Essence, and Gunpowder.

@rhn is correct that the spawn range is 8x8x3., but the spawners do a check before they actually spawn to see if there are mobs of the spawning type in range. If there are mobs of the type, the spawning is delayed. Therefore, you get diminishing returns when adding multiple spawners in close proximity, as they are all waiting for the area to clear before doing their thing. Blaze spawners in particular spawn 2-4 Blaze per cycle, and the speed is quite rapid. All of the power gen I had going was using three spawners at its peak (before we switched to an entity free system for server performance reasons), and even after a month of being shut down, I still have over 10k rods in my ME system.

So far as question 3 is concerned, treasure bags are added by Thaumcraft, and only drop from enhanced "mini-boss" mobs. Each mob.spawned will have a chance to be buffed as it spawns, and the type of bag dropped is dependant on which template gets randomly selected to be added. If you are currently collecting some with your method, you will be fine. Just don't expect every Blaze to drop one.

One final note, if you decide to do the spawners on Cursed Earth, I highly recommend using a drawbridge to place and retract the Cursed Earth block, as Blaze will spawn regardless of light level (making them a pain to work around). The drawbridge option allows you to shut down the spawning via redstone signal, although they will always spawn if a player is in the vanilla proximity ( again, regardless of light level).

 

[immibis]

I have worked extensively with Blaze Spawners on Cursed Earth on our Infinity Server. At one point, I was producing enough RF for a server of 6 using only Blaze Rods, Mob Essence, and Gunpowder.

@rhn is correct that the spawn range is 8x8x3., but the spawners do a check before they actually spawn to see if there are mobs of the spawning type in range. If there are mobs of the type, the spawning is delayed. Therefore, you get diminishing returns when adding multiple spawners in close proximity, as they are all waiting for the area to clear before doing their thing. Blaze spawners in particular spawn 2-4 Blaze per cycle, and the speed is quite rapid. All of the power gen I had going was using three spawners at its peak (before we switched to an entity free system for server performance reasons), and even after a month of being shut down, I still have over 10k rods in my ME system.

So far as question 3 is concerned, treasure bags are added by Thaumcraft, and only drop from enhanced "mini-boss" mobs. Each mob.spawned will have a chance to be buffed as it spawns, and the type of bag dropped is dependant on which template gets randomly selected to be added. If you are currently collecting some with your method, you will be fine. Just don't expect every Blaze to drop one.

One final note, if you decide to do the spawners on Cursed Earth, I highly recommend using a drawbridge to place and retract the Cursed Earth block, as Blaze will spawn regardless of light level (making them a pain to work around). The drawbridge option allows you to shut down the spawning via redstone signal, although they will always spawn if a player is in the vanilla proximity ( again, regardless of light level).

Blaze spawners can be deactivated by light, but the required level is higher than for skeletons/zombies/creepers/etc.