Help with my mob grinder please?

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Flexico

Well-Known Member
Dec 15, 2012
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I built my (vanilla) mob spawner/grinder under the belief that a fall of 23.5 blocks will kill skeletons and creepers (for their drops), but leave zombies alive, because they have a bit of armor bonus or something (so that I can punch them for xp). However, when they fall 23.5 blocks, skeletons and creepers also survive. A drop of 24 blocks kills all three. Has this changed, or was I wrong about that mechanic? I did experiments a long time ago and I thought this worked.

Also, is there any material that Spiders can't climb? Another thread said that putting signs on the walls will stop spiders from climbing and surviving the fall. That didn't work either.
 

ShneekeyTheLost

Too Much Free Time
Dec 8, 2012
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Yea, that sounds like old-school mob grinder suggestions that don't work anymore. I don't know if a 'lava blade' style grinder would work either, but it might be worth trying. It has been a VERY long while since I've played with these sorts of vanilla mechanics.

Typically, you keep spiders out of your system by building your dark room in such a way as to prevent spider spawns (i.e. half-slabs spaced every so often so there isn't a 2x2 area available for them to spawn in).
 

lenscas

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Jul 31, 2013
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also, mobs have different interactions with other mobs.
Zombies want to hurt villagers
Creepers are scared of cats
Skeletons are scared of dogs.

This should allow you to sort them though, it wouldn't be easy.

Maybe there is a better way though? What about making the hight variable? That way you can make it so every mob dies or at the press of a button/pressure plate/whatever the mobs fall just a bit less allowing you to farm them for XP?

A single sticky piston should do the trick.
 

Cpt_gloval

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Oct 20, 2013
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I believe Etho has a video from about a year ago in his long running vanilla lets play where he build a mod spawning tower with mod sorting using the mentioned villagers, cats and dogs. Left him we 3 piles of mobs using the entity cramming mechanic to get passive drops or a piston to partition off sets of 24 for one his killing for exp.
 

KingTriaxx

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Jul 27, 2013
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I saw the one he did sorting mobs by preferences, it was actually pretty funny. Don't remember if it was him or someone else that set up a sorter to get creepers shot by skeletons for records.
 

lenscas

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Jul 31, 2013
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I saw the one he did sorting mobs by preferences, it was actually pretty funny. Don't remember if it was him or someone else that set up a sorter to get creepers shot by skeletons for records.
There are quite a few people who made something like that. Etho however wend a step further and made a system that kept the creepers and the skeletons alive and ready to be transported after the skeleton shot it.

This way he could in theory move both of them to whatever place he wants and have the creeper blow up. Probably not very practical, but.... we are talking about Etho here.
 
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Citron

Guest
Also, is there any material that Spiders can't climb?
SoulSand.

Filtering mobs in vanilla is pretty hard (as the ai is... free as a flying butter), but if you want to get the zombies, you can try to bait them with a villager ^_^
 
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Flexico

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Dec 15, 2012
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Ok, I tried filtering out the creepers with the mentioned fear of cats, but to keep the cats from getting into the grinder themselves, I have to section them off with glass or a fence. The creepers don't seem to flee from them if there are any blocks in between. (In the pic, the mobs would land in the flowing water. That's just a test world, so I'm using eggs.)

Oh, I haven't seen any of Etho's stuff! I'll have to check that out.

And to those who asked, yes I plan to only use vanilla stuff. I'm playing on 1.13 and no mods have updated yet. =P
 

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lenscas

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Jul 31, 2013
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Ok, I tried filtering out the creepers with the mentioned fear of cats, but to keep the cats from getting into the grinder themselves, I have to section them off with glass or a fence. The creepers don't seem to flee from them if there are any blocks in between. (In the pic, the mobs would land in the flowing water. That's just a test world, so I'm using eggs.)

Oh, I haven't seen any of Etho's stuff! I'll have to check that out.

And to those who asked, yes I plan to only use vanilla stuff. I'm playing on 1.13 and no mods have updated yet. =P
I believe the trick is either to use slabs or minecarts.
 
C

Citron

Guest
Tame the cats, sit them so they won't move and won't need a separation.
To keep the line of view and separate two areas, use 2 carpets as a fence.
 
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Cpt_gloval

Well-Known Member
Oct 20, 2013
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The water won;t help either. Vanilla Mob sorting gets kind of preempted by the push of the water.
Use the carpets and tamed cats @Citron mentioned, put a villager in a glass box to the left of that image, past the collection drop off, and a dog behind, on the right. No water.
When the mobs drop onto that platform they will react to the proper stimuli and move as desired leaving you a pit of Zomboids and Skellies ripe for the killing and a lava pool of melted Creeper bits.