Thus far I am almost finished draining the exterior of the monument and have developed a few tips for those who wish to attempt this build. First thing first, this project is not for the faint of heart. But here is a list of some stuff you will need.
1. About 5 1/2 double chests filled with sand
2. About 5,000+ dispensers... I believe. 104 for 2 rows, one row of building block, then 2 rows of dispensers. Rinse and repeat until all 52 rows are done. Facing downward.
3. Guessing around 3 double chests of your preferred building block. Under each single row, place a further 5 or 6 blocks underneath, all the way across.
4. Signs, around 5000+ signs. These go on either side of the 2x52x6 shafts to prevent water from getting out.
5. Buckets, 5000+. Fill each with water. To make life simpler, remember to set up an easily accessible infinite water source. For those who do not know how to make one, simple make a 1x3 hole and place water on either side. The middle becomes an infinite water source. Place the water buckets inside each dispenser.
6. Rails, roughly 208 rails will be needed. Place 2 rails at the end of each side of the monument, the entire row.
7. Power rails, guessing 8000-9000. Make a line for each row, connecting to the rails on either end. Also on power rail at the end of each row.
8. Redstone blocks, about 1000 or so. Remember that each block powers 7 rails in each direction plus the power rail over it.
9. Levers, 104 levers to place by the individual power rails on each side.
10. Hoppers, you will need 260 hoppers, 1 underneath each regular rail and 52 for Minecraft hoppers.
11. Minecart, 52, 1 for each row.
12. Chests, 104 chests or 52 double chests. These go underneath the hoppers at the end of every other row.
13. Trap chests, 104 trap chests or 52 double trap chest. These go underneath the hoppers every other row, opposite of regular chests.
14. Pickaxes, preferably iron. You will need a couple dozen iron pickaxes to mine out the monument and 34 spaces below the monument. 32 blocks down to kill the guardians and 2 more below for half slabs and the rail system.
15. Half slabs, roughly 4 double chests full. These go directly above the rail system to prevent mob collisions and also provides a neat floor for the Minecart hoppers to clean.
16. Redstone, about 9-10 stacks should do. Wire up the dispensers so that each has power, lead the wire to a place you would like to use to turn on and off the farm.
17. Repeators, you will need around 250 repeators to supply power to each dispenser.
18. One last lever to use at your on/off station. Give it a flip and watch the guardians come raining down.
This build is extremely resource expensive and takes quite a bit of time to set up. I strongly recommend that you build an iron farm prior to attempting this build. Use sand to section off areas to effectively drain with however many sponges you can find. I stick with 4x4 shafts, it seems to make draining a bit easier and doesn't give guardians a lot of room to run. Hope that this helps anyone looking to attempt this build. Once mine is finished, I will get some pics up
I would suggest altering your setup slightly to ditch the dispensers, and water buckets in favor of pistions, holding back the water, with water source blocks located at Y=38. (guardians spawn between layers 39 through 61, in a 58x58x23 area (roughly the size of the ocean temple). Using a 4x4 grid you can easily setup pistons to stop water from flowing down the tubes. You loose a bit of spawn space, but you will hardly notice the difference. The Pistons will behave correctly most of the time, unlike dispensers, which are prone to either not firing their buckets, or failing to pick them up.
Second rather then using signs to hold back the water, why not use fence gates? Signs in 1.8 are rendered differently then they were in previous versions, and can cause lag, fence gates don't, however fence gates do need to be placed on top of a block first, and then that block needs removed, so its a bit more setup but better for the frame rate later.
In my setup i didn't have the space to drop them to kill them so instead about 10 blocks down I drop them through a lava block which catches them on fire, coupled with a bit of fall damage they don't last too long. I also didn't want to use minecarts and or mass numbers of hoppers, so instead I opted to run the farm in 2 phases, the first phase runs for exactly 2:30 minutes, in this phase the guardians spawn, fall and die, with all the drops sitting on the bottom collection floor. The floor is setup in an inverse pyramid setup. Phase 2 starts by shutting off the water so guardians can't spawn, after 30 seconds have passed (it makes sure everything in the kill floor is dead), it opens up water around the collection floor, which flushes everything down and to the center, where a hopper picks up, and sends the items to be sorted and stored. 1 minute later the farm reverts back to phase 1 and the process starts anew.
Drop the guardians on carpet, with minecart hoppers running underneath. Make an unloading system at the far end. Gather ice blocks for easier water placements. Fence gates are prefered than signs. Probably use sponges, takes time but is efficient. I ran through 2 unbreaking 3 diamond shovels while digging all that sand (currently making the farm in survival). Use sand to mark out the temple.
In other words, a guardian farm requires patience and isn't a 'spawn-and-build' thing like a house.
Hope this helps
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'Life is too short to short to kill the Ender Dragon'~ ThatOneBrat
personally I gave up on the entire Redstone bit. Made a farm using 8 block long floors that funnel into a grinder similar to an xp farm. Was rather easy and pretty much all required materials are present in the monument minus wood for fence gates. It's not pretty but it gets the job done. Also building a 4x4 roof 1 block above the drop point helps funnel the guardians. So does standing by the drop point. Guardians seem to swim towards the player so get next to the shaft just below the spawn floor and get ready to wait long periods of time for any substantial production.
As a side note, mob caps do interfer greatly with this particular farm. I usually get 10-12 shards, 20 fish and 3-5 of the other drop, forget the name right now. But it is not very efficient whatsoever.
I built a wash floor under the spawning area that pushes the guardians into three trenches two blocks wide where they fall and die. I have hopper minecarts that run in a u and an unloader at one end. It only takes six hoppers including the minecarts to gather everything up and the farm can run continuously. The mining is a lot simpler this way too, you only need to mine out three two block wide trenches to the bottom.
Wolfshusband, if you build a platform at y128 or higher the spawn rates will improve greatly. Mine doesn't hardly make any items when I'm near sea level but when I climb to the top of the tower there is a steady stream of items coming up the elevator.
x1t0m can you please tell us your hourly income of items please? Currently been building this farm from about 1 week and dont want it to be slow. Thanks
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
'Life is too short to short to kill the Ender Dragon'~ ThatOneBrat
The prototype in creative made 12,800 items per hour. Its hard to get an exact count in survival, but its pretty close to the output of the creative build if not a little more. The key was making a platform high up above the farm to take as many caves as possible out of spawning range. While I mined out for the bottom of the farm I lit up the caves I found directly underneath and adjacent to the farm but I only went 20 or 30 blocks away from the footprint of the monument. I didn't worry about slimes either and there are slime chunks under the farm. There is a decent area under there to spawn in but it doesn't hurt output enough for me to worry about flooding or slabbing. My platform is at y122, but you can go higher, wouldn't go any lower than that though.
Thus far I am almost finished draining the exterior of the monument and have developed a few tips for those who wish to attempt this build. First thing first, this project is not for the faint of heart. But here is a list of some stuff you will need.
1. About 5 1/2 double chests filled with sand
2. About 5,000+ dispensers... I believe. 104 for 2 rows, one row of building block, then 2 rows of dispensers. Rinse and repeat until all 52 rows are done. Facing downward.
3. Guessing around 3 double chests of your preferred building block. Under each single row, place a further 5 or 6 blocks underneath, all the way across.
4. Signs, around 5000+ signs. These go on either side of the 2x52x6 shafts to prevent water from getting out.
5. Buckets, 5000+. Fill each with water. To make life simpler, remember to set up an easily accessible infinite water source. For those who do not know how to make one, simple make a 1x3 hole and place water on either side. The middle becomes an infinite water source. Place the water buckets inside each dispenser.
6. Rails, roughly 208 rails will be needed. Place 2 rails at the end of each side of the monument, the entire row.
7. Power rails, guessing 8000-9000. Make a line for each row, connecting to the rails on either end. Also on power rail at the end of each row.
8. Redstone blocks, about 1000 or so. Remember that each block powers 7 rails in each direction plus the power rail over it.
9. Levers, 104 levers to place by the individual power rails on each side.
10. Hoppers, you will need 260 hoppers, 1 underneath each regular rail and 52 for Minecraft hoppers.
11. Minecart, 52, 1 for each row.
12. Chests, 104 chests or 52 double chests. These go underneath the hoppers at the end of every other row.
13. Trap chests, 104 trap chests or 52 double trap chest. These go underneath the hoppers every other row, opposite of regular chests.
14. Pickaxes, preferably iron. You will need a couple dozen iron pickaxes to mine out the monument and 34 spaces below the monument. 32 blocks down to kill the guardians and 2 more below for half slabs and the rail system.
15. Half slabs, roughly 4 double chests full. These go directly above the rail system to prevent mob collisions and also provides a neat floor for the Minecart hoppers to clean.
16. Redstone, about 9-10 stacks should do. Wire up the dispensers so that each has power, lead the wire to a place you would like to use to turn on and off the farm.
17. Repeators, you will need around 250 repeators to supply power to each dispenser.
18. One last lever to use at your on/off station. Give it a flip and watch the guardians come raining down.
This build is extremely resource expensive and takes quite a bit of time to set up. I strongly recommend that you build an iron farm prior to attempting this build. Use sand to section off areas to effectively drain with however many sponges you can find. I stick with 4x4 shafts, it seems to make draining a bit easier and doesn't give guardians a lot of room to run. Hope that this helps anyone looking to attempt this build. Once mine is finished, I will get some pics up
Youtube-eonwolfx9, Twitter @eonwolfx9
I would suggest altering your setup slightly to ditch the dispensers, and water buckets in favor of pistions, holding back the water, with water source blocks located at Y=38. (guardians spawn between layers 39 through 61, in a 58x58x23 area (roughly the size of the ocean temple). Using a 4x4 grid you can easily setup pistons to stop water from flowing down the tubes. You loose a bit of spawn space, but you will hardly notice the difference. The Pistons will behave correctly most of the time, unlike dispensers, which are prone to either not firing their buckets, or failing to pick them up.
Second rather then using signs to hold back the water, why not use fence gates? Signs in 1.8 are rendered differently then they were in previous versions, and can cause lag, fence gates don't, however fence gates do need to be placed on top of a block first, and then that block needs removed, so its a bit more setup but better for the frame rate later.
In my setup i didn't have the space to drop them to kill them so instead about 10 blocks down I drop them through a lava block which catches them on fire, coupled with a bit of fall damage they don't last too long. I also didn't want to use minecarts and or mass numbers of hoppers, so instead I opted to run the farm in 2 phases, the first phase runs for exactly 2:30 minutes, in this phase the guardians spawn, fall and die, with all the drops sitting on the bottom collection floor. The floor is setup in an inverse pyramid setup. Phase 2 starts by shutting off the water so guardians can't spawn, after 30 seconds have passed (it makes sure everything in the kill floor is dead), it opens up water around the collection floor, which flushes everything down and to the center, where a hopper picks up, and sends the items to be sorted and stored. 1 minute later the farm reverts back to phase 1 and the process starts anew.
Hope it helps.
Hmm, sounds interesting. I may have to give that a try. Never got to the advanced Redstone techniques. Perhaps this will be a good reason to.
Youtube-eonwolfx9, Twitter @eonwolfx9
Drop the guardians on carpet, with minecart hoppers running underneath. Make an unloading system at the far end. Gather ice blocks for easier water placements. Fence gates are prefered than signs. Probably use sponges, takes time but is efficient. I ran through 2 unbreaking 3 diamond shovels while digging all that sand (currently making the farm in survival). Use sand to mark out the temple.
In other words, a guardian farm requires patience and isn't a 'spawn-and-build' thing like a house.
Hope this helps
'Life is too short to short to kill the Ender Dragon'~ ThatOneBrat
personally I gave up on the entire Redstone bit. Made a farm using 8 block long floors that funnel into a grinder similar to an xp farm. Was rather easy and pretty much all required materials are present in the monument minus wood for fence gates. It's not pretty but it gets the job done. Also building a 4x4 roof 1 block above the drop point helps funnel the guardians. So does standing by the drop point. Guardians seem to swim towards the player so get next to the shaft just below the spawn floor and get ready to wait long periods of time for any substantial production.
As a side note, mob caps do interfer greatly with this particular farm. I usually get 10-12 shards, 20 fish and 3-5 of the other drop, forget the name right now. But it is not very efficient whatsoever.
Youtube-eonwolfx9, Twitter @eonwolfx9
I built a wash floor under the spawning area that pushes the guardians into three trenches two blocks wide where they fall and die. I have hopper minecarts that run in a u and an unloader at one end. It only takes six hoppers including the minecarts to gather everything up and the farm can run continuously. The mining is a lot simpler this way too, you only need to mine out three two block wide trenches to the bottom.
Wolfshusband, if you build a platform at y128 or higher the spawn rates will improve greatly. Mine doesn't hardly make any items when I'm near sea level but when I climb to the top of the tower there is a steady stream of items coming up the elevator.
x1t0m can you please tell us your hourly income of items please? Currently been building this farm from about 1 week and dont want it to be slow. Thanks
'Life is too short to short to kill the Ender Dragon'~ ThatOneBrat
The prototype in creative made 12,800 items per hour. Its hard to get an exact count in survival, but its pretty close to the output of the creative build if not a little more. The key was making a platform high up above the farm to take as many caves as possible out of spawning range. While I mined out for the bottom of the farm I lit up the caves I found directly underneath and adjacent to the farm but I only went 20 or 30 blocks away from the footprint of the monument. I didn't worry about slimes either and there are slime chunks under the farm. There is a decent area under there to spawn in but it doesn't hurt output enough for me to worry about flooding or slabbing. My platform is at y122, but you can go higher, wouldn't go any lower than that though.