Been looking around at various designes and I had a few questions.
First of all, which is the most up to date and arguably "best" design currently around?
Secondly, From the few designs I have seen, many have a water way pulling the golems away from the farm with lava blades to weaken them. Why, exactly? Is it to make room for a new golem more quickly?
Lastly, Part of the second question but why not kill the golem outright by simply dropping them in a lava pit over hoppers? (2x2 "room" with lava on signs above it)
Yes, a village has a limit to the number of golems it can hold so you have to get the golem out of the village as soon as possible for a new one to spawn. Your hopper idea sounds like a good one, give it a try. The newest golem farm design is probably the iron trench. My favorite is this one:
I just looked at that one, actually. Tried asking Doc about it but he seemes busy atm. Any reason its your favorite?
Secondly, While play testing with his design, I noticed if you made the lava blade 16 instead of 15, they die as soon as they leave it, dropping the items without the need for a crusher.
Well an iron farm is a very good thing to have in your world. I'm glad you are interested in them. To answer the question what is the best iron farm you have to take a few thins into consideration. Your resources and your time. If you have a LOT of time and resources TangoTek's Iron Trench is deffenatly the best:
This build is extreamly time and resource consuming but, will produce enough iron for you to have your scaffolding made out of iron blocks.
The second and until recently the best iron farm is Docm77's
This one is farly easy to build and very customizable. I myself have built this version. The hardest part is getting the villagers into the spawning chambers.
For your second question, the reason why they had lava to weaken them is because pre 1.5 there were no hoppers. You had to manually kill and collect the golems and iron yourself or it would despawn. You have a nice idea there. You can infact drop golems right into lava. Just put four hoppers down in a 2 x 2 like you said and put halfslabs on top. Directly above you can put the lava. The golems will die and you collect the loot. Even though the lava is right where the golems die you collect all the loot. This only is the case with iron golems, this will not work with any other mob.
Interesting points, Forged. The first one i've been looking at since Eve up there mentioned it and it seems incredibly complicated. I wouldn't mind it much but i'm not sure its worth that much time and effort.
As for the other farm? You could of done something similar except standing next to them in order to collect. The 2x2 room with lava ontop would of given you enough room to fit in there with them and not worry about the lava and simply afk. Though since hoppers have been added now, it just makes it a bit easier.
The only problem I could see with Docm's design is simply being very large and hard to fill with villagers.
Been looking around at various designes and I had a few questions.
First of all, which is the most up to date and arguably "best" design currently around?
Secondly, From the few designs I have seen, many have a water way pulling the golems away from the farm with lava blades to weaken them. Why, exactly? Is it to make room for a new golem more quickly?
Lastly, Part of the second question but why not kill the golem outright by simply dropping them in a lava pit over hoppers? (2x2 "room" with lava on signs above it)
1- Best design is the Iron Trench (No this is not mine its just freaking awesome)
2- yes
3- not quite sure what you mean, Most farms autokill them, some dont so you can use lotting on them, The iron trench is Autokill. Though it takes a lot to build it in survival. I built it on my SSP world and it took me over a month
1- Best design is the Iron Trench (No this is not mine its just freaking awesome)
2- yes
3- not quite sure what you mean, Most farms autokill them, some dont so you can use lotting on them, The iron trench is Autokill. Though it takes a lot to build it in survival. I built it on my SSP world and it took me over a month
3- I meant killing them as soon as they drop down, rather than carting them away, first. Secondly, is the trench really worth it?
3- I meant killing them as soon as they drop down, rather than carting them away, first. Secondly, is the trench really worth it?
Most farms have the lava blades to kill them. We don't drop them into lava directly so that the iron doesn't burn up. And if you build the iron trench, you will find yourself with more iron than dirt.
All iron farms (even the Iron Trench) operate on the same basic principle. In any one village, a golem will only spawn about once every six minutes; the only way to get more golems is to build more villages. In order to avoid becoming merged, the villages need to be about 70 blocks apart from each other to remain separate, which is why Docm's design is so huge with the four separate "modules" spaced so far apart. Of course, you don't need to build exactly four of them; depending on your needs you could build just a single pod or even eight or more.
The Iron Trench uses a lot of shenaniganry to "trick" the game into mashing 32 individual villages into the space of only one or two without them becoming merged. Unfortunately, if you don't build it in the world's always-loaded spawn zone, the villages will merge whenever you leave and return to the area, at which point it has to reset and go though it's roughly 20-minute "startup procedure" before it starts working again. The good news is that it cranks out golems so fast you'll soon have more iron than you know what to do with, so you won't have to hang around waiting for it to reset very many times before you've got iron blocks coming out your ears. In the end, it's a neat concept, but maybe not very practical; likely more trouble and resources than it's worth except maybe as a large group project on a multiplayer server.
Iron Trench aside, Docm's design is the standard "go-to" model, but there have been some changes to the game since its inception which leave room for minor improvements. First is the obvious addition of hoppers, which were not in the game when the farm was designed. A hopper collection system can allow you to kill the golems as soon as they're spawned, eliminating the need hold them live and group-kill them whenever you happen on by (which was the only reason for "softening them up" with the lava in the first place -- it made them die that much faster when you did come to collect.) Now I just drop them in a pit with hoppers as the floor, and signs holding up lava at the golems' head level three blocks up. Then the hoppers all feed into a chest or item-sorter or storage-minecart back to your supply warehouse or whatever you prefer.
Secondly, the number of villagers required to spawn a golem was reduced from sixteen to only ten, meaning you can get away with having fewer doors. You really only need 21 of them, but that's not enough to breed the required number of villagers; you'd have to bring them all in manually. To breed the required ten villagers you need a minimum of 29 doors, although 32, being a multiple of eight, will fit nice and symmetrically around the four faces, ensuring that the village center and golem-spawning zone stay right smack in the middle where they're supposed to be.
Also, I'd like to point out one more option in the form of MegaTrain's MegaVillage, which is a mass-breeding villager farm and trading station, with a bonus built-in iron farm (or vice versa.) You can just build it by itself, or use it to replace one of the "modules" in a large Docm-style array.
My advice, build a MegaVillage and/or a Docm-style module, and add extra pods on if and when you need them for even more output. Even a single pod can rack up a fair amount of iron if you build it in the always-loaded spawn zone, so that it keeps on running no matter where you are in the world. And unless you plan to build a huge tower out of iron blocks or something, then a four-pod array like in Docm's video should be more than enough to keep you set for life.
I just looked at that one, actually. Tried asking Doc about it but he seemes busy atm. Any reason its your favorite?
Secondly, While play testing with his design, I noticed if you made the lava blade 16 instead of 15, they die as soon as they leave it, dropping the items without the need for a crusher.
You will never need iron again if you make an iron trench in your spawn chunks. Runs 24/7 when you're on/someone is on if it's a server. A server mate recently completed one in a few days' worth of building.. I'm pretty sure no one needs iron ever again unless they use it for building specifically, and that's not really viable in my opinion just because of how few builds I think it's good-looking in.
Iron trench: Overkill, which makes it worth it if you're into the long-term stuff. If you're an incompetent builder/redstone person, then I really don't recommend even trying. It's not super complicated, Tango gives you all the information you need in his tutorial so just follow that. However, if you have trouble following tutorials in general and are completely new to redstone, I highly doubt you won't have problems..
Most iron golem farms produce quite a bit of iron regardless (even single-cell ones, basically 1/4 of what that Docm77 tutorial uses). Single cell of that design will produce uh.. ~800-950 iron per 24 hours, but has to have a player logged in around it or on the server (sp or mp) if it's in spawn chunks which are loaded 100% of the time if a player is in the realm. So yeah..
Standard farms: probably a stack of iron per hour, if made the right size. Iron trench is much, much more..
Edit: Why does it matter if you kill them right away or if they get moved into lava by water? If you planned on using looting, you've gotta do some system of damage and use splash damage potions then switch to looting sword mid-throw when they're really low. It's really not meant to be used that way, because give any iron farm enough time and it becomes excess. The benefit to iron farms is that they are AFK. There are better xp alternatives, if iron golems even drop experience.
Standard farms: probably a stack of iron per hour, if made the right size. Iron trench is much, much more..
Roughly 30-50 ingots/hour, based on ten golems/hour and 3-5 ingots/golem.
Edit: Why does it matter if you kill them right away or if they get moved into lava by water?
It doesn't. The lava blade is included in the design because this particular build was developed before hoppers existed. So if you just killed the golems right away, the ingots would drop and despawn unless you AFK at a collection point to gather them. So instead, the golems were "softened up" as much as possible with the lava, without actually killing them. That way, whenever you come around you could just stand on the pressure plate and kill them in just a few seconds, instead of waiting for it to go CLANG!-CLANG!-CLANG!-CLANG!-CLANG!-CLANG!-CLANG!-CLANG! through their full 50 hearts (at only half a heart per CLANG!, that's one hundred CLANG!s if you don't soften them up first.)
Now, of course, we just drop them in a pit with signs holding up lava over hoppers. Lava kills them all the way, and hoppers collect the loot.
If you planned on using looting, you've gotta do some system of damage and use splash damage potions then switch to looting sword mid-throw when they're really low. It's really not meant to be used that way, because give any iron farm enough time and it becomes excess. The benefit to iron farms is that they are AFK. There are better xp alternatives, if iron golems even drop experience.
They do not drop experience, and I don't think Looting works on them, either. I just tried killing several of them in a creative test world with a Looting III sword, and they still all dropped the regular 3-5 ingots each. To make sure that it wasn't something about being in creative that did it, I tried it on some cows to see what would happen and almost all of them dropped more than the 1-3 beef they usually do.
First of all, which is the most up to date and arguably "best" design currently around?
Secondly, From the few designs I have seen, many have a water way pulling the golems away from the farm with lava blades to weaken them. Why, exactly? Is it to make room for a new golem more quickly?
Lastly, Part of the second question but why not kill the golem outright by simply dropping them in a lava pit over hoppers? (2x2 "room" with lava on signs above it)
Channel
https://www.youtube.com/user/Tyken132
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http://tyken132.com/
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CCwQtwIwAA&url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xE04Ui90sQY&ei=7UBfUryoB4SfyQGW1oCICg&usg=AFQjCNFr99fmHO_t20ABr9knQ_uCfnIogg&sig2=FG_mdZxaxkzI8-z3D-qbyw&bvm=bv.54176721,d.aWc
Secondly, While play testing with his design, I noticed if you made the lava blade 16 instead of 15, they die as soon as they leave it, dropping the items without the need for a crusher.
Channel
https://www.youtube.com/user/Tyken132
My Blog/Forums
http://tyken132.com/
This build is extreamly time and resource consuming but, will produce enough iron for you to have your scaffolding made out of iron blocks.
The second and until recently the best iron farm is Docm77's
This one is farly easy to build and very customizable. I myself have built this version. The hardest part is getting the villagers into the spawning chambers.
For your second question, the reason why they had lava to weaken them is because pre 1.5 there were no hoppers. You had to manually kill and collect the golems and iron yourself or it would despawn. You have a nice idea there. You can infact drop golems right into lava. Just put four hoppers down in a 2 x 2 like you said and put halfslabs on top. Directly above you can put the lava. The golems will die and you collect the loot. Even though the lava is right where the golems die you collect all the loot. This only is the case with iron golems, this will not work with any other mob.
I hope this helps!
As for the other farm? You could of done something similar except standing next to them in order to collect. The 2x2 room with lava ontop would of given you enough room to fit in there with them and not worry about the lava and simply afk. Though since hoppers have been added now, it just makes it a bit easier.
The only problem I could see with Docm's design is simply being very large and hard to fill with villagers.
Channel
https://www.youtube.com/user/Tyken132
My Blog/Forums
http://tyken132.com/
1- Best design is the Iron Trench (No this is not mine its just freaking awesome)
2- yes
3- not quite sure what you mean, Most farms autokill them, some dont so you can use lotting on them, The iron trench is Autokill. Though it takes a lot to build it in survival. I built it on my SSP world and it took me over a month
3- I meant killing them as soon as they drop down, rather than carting them away, first. Secondly, is the trench really worth it?
Channel
https://www.youtube.com/user/Tyken132
My Blog/Forums
http://tyken132.com/
Most farms have the lava blades to kill them. We don't drop them into lava directly so that the iron doesn't burn up. And if you build the iron trench, you will find yourself with more iron than dirt.
The Iron Trench uses a lot of shenaniganry to "trick" the game into mashing 32 individual villages into the space of only one or two without them becoming merged. Unfortunately, if you don't build it in the world's always-loaded spawn zone, the villages will merge whenever you leave and return to the area, at which point it has to reset and go though it's roughly 20-minute "startup procedure" before it starts working again. The good news is that it cranks out golems so fast you'll soon have more iron than you know what to do with, so you won't have to hang around waiting for it to reset very many times before you've got iron blocks coming out your ears. In the end, it's a neat concept, but maybe not very practical; likely more trouble and resources than it's worth except maybe as a large group project on a multiplayer server.
Iron Trench aside, Docm's design is the standard "go-to" model, but there have been some changes to the game since its inception which leave room for minor improvements. First is the obvious addition of hoppers, which were not in the game when the farm was designed. A hopper collection system can allow you to kill the golems as soon as they're spawned, eliminating the need hold them live and group-kill them whenever you happen on by (which was the only reason for "softening them up" with the lava in the first place -- it made them die that much faster when you did come to collect.) Now I just drop them in a pit with hoppers as the floor, and signs holding up lava at the golems' head level three blocks up. Then the hoppers all feed into a chest or item-sorter or storage-minecart back to your supply warehouse or whatever you prefer.
Secondly, the number of villagers required to spawn a golem was reduced from sixteen to only ten, meaning you can get away with having fewer doors. You really only need 21 of them, but that's not enough to breed the required number of villagers; you'd have to bring them all in manually. To breed the required ten villagers you need a minimum of 29 doors, although 32, being a multiple of eight, will fit nice and symmetrically around the four faces, ensuring that the village center and golem-spawning zone stay right smack in the middle where they're supposed to be.
Also, I'd like to point out one more option in the form of MegaTrain's MegaVillage, which is a mass-breeding villager farm and trading station, with a bonus built-in iron farm (or vice versa.) You can just build it by itself, or use it to replace one of the "modules" in a large Docm-style array.
My advice, build a MegaVillage and/or a Docm-style module, and add extra pods on if and when you need them for even more output. Even a single pod can rack up a fair amount of iron if you build it in the always-loaded spawn zone, so that it keeps on running no matter where you are in the world. And unless you plan to build a huge tower out of iron blocks or something, then a four-pod array like in Docm's video should be more than enough to keep you set for life.
Village Mechanics: A not-so-brief guide - Update 2017! Now with 1.8 breeding mechanics! Long-overdue trading info, coming soon!
You think magic isn't real? Consider this: for every person, there is a sentence -- a series of words -- which has the power to destroy them.
You will never need iron again if you make an iron trench in your spawn chunks. Runs 24/7 when you're on/someone is on if it's a server. A server mate recently completed one in a few days' worth of building.. I'm pretty sure no one needs iron ever again unless they use it for building specifically, and that's not really viable in my opinion just because of how few builds I think it's good-looking in.
Iron trench: Overkill, which makes it worth it if you're into the long-term stuff. If you're an incompetent builder/redstone person, then I really don't recommend even trying. It's not super complicated, Tango gives you all the information you need in his tutorial so just follow that. However, if you have trouble following tutorials in general and are completely new to redstone, I highly doubt you won't have problems..
Most iron golem farms produce quite a bit of iron regardless (even single-cell ones, basically 1/4 of what that Docm77 tutorial uses). Single cell of that design will produce uh.. ~800-950 iron per 24 hours, but has to have a player logged in around it or on the server (sp or mp) if it's in spawn chunks which are loaded 100% of the time if a player is in the realm. So yeah..
Standard farms: probably a stack of iron per hour, if made the right size. Iron trench is much, much more..
Edit: Why does it matter if you kill them right away or if they get moved into lava by water? If you planned on using looting, you've gotta do some system of damage and use splash damage potions then switch to looting sword mid-throw when they're really low. It's really not meant to be used that way, because give any iron farm enough time and it becomes excess. The benefit to iron farms is that they are AFK. There are better xp alternatives, if iron golems even drop experience.
Roughly 30-50 ingots/hour, based on ten golems/hour and 3-5 ingots/golem.
It doesn't. The lava blade is included in the design because this particular build was developed before hoppers existed. So if you just killed the golems right away, the ingots would drop and despawn unless you AFK at a collection point to gather them. So instead, the golems were "softened up" as much as possible with the lava, without actually killing them. That way, whenever you come around you could just stand on the pressure plate and kill them in just a few seconds, instead of waiting for it to go CLANG!-CLANG!-CLANG!-CLANG!-CLANG!-CLANG!-CLANG!-CLANG! through their full 50 hearts (at only half a heart per CLANG!, that's one hundred CLANG!s if you don't soften them up first.)
Now, of course, we just drop them in a pit with signs holding up lava over hoppers. Lava kills them all the way, and hoppers collect the loot.
They do not drop experience, and I don't think Looting works on them, either. I just tried killing several of them in a creative test world with a Looting III sword, and they still all dropped the regular 3-5 ingots each. To make sure that it wasn't something about being in creative that did it, I tried it on some cows to see what would happen and almost all of them dropped more than the 1-3 beef they usually do.
Village Mechanics: A not-so-brief guide - Update 2017! Now with 1.8 breeding mechanics! Long-overdue trading info, coming soon!
You think magic isn't real? Consider this: for every person, there is a sentence -- a series of words -- which has the power to destroy them.