I have a bamboo jungle not too far away from my base, but every time I go there, I am never able to find any pandas. I remember reading on the wiki that they have to spawn on grass (with certain space requirements etc.), but most of the ground in the jungle is podzol. If I were to clear away some of it and make a flat grass area, would pandas be more likely to spawn?
That means that if there are more than 9 animals in the loaded chunks no more will spawn.
They will still be generated along with new chunks but, except in skyblock or other exceptional cases, it takes a lot of work to get new animals to spawn in old chunks.
So your best bet would be to find another jungle with pandas and then breed them.
Yes, it's possible to create a panda spawner. A friend and I did this last night after I accidentally sacrificed 3 pandas to the gods of transportation errors. It's quite a lot of work though, so weigh your options. Passive mobs spawn in "active" blocks. This means 120 blocks around a player. The world spawn point is always active as well. There are only 10 passive mobs at a time. So we used that mechanic and the spawn criteria of the pandas, which you can find on the wiki. But basically it needs grass, two clear blocks, and a light level greater than 9. So we basically leveled a bamboo forest biome. Flattened the terrain, made it all grass, filled in any water, gravel, podzol, or sand with dirt (to become grass), removed all the trees to allow maximum light, etc. We intended to do this for a radius of 120m around a midpoint block, but it turns out, we didn't need that much. To get the pandas to spawn, we worked together. He went to spawn point to kill passive mobs. I stood in the center of the bamboo forest and occasionally killed passive mobs spawning there. It took a while, but we finally got 4 pandas to spawn at once (2 normals, 1 aggressive, 1 worried). Downside: it's a lot of work. I probably wouldn't have done this if I thought I could have found a jungle faster, or hadn't already built a panda-friendly track.
Worth mentioning: When you transport your panda via minecart, make sure the entire track is never up against a wall (so you'll want a 3-block wide passage if taking a panda through the nether). Pandas are wide, and I found that any time the minecart was up against a wall, the panda would take damage from the wall. RIP Panda #1. XD
I have a bamboo jungle not too far away from my base, but every time I go there, I am never able to find any pandas. I remember reading on the wiki that they have to spawn on grass (with certain space requirements etc.), but most of the ground in the jungle is podzol. If I were to clear away some of it and make a flat grass area, would pandas be more likely to spawn?
Probably not, passive mobs share a mob cap of 10.
That means that if there are more than 9 animals in the loaded chunks no more will spawn.
They will still be generated along with new chunks but, except in skyblock or other exceptional cases, it takes a lot of work to get new animals to spawn in old chunks.
So your best bet would be to find another jungle with pandas and then breed them.
Just testing.
Ah darn, I haven't been able to find any others even with amidst. I'll keep looking though.
Yes, it's possible to create a panda spawner. A friend and I did this last night after I accidentally sacrificed 3 pandas to the gods of transportation errors. It's quite a lot of work though, so weigh your options. Passive mobs spawn in "active" blocks. This means 120 blocks around a player. The world spawn point is always active as well. There are only 10 passive mobs at a time. So we used that mechanic and the spawn criteria of the pandas, which you can find on the wiki. But basically it needs grass, two clear blocks, and a light level greater than 9. So we basically leveled a bamboo forest biome. Flattened the terrain, made it all grass, filled in any water, gravel, podzol, or sand with dirt (to become grass), removed all the trees to allow maximum light, etc. We intended to do this for a radius of 120m around a midpoint block, but it turns out, we didn't need that much. To get the pandas to spawn, we worked together. He went to spawn point to kill passive mobs. I stood in the center of the bamboo forest and occasionally killed passive mobs spawning there. It took a while, but we finally got 4 pandas to spawn at once (2 normals, 1 aggressive, 1 worried). Downside: it's a lot of work. I probably wouldn't have done this if I thought I could have found a jungle faster, or hadn't already built a panda-friendly track.
Worth mentioning: When you transport your panda via minecart, make sure the entire track is never up against a wall (so you'll want a 3-block wide passage if taking a panda through the nether). Pandas are wide, and I found that any time the minecart was up against a wall, the panda would take damage from the wall. RIP Panda #1. XD