What I'm saying is, does anyone else actually prefer playing survival the good old-fashioned way without making these huge automatic farms and grinders?
I agree with Azura. I haven't really done much with automation, but I've wanted to do it for a long time. I've been busy with school, unfortunately, with barely enough time to do the basics of Minecraft, let alone large projects. Summer is coming for me, though, and I've been having more and more time as the amount of work I have considerably dwindles. That aside, to me, whether big or small, any project is an accomplishment of some sort.
I built mob farms and chicken cookers in my first few worlds but now I feel I've done that. I just have a potato farm for food and with a Looting III sword and Fortune III pick I get more stuff than I can use just mining and hunting mobs at night and in caves.
On my latest world I didn't even fence in cows for the bookshelves for my enchanting setup, I just ran around breeding and killing cows in the wild.
I am thinking of building an automatic sorting and storage system, not because I feel I need it but just because that's something I haven't done yet.
97% of teenagers would cry if they saw Justin Bieber on top of a tower about to jump. If you're the 3% who is sitting there with popcorn screaming "DO A BACKFLIP", copy and paste this as your signature.
I will build a grinder for mobs because I no longer fear them and it's just tedious to go around hunting them at night for what little I actually need from them. Mostly it's just for arrows and some bonemeal, but on occasion I'll use the gunpowder if I need to clear a large section of land. I usually also build a chicken cooker just so I have a guaranteed supply of food for the mine. Above ground I'll gather food myself from cows or grow some crops in a manual farm (I always use small manual farms).
Other than that I do everything else the 'old fashioned way'. I've never have nor will I ever make an iron farm nor a gold farm. I find I can gather enough for what I need via mining. I typically have a mine that extends 50x50x2 at bedrock, Then I slowly ascend from there mining up to about y=45-50ish. Then I'll go back to the bottom and extend the mine an extra 10 blocks all around and again I'll ascend upwards. I'm going to use a different method (probably a quicker strip-mining method) in the next world I start. Likely when 1.9 hits.
I built mob farms and chicken cookers in my first few worlds but now I feel I've done that. I just have a potato farm for food and with a Looting III sword and Fortune III pick I get more stuff than I can use just mining and hunting mobs at night and in caves.
On my latest world I didn't even fence in cows for the bookshelves for my enchanting setup, I just ran around breeding and killing cows in the wild.
I am thinking of building an automatic sorting and storage system, not because I feel I need it but just because that's something I haven't done yet.
Oh yeah, I do that, too. Making some sort of automated whatever machine just because I haven't and it seems neat. I usually build automated brewing stands just because of how tedious it is. I used to build an automated cow killing pen that I started calling the "Cattle Strangler". Every new redesign was Mk II, Mk III, Mk IV, etc. All it did was filter the calves from the adult cows, then strangle them once they grew up and auto-collect the drops into a chest. First few designs were slow, but the latest design allows for more adult cows and they move around in a large circle, so I can spam-breed them allowing for more calves. Larger calf pen as well. It's fun just building them at first, then trying to figure out a more efficient way to do it.
Once I'm satisfied with a system's efficiency, I tend to go back to the manual way of doing things. I don't care for having all of those automated systems, but I like the puzzle of designing one.
I like to have both a manual and automatic farm where possible, I find that once I start getting towards the "end game" stage, I start looking at doing large scale projects, and I'd rather not do menial tasks, but at the same time manual farms are great to just have something simple to do in between.
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No, not for me. I love building automated things. I find it very satisfying when you finish an automatic farm/grinder after a lot of hard work, and you know you'll never run out of those resources ever again.
My worlds rarely ever get up to the point where I can start automating smaller things. I'll have a few farms, maybe a single automated reed farm or something like that, but beyond that I tend to drop worlds rather quickly to try something new or focus on a new mod or to adjust my modpack or because suddenly it's just boring or what-have-you. I tend to envy those who can stay on a world for upwards of a year to build or even need an auto-tree-cutter, or a house that repairs itself, etc.
I only harvest/gather materials manually when I'm playing in my first phase of the game. Once I feel like I'm playing the midgame phase, I start building autofarms. When my demands are fast increasing, I really heavily invest on automated farming and other industrialized equipments using redstone.
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!Special thanks for TNT123BOOM for an awesome siggy! Want to read some awesome journals? Try this: Survival Journals/Worlds list
I do everything manually until I basically finish the game by killing the dragon, building the town/city I wanted to, or whatever. After that, if I like the world, I go into the industrial revolution and mechanise everything I can for the future plans on that world.
For the most part, no, I enjoy the automation aspect of the game.
I find it extremely satisfying to build an automated farm, then when I come back the next morning and crack open that double chest, it's like Christmas, except I'm Santa, his elves, and the wide-eyed kid with messy hair in a gaudy sweater, all at the same time.
I'll use automated farms in practical ways. One of my first automated things in any world is a mob grinder of some sort for a supply of arrows. Not that I use arrows a lot, but I find that what I tend to get from just killing skeletons isn't quite enough, partially because I don't tend to go out looking for fights, just what I kill while caving, building or traveling.
With my playstyle I get so many resources, both materials and XP, it isn't funny. Even when I first enchant (which is only done one time) I just mine quartz, in addition to XP from normal nighttime mob spawns and branch-mining; I'm pretty sure that the time taken to make an XP farm would negate any advantage, plus I used the quartz to build my base so that wasn't the only reason to mine it.
Similarly, for food a small potato farm only takes a minute or two out of 24 hours of playtime to harvest and replant (time taken to cook the potatoes not included since I don't have to wait for them to cook, doing other things until they are done), this is also the only real use I have for Fortune (in vanilla, as I do enchant a diamond pickaxe with it for my mod's amethyst ore, which is rare enough to justify it, but even there I only use it when branch-mining for an initial stockpile, despite being around 8 times rarer than diamond when found by caving), since again I get silly amounts of resources, most of which I never use (e.g. almost no use for iron, even for rails, as I just take them from mineshafts at a far greater rate than I can use them; powered rails can be made just using gold and redstone from the chests; the little iron that I do use for anvils and shears is likewise easily met by iron from chests - so I really don't even need to mine iron ore after I just do caving; I just mine all those resources for fun).
There should also be less need for some resources, especially XP, if you are playing in 1.8; for example, it only costs 2 levels to repair an item the first time, increasing to 33 for the final repair - but that is far less XP overall than most items prior to 1.8; an Efficiency V, Unbreaking III diamond pickaxe costs 33 levels for every repair (due to leveling changes this is less XP than the same number of levels in 1.8, but still far more than the cost of all but the last repair). Other items have even greater advantages, such as if you added Fortune III to that pickaxe - prior to 1.8 that means spending 37 levels to repair it only 25% at a time (5,624 XP for four repairs). Similarly, enchanting costs are greatly reduced, easily offsetting the fact that you have to replace them.
I don't think words can describe this - that was all in a single play session:
I've even had people try to convince me to make automated farms, such as a chicken farm for food - which require you to AFK and/or stay near them for them to properly work (one even suggested that I use cheats to change the world spawn, as I spend days at a time up to thousands of blocks away from the spawn chunks, such are the distances that I explore underground); as far as I'm concerned you are not playing if you AFK; in my case the "time played" stat and the number of in-game days that have passed accurately reflects the total playtime I've spent in my worlds (spending 3,900 days, as in one of my worlds, in a world isn't that impressive if most of that time was spent leaving the game running overnight). Even when I need to smelt iron/gold ore so I can make more room I just up furnaces in a safe area and continue exploring nearby until they are done.
I have always been the person to use the good old school methods, I don't use any red stone for my farming pleasures, there is just something rewarding about farming, and creating by hand without the use of red stone.
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"The only way to do great work is to love what you do" - Steve Jobs
Who says building huge farms & mob grinders isn'tthe 'old fashioned way'? We just have more options now that let us build them more efficiently. Everyone plays differently after all. And because minecraft is such an open sandbox, every way to play is correct as long as that's how you want to play.
Who says building huge farms & mob grinders isn'tthe 'old fashioned way'? We just have more options now that let us build them more efficiently. Everyone plays differently after all. And because minecraft is such an open sandbox, every way to play is correct as long as that's how you want to play.
Old fashioned as in you couldn't do it properly before mob spawners, redstone, and tutorials, I know few people who design their own these days.
Automated farms often seem like more effort than they're worth in my opinion. I may build a big automated farm as a major project, but that's for the sake of building something Really Big and not to save myself effort (quite the opposite, actually; I build things like that because they take a lot of effort to build).
I understand why some people like automated farms, though. Many people like to optimize how they play MineCraft and automated farms are usually more efficient than manual farms once you have them set up. I've never been one for optimization, though, and I like to do things manually a lot of the time.
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The source of my intention isn't really crime prevention; my intention is prevention of the lie! Yeah, welcome to the Scatman's world!
What I'm saying is, does anyone else actually prefer playing survival the good old-fashioned way without making these huge automatic farms and grinders?
What are you looking at?
I agree with Azura. I haven't really done much with automation, but I've wanted to do it for a long time. I've been busy with school, unfortunately, with barely enough time to do the basics of Minecraft, let alone large projects. Summer is coming for me, though, and I've been having more and more time as the amount of work I have considerably dwindles. That aside, to me, whether big or small, any project is an accomplishment of some sort.
I built mob farms and chicken cookers in my first few worlds but now I feel I've done that. I just have a potato farm for food and with a Looting III sword and Fortune III pick I get more stuff than I can use just mining and hunting mobs at night and in caves.
On my latest world I didn't even fence in cows for the bookshelves for my enchanting setup, I just ran around breeding and killing cows in the wild.
I am thinking of building an automatic sorting and storage system, not because I feel I need it but just because that's something I haven't done yet.
Just testing.
both are cool
97% of teenagers would cry if they saw Justin Bieber on top of a tower about to jump. If you're the 3% who is sitting there with popcorn screaming "DO A BACKFLIP", copy and paste this as your signature.
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I will build a grinder for mobs because I no longer fear them and it's just tedious to go around hunting them at night for what little I actually need from them. Mostly it's just for arrows and some bonemeal, but on occasion I'll use the gunpowder if I need to clear a large section of land. I usually also build a chicken cooker just so I have a guaranteed supply of food for the mine. Above ground I'll gather food myself from cows or grow some crops in a manual farm (I always use small manual farms).
Other than that I do everything else the 'old fashioned way'. I've never have nor will I ever make an iron farm nor a gold farm. I find I can gather enough for what I need via mining. I typically have a mine that extends 50x50x2 at bedrock, Then I slowly ascend from there mining up to about y=45-50ish. Then I'll go back to the bottom and extend the mine an extra 10 blocks all around and again I'll ascend upwards. I'm going to use a different method (probably a quicker strip-mining method) in the next world I start. Likely when 1.9 hits.
Ropes: Leads, just better -Deonyi
Oh yeah, I do that, too. Making some sort of automated whatever machine just because I haven't and it seems neat. I usually build automated brewing stands just because of how tedious it is. I used to build an automated cow killing pen that I started calling the "Cattle Strangler". Every new redesign was Mk II, Mk III, Mk IV, etc. All it did was filter the calves from the adult cows, then strangle them once they grew up and auto-collect the drops into a chest. First few designs were slow, but the latest design allows for more adult cows and they move around in a large circle, so I can spam-breed them allowing for more calves. Larger calf pen as well. It's fun just building them at first, then trying to figure out a more efficient way to do it.
Once I'm satisfied with a system's efficiency, I tend to go back to the manual way of doing things. I don't care for having all of those automated systems, but I like the puzzle of designing one.
Ropes: Leads, just better -Deonyi
I like to have both a manual and automatic farm where possible, I find that once I start getting towards the "end game" stage, I start looking at doing large scale projects, and I'd rather not do menial tasks, but at the same time manual farms are great to just have something simple to do in between.
No, not for me. I love building automated things. I find it very satisfying when you finish an automatic farm/grinder after a lot of hard work, and you know you'll never run out of those resources ever again.
My worlds rarely ever get up to the point where I can start automating smaller things. I'll have a few farms, maybe a single automated reed farm or something like that, but beyond that I tend to drop worlds rather quickly to try something new or focus on a new mod or to adjust my modpack or because suddenly it's just boring or what-have-you. I tend to envy those who can stay on a world for upwards of a year to build or even need an auto-tree-cutter, or a house that repairs itself, etc.
I'm a pixel artist who makes pixel things and maps! I also do line art occasionally.
I have two work in progress resource packs!
This is the second one!
And of course, by "work-in-progress" I mean "will never, ever be completed".
I only harvest/gather materials manually when I'm playing in my first phase of the game. Once I feel like I'm playing the midgame phase, I start building autofarms. When my demands are fast increasing, I really heavily invest on automated farming and other industrialized equipments using redstone.
Want to read some awesome journals? Try this: Survival Journals/Worlds list
I started doing traditional farms and mechanics at the beginning of the game,
after few minecraft-weeks, I start creating automated machines! Just like how technology keeps improving in the real life.
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I do everything manually until I basically finish the game by killing the dragon, building the town/city I wanted to, or whatever. After that, if I like the world, I go into the industrial revolution and mechanise everything I can for the future plans on that world.
For the most part, no, I enjoy the automation aspect of the game.
I find it extremely satisfying to build an automated farm, then when I come back the next morning and crack open that double chest, it's like Christmas, except I'm Santa, his elves, and the wide-eyed kid with messy hair in a gaudy sweater, all at the same time.
I'll use automated farms in practical ways. One of my first automated things in any world is a mob grinder of some sort for a supply of arrows. Not that I use arrows a lot, but I find that what I tend to get from just killing skeletons isn't quite enough, partially because I don't tend to go out looking for fights, just what I kill while caving, building or traveling.
by c0yote
I tried it with terrible results. I gave my wife my glasses for a second, a creeper showed up and now my wife is pregnant.
Stupid 3D..
With my playstyle I get so many resources, both materials and XP, it isn't funny. Even when I first enchant (which is only done one time) I just mine quartz, in addition to XP from normal nighttime mob spawns and branch-mining; I'm pretty sure that the time taken to make an XP farm would negate any advantage, plus I used the quartz to build my base so that wasn't the only reason to mine it.
Similarly, for food a small potato farm only takes a minute or two out of 24 hours of playtime to harvest and replant (time taken to cook the potatoes not included since I don't have to wait for them to cook, doing other things until they are done), this is also the only real use I have for Fortune (in vanilla, as I do enchant a diamond pickaxe with it for my mod's amethyst ore, which is rare enough to justify it, but even there I only use it when branch-mining for an initial stockpile, despite being around 8 times rarer than diamond when found by caving), since again I get silly amounts of resources, most of which I never use (e.g. almost no use for iron, even for rails, as I just take them from mineshafts at a far greater rate than I can use them; powered rails can be made just using gold and redstone from the chests; the little iron that I do use for anvils and shears is likewise easily met by iron from chests - so I really don't even need to mine iron ore after I just do caving; I just mine all those resources for fun).
There should also be less need for some resources, especially XP, if you are playing in 1.8; for example, it only costs 2 levels to repair an item the first time, increasing to 33 for the final repair - but that is far less XP overall than most items prior to 1.8; an Efficiency V, Unbreaking III diamond pickaxe costs 33 levels for every repair (due to leveling changes this is less XP than the same number of levels in 1.8, but still far more than the cost of all but the last repair). Other items have even greater advantages, such as if you added Fortune III to that pickaxe - prior to 1.8 that means spending 37 levels to repair it only 25% at a time (5,624 XP for four repairs). Similarly, enchanting costs are greatly reduced, easily offsetting the fact that you have to replace them.
I don't think words can describe this - that was all in a single play session:
I've even had people try to convince me to make automated farms, such as a chicken farm for food - which require you to AFK and/or stay near them for them to properly work (one even suggested that I use cheats to change the world spawn, as I spend days at a time up to thousands of blocks away from the spawn chunks, such are the distances that I explore underground); as far as I'm concerned you are not playing if you AFK; in my case the "time played" stat and the number of in-game days that have passed accurately reflects the total playtime I've spent in my worlds (spending 3,900 days, as in one of my worlds, in a world isn't that impressive if most of that time was spent leaving the game running overnight). Even when I need to smelt iron/gold ore so I can make more room I just up furnaces in a safe area and continue exploring nearby until they are done.
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
I have always been the person to use the good old school methods, I don't use any red stone for my farming pleasures, there is just something rewarding about farming, and creating by hand without the use of red stone.
"The only way to do great work is to love what you do" - Steve Jobs
Who says building huge farms & mob grinders isn't the 'old fashioned way'? We just have more options now that let us build them more efficiently. Everyone plays differently after all. And because minecraft is such an open sandbox, every way to play is correct as long as that's how you want to play.
My Survival Journal
Old fashioned as in you couldn't do it properly before mob spawners, redstone, and tutorials, I know few people who design their own these days.
I like manual farms, honestly.
Automated farms often seem like more effort than they're worth in my opinion. I may build a big automated farm as a major project, but that's for the sake of building something Really Big and not to save myself effort (quite the opposite, actually; I build things like that because they take a lot of effort to build).
I understand why some people like automated farms, though. Many people like to optimize how they play MineCraft and automated farms are usually more efficient than manual farms once you have them set up. I've never been one for optimization, though, and I like to do things manually a lot of the time.
The source of my intention isn't really crime prevention; my intention is prevention of the lie! Yeah, welcome to the Scatman's world!