When I build a mob xp farm above ground i tend to build a few 16x16x2 pads. Then separate them by a 16x2x2 water canals. Ethoslab does a great job on a tutorial for these sorts of things.
Here is a video link for how he does it. He breaks it down really simply which is why there is 4 videos, just get the basic idea and you can skip around in them. Part 4 he describes how to build a drowning trap, but instead of that you could just build a little container for them to kill them their. Or make the "mob elevator" go up higher just to have them fall back down so they take damage = less hits to kill them.
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
Part 4:
Endermen farms are the most efficient, any other non-spawner EXP system has a pretty low cap of around 80 mobs, so AFKing isn't much good with them.
Endermen farms have the same 80 hostile cap. The end is just an ideal place to build since no other mob types spawn there and you can get > 128 blocks away from anything. Its like building on a superflat/half slabbed world as you have full control over all spawn-able space.
In 1.2.5 I made an attempt at an overworld trap to compete with enderman xp farm rates. In that version an endermen farm was about 5 minutes to 50. I got an overworld trap to 8.5 minutes to 50.
In 1.3 the endermen farms are ~1-2 minutes to 30. My trap is ~2 minutes to 30.
This is the trap:
Multilevel sifter with short water paths at each level to a central pitfall.
In 1.3 the endermen farms are ~1-2 minutes to 30. My trap is ~2 minutes to 30.
In the video at the end, your trap took 2:22~3:13 to get to level 14. That was 50 seconds.
Level 14 requires 238 experience in total, meaning your trap gives 4.76 experience per second.
From level 14 to level 30 requires 587 experience in total, meaning it would take another 123 seconds.
So in total your trap should get you to level 30 in about 123+50=3 minutes.
Ender farms are the best non-spawner farms. Yes they are mob capped at aroud 83 but who cares when you can go from level 0 to 30 in about 3 minutes? After gathering all the materials I built one in about 4-5 days start to finish. (I was on vacation at the time so I spent a good 6 hours a day working on it). It's based on the tutorial docm posted. A breif writeup and some screen shots can be found in my castle build thread here:
In the video at the end, your trap took 2:22~3:13 to get to level 14. That was 50 seconds.
Level 14 requires 238 experience in total, meaning your trap gives 4.76 experience per second.
From level 14 to level 30 requires 587 experience in total, meaning it would take another 123 seconds.
So in total your trap should get you to level 30 in about 123+50=3 minutes.
That video is from 1.2.5. I have run the numbers in the world in 1.3 and it is consistently around 2 minutes to 30.
I did build one of those once, took a hell of a time. Causes alot of lag on low-end computers, but the efficiency is amazing.
Yeah. The piston movements and redstone makes it a bit laggy if you time it to shift at the same time and repeat it often. On a version i made for survival I have each floor shifting at different times and don't shift too often.
Oddly enough the 1.3 update also made the lag much less without tweaks to the design.
Here is a video link for how he does it. He breaks it down really simply which is why there is 4 videos, just get the basic idea and you can skip around in them. Part 4 he describes how to build a drowning trap, but instead of that you could just build a little container for them to kill them their. Or make the "mob elevator" go up higher just to have them fall back down so they take damage = less hits to kill them.
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
Part 4:
Endermen farms have the same 80 hostile cap. The end is just an ideal place to build since no other mob types spawn there and you can get > 128 blocks away from anything. Its like building on a superflat/half slabbed world as you have full control over all spawn-able space.
In 1.2.5 I made an attempt at an overworld trap to compete with enderman xp farm rates. In that version an endermen farm was about 5 minutes to 50. I got an overworld trap to 8.5 minutes to 50.
In 1.3 the endermen farms are ~1-2 minutes to 30. My trap is ~2 minutes to 30.
This is the trap:
Multilevel sifter with short water paths at each level to a central pitfall.
In the video at the end, your trap took 2:22~3:13 to get to level 14. That was 50 seconds.
Level 14 requires 238 experience in total, meaning your trap gives 4.76 experience per second.
From level 14 to level 30 requires 587 experience in total, meaning it would take another 123 seconds.
So in total your trap should get you to level 30 in about 123+50=3 minutes.
http://www.minecraft.../#entry17170929
That video is from 1.2.5. I have run the numbers in the world in 1.3 and it is consistently around 2 minutes to 30.
Yeah. The piston movements and redstone makes it a bit laggy if you time it to shift at the same time and repeat it often. On a version i made for survival I have each floor shifting at different times and don't shift too often.
Oddly enough the 1.3 update also made the lag much less without tweaks to the design.
I still have an on/off switch for it though.