That's a large reason why I play SSP. You'll never be free from griefers, and they feed off your pain and frustrations. Given the hours a good world, even a good home, takes to develop in Minecraft, I just don't see the reason for opening yourself up to that kind of headache.
Plus, there's almost nothing you can do except nod sadly and either find a new server, re-build/clean/un-lava everything, or just start a new world.
You know, the best way to learn how to build all this stuff is to get some blocks and just start experimenting. Just dive right in and start building. Chances are you'll come up with a unique design that's a lot more satisfying than just copying someone else's.
The only thing I really look for is a forest biome, so I can quickly set up a high-yield tree farm. Other than that, you can pretty much build or mine away anything that you don't like.
Additionally, your base will have changing needs according to whatever project you're currently working on, so don't get TOO hung up on finding the 'perfect' location. Chances are you'll never find it. You'll have much better luck with a small list of 'must haves' for a first base like "near sand," or "on ice."
Keep in mind, the second word in Minecraft is "craft." At least half the point is to craft your base to your personal specs, not to be a slave to a world that's already almost completely modifiable.
Part of the problem is that mobs spawn outside your trap as well, and even passive mobs will affect the number of spawns allowed at any given time.
Unless you control every square block of spawning radius around your character (which *is* possible, just a rather massive undertaking) you're always going to have a percentage of mobs that spawn outside your trap. Since these mobs aren't being killed, they're hanging around and reducing the number of spawns you have inside the trap. Additionally, as your trap grinds more and more mobs, there are more opportunities for the mobs to spawn outside the trap as the grinder reduces the number of active mobs and the game spawns more to replace them.
Moving around moves the spawn radius around the character, causing the game to re-calculate the spawning radius around your character, which seems to give a bit of a kick to the spawning. My guess is that as you move around, you're actively causing some of the extraneous mobs to despawn as they move out of the outer edge of the active radius around the player.
Another trick you can do to reset a grinder is to set the game on peaceful for a moment, which will despawn all hostile mobs, then set the game difficulty higher. This will cause the game to freshly spawn mobs and your mobtrap will be an ideal place for that spawning to occur.
The general rule of thumb is the larger the spawning area in your trap, the more mobs you're going to be able to grind. Massive traps take control of more of the available spawning area and can transport more mobs to your grinders.
However, it's not just the size of the trap that matters, it's how efficiently you can get the mobs from their spawning point to the grinder and how quickly the grinder grinds those mobs. There's a trade-off between size, efficiency and speed.
My best suggestion is to start with a small trap, something like 20x20 or 25x25, until you get comfortable with the concepts. Once you've got a small trap and grinder going, you can analyze your design and see what's working and what isn't, and design the next one better.
Then you can get to the fun questions like "Should my grinder be about the maximum amount of loot in the shortest amount of time, or about the most creatively gruesome way I can slaughter mobs?" You'll begin to compare the merits of drowning traps versus lava blades. You'll start to need whole rooms of chests just to stash all these *%^&$% feathers. And then sooner or later you'll begin design your Ultimate Trap. (And everyone who gets interested in mob traps designs an Ultimate Trap, don't let them tell you different.)
I'm currently working on my fourth mob trap. It's based off my last one, a gravity trap with five floors of spawning area. It's something like 65 blocks high, but it will fit into a 22x22 square and I get about 300-400 drops per hour. It's not a trap designed for lots of loot, it's more of a fun way to watch mobs die, but I'm working on scaling it up by a factor of four and seeing what that will do to the drop rate.
Luclin here taught me a lot about mob traps and grinders: h**p://
Also, I think kiershar is a mad genius when it comes to mobtraps, and this was the mindblowing lunacy that inspired my current gravity trap design: h**p://
You can also filter your canals through a series of portals that only allow certain mobs through, and then filter the sorted mobs into different grinders. For example, skeletons and creepers will fit through a gap two blocks high and one block wide, but spiders won't be able to fit through a hole like that and can be transported to a different gap (such as one that's two blocks wide and one high, which would keep skeletons and creepers out.
It's a little more complex canal work, but if you're unsatisfied with your string drops, you need to find a better way to kill the spiders.
You might try a gravity trap as opposed to a lava blade. What's probably happening is the spiders are climbing the walls as they burn, causing their string to drop on the lava blade and burn up.
A gravity trap isn't quite as lethal as a lava blade, but it doesn't pose the risk of burning up all your loots. For extra dorfiness, you can combine a gravity trap with a lava blade at the bottom and a switch to toggle back and forth between the two.
I'm a big fan of large towers, personally. I'm just branching out into large, ostentatious fortresses with massive underground complexes and facilities, but my usual first "serious" base is generally a tower located on a large, flat plain with easy access to a beach (for sand, more than access to the ocean.)
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Plus, there's almost nothing you can do except nod sadly and either find a new server, re-build/clean/un-lava everything, or just start a new world.
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Additionally, your base will have changing needs according to whatever project you're currently working on, so don't get TOO hung up on finding the 'perfect' location. Chances are you'll never find it. You'll have much better luck with a small list of 'must haves' for a first base like "near sand," or "on ice."
Keep in mind, the second word in Minecraft is "craft." At least half the point is to craft your base to your personal specs, not to be a slave to a world that's already almost completely modifiable.
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Unless you control every square block of spawning radius around your character (which *is* possible, just a rather massive undertaking) you're always going to have a percentage of mobs that spawn outside your trap. Since these mobs aren't being killed, they're hanging around and reducing the number of spawns you have inside the trap. Additionally, as your trap grinds more and more mobs, there are more opportunities for the mobs to spawn outside the trap as the grinder reduces the number of active mobs and the game spawns more to replace them.
Moving around moves the spawn radius around the character, causing the game to re-calculate the spawning radius around your character, which seems to give a bit of a kick to the spawning. My guess is that as you move around, you're actively causing some of the extraneous mobs to despawn as they move out of the outer edge of the active radius around the player.
Another trick you can do to reset a grinder is to set the game on peaceful for a moment, which will despawn all hostile mobs, then set the game difficulty higher. This will cause the game to freshly spawn mobs and your mobtrap will be an ideal place for that spawning to occur.
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However, it's not just the size of the trap that matters, it's how efficiently you can get the mobs from their spawning point to the grinder and how quickly the grinder grinds those mobs. There's a trade-off between size, efficiency and speed.
My best suggestion is to start with a small trap, something like 20x20 or 25x25, until you get comfortable with the concepts. Once you've got a small trap and grinder going, you can analyze your design and see what's working and what isn't, and design the next one better.
Then you can get to the fun questions like "Should my grinder be about the maximum amount of loot in the shortest amount of time, or about the most creatively gruesome way I can slaughter mobs?" You'll begin to compare the merits of drowning traps versus lava blades. You'll start to need whole rooms of chests just to stash all these *%^&$% feathers. And then sooner or later you'll begin design your Ultimate Trap. (And everyone who gets interested in mob traps designs an Ultimate Trap, don't let them tell you different.)
I'm currently working on my fourth mob trap. It's based off my last one, a gravity trap with five floors of spawning area. It's something like 65 blocks high, but it will fit into a 22x22 square and I get about 300-400 drops per hour. It's not a trap designed for lots of loot, it's more of a fun way to watch mobs die, but I'm working on scaling it up by a factor of four and seeing what that will do to the drop rate.
Luclin here taught me a lot about mob traps and grinders: h**p://
Also, I think kiershar is a mad genius when it comes to mobtraps, and this was the mindblowing lunacy that inspired my current gravity trap design: h**p://
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It's a little more complex canal work, but if you're unsatisfied with your string drops, you need to find a better way to kill the spiders.
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A gravity trap isn't quite as lethal as a lava blade, but it doesn't pose the risk of burning up all your loots. For extra dorfiness, you can combine a gravity trap with a lava blade at the bottom and a switch to toggle back and forth between the two.
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