Name: The Obstruction Charm: Garnier de Naplouse, Al Mualim, and Talal @ianxofour
Uploaded: 2024-10-12T08:17:00-05:00
Duration: 8 min 17 s
Description: The Obstruction Charm: Garnier de Naplouse, Al Mualim, and Talal

The Obstruction Charm: Garnier de Naplouse, Al Mualim, and Talal

ianxofour 2024-10-12 | The Obstruction Charm: Garnier de Naplouse, Al Mualim, and Talal

Minecraft Elegance: Practical Concrete Factory (Sand, Gravel, Powder, Flint, Java 1.19+)

ianxofour 2024-01-21 | An easy-to-build, slimeless concrete factory that runs safely on servers (45,000 blocks/hr). Dupes concrete powder blocks, converts them to concrete, and breaks them for collection. It can also handle sand, red sand, and gravel. Designed to automatically start and stop the TNT duper so that it doesn’t self-destruct. The player can start and stop the farm to reconfigure the duplicated blocks without changing dimensions.

0:00 Intro
0:21 Material List
MECHANICS
0:56 Overview
1:29 Gravity Block Duping
3:38 Block Conveyor
4:04 TNT Duper Auto Stop
5:39 Block Stream Breaking
6:20 Overworld Entity Processing
7:09 TNT Duper Auto Start
BUILD TUTORIAL
8:29 Server Assessment
9:53 Getting Started
10:41 Bedrock Breaking
12:43 Gravity Block Duper
15:31 Collection System
24:49 Usage Instructions and Rates
26:36 Outro

IanXO4's Discord Server: discord.gg/G9aa2YTTQX
World Download: mediafire.com/file/iy9blrzu396dpld/IanXO4_Practical_Concrete_Factory.zip/file
Litematica Files: mediafire.com/file/luqntweinm04vmf/IanXO4_Concrete_Factory_OW.litematic/file
mediafire.com/file/0s8gm5dsnume8dn/IanXO4_Concrete_Factory_End.litematic/file
Bigbooty17's shulker box loader: youtube.com/watch?v=n86A-Vu5BCg

FAQ: "Can you use both sides of the exit portal to increase the rates?" No, the block conveyor and block breaking system in the overworld is designed for 5 blocks arriving every 8 game ticks, so this would need to be reengineered.
"Does this dupe dragon eggs or anvils?" No
"How high can you build this in the sky?" As high as you want, as long as it fits under the build limit. You can start building around Y=300. This can be a good way to hide the farm.
"Can the pillar of temporary dirt blocks at world spawn be removed?" Yes.

NOTES
5:59 and 6:06 Examples where items of concrete blocks (green) are ejected from the block stream by the concrete column.
8:06 These items are concrete powder, not concrete.
9:30 I recommend connecting your world spawn to a stronghold by a nether highway, for example, on the roof.
13:50 One redstone tick = 2 game ticks, so 3 redstone ticks = 6 game ticks.
26:36 Players arriving at the world spawn have a chance of spawning around the edges of the farm and getting some damage from the TNT explosions. You can put a roof of leaves (7x13) over the farm to prevent this. The scaffolding gives a way to climb down.
26:42 This modification lets you configure whether to collect concrete or concrete powder. It also lets you collect without TNT explosions, for example, to collect gravel without flint.
27:15 A wither cage under the exit portal (e.g., for wither rose farming) does not interfere with the farm.
27:35 Tear down the gravity block duper and place the last end crystal on an obsidian to resummon a dragon.
27:52 Gravel can be converted into dirt by crafting coarse dirt and then using a shovel to make dirt path, which breaks to make dirt. An alternative is to till the coarse dirt to make farmland, and then breaking it to make dirt. A water bottle applied to coarse dirt makes mud, the same as normal dirt.

REFERENCES
Redstonia’s Sand Duper: youtube.com/watch?v=B0gUz2X7BR8
Fallen Breath’s Bedrock Breaking
youtube.com/watch?v=o3JBaioeIpc
youtube.com/watch?v=UcxmUl65nYM
Dark’s Simple Chunk Loader: youtube.com/watch?v=jY9L4Xrohm4
Mercury’s TNT Duper: bilibili.com/video/BV1cg41157mW
Bigbooty17’s cobblestone generator: youtube.com/watch?v=QJjanAVCcVw
Scorpio's Simple TNT Duper Summary: youtube.com/watch?v=KPH1UCvyrkE
Alternate Current Mod changes: youtube.com/watch?v=povFs7-MjLQ
Redstone Tweaks Resource Pack: modrinth.com/resourcepack/redstone-tweaks

PAPER RESOURCES
Many Paper players have reported difficulty getting this farm to work, perhaps due to inconsistency in the gravity block duping with Gravity Control. If you still would like to try, some resources are listed below.
dev.bukkit.org/projects/gravity-control
docs.papermc.io/paper/reference/global-configuration
Set “allow-permanent-block-break-exploits” and “allow-piston-duplication” to true
Paper-friendly chunk loader
youtube.com/watch?v=FosDMBCaDh0

Minecraft Elegance: Peer Pressure Fortress Farm (Java 1.16.4+*)

ianxofour 2023-10-07 | A very simple fortress farm that relies on fortress mobs pushing each other into portals. Serves as an upgrade to the Instant Wither Skeleton Farm. This video addresses many common errors and questions. *I believe this farm works for Java 1.16.4+.

RATES (per hr): 128 wither skeleton skulls, 5710 bone, 4180 coal, 1960 blaze rods, 3000 gold nuggets, 83 gold ingots
Pack spawning *upgrade* (690 additional nether bricks and 624 buttons): tinyurl.com/yp9pj773
Upgraded rates (per hr): 148 skull, 6600 bone, 4830 coal, 2230 blaze rods, 3300 gold nuggets, 92 gold ingots

0:00 Intro
0:25 Materials
0:45 Mechanics
4:21 Finding a Build Site
8:42 Managing Wolves
11:43 Build Tutorial
25:25 Instructions for Use
26:20 Multiplayer servers
27:00 Outro

IanXO4 Discord Server: discord.gg/G9aa2YTTQX
World Download: tinyurl.com/657hm2ca
Litematica Files: tinyurl.com/2e7x7k3z

REFERENCES
Instant Wither Skeleton Farm. youtu.be/ixGwh1pJb9o
Dark's simple chunk loader. youtu.be/jY9L4Xrohm4

NOTES
0:42 If you are *upgrading the instant wither skeleton farm*, you can reuse most of the existing spawn platform at the same y level. The overworld bridge can probably be reused, and you should add the roof over the bridge to protect blazes from rain. Completely rebuild the player station.
1:40 Some modified servers like *PAPER or SPIGOT* have a setting to change the hard despawn radius from the default 128 blocks, often to 96 blocks. Ask the admin to change the setting back to 128, or lower the player station by the corresponding amount (e.g., lower by 128-96 = 32 blocks).
3:30 Some modified servers like *PAPER or SPIGOT* will limit processing of mobs in dimensions that have no players, so this will require a second player to be near the overworld bridge in order for the farm to work. Alternatively, move the killing chamber to the overworld if you wish to commit to a 2-player farm.
4:10 If the storage system fills up, the filtering system will break. Completely empty all hoppers and droppers to fix.
6:13 More details for going up to the nether roof. youtu.be/ixGwh1pJb9o&t=285s
7:00 *MiniHUD* does not work on servers unless it has Servux installed. Use a copy of your world with the same seed as a workaround.
9:57 The world spawn is where compasses point towards by default. *Spawn chunks* are the 19x19 chunks that surround the world spawn, which is in the middle.
10:53 *Breeding 12 wolves* , starting from 2 wolves at full health and 137 meat:
1) Breed wolves 1&2, and feed the pup 13 meat.
2) When the pup grows up (in 5 min), breed wolves 1&2 again. When the pup grows up (in 1 min), breed wolves 3&4, and feed the pup 14 meat.
3) When the pup grows up (in 4 min), breed wolves 1&2 again, and feed the pup 32 meat.
4) When the pup grows up (in 1 min), breed all 4 wolves, and feed the 2 pups 13 meat each.
5) When the pups grow up (in 5 min), breed all 8 wolves to make 4 pups. Consider whether you want extra wolves in case of problems.
12:05 Players load the destination dimension for 15 secs when going through a portal, even if the player teleports away within those 15 secs. As a result, the TNT may finish exploding without the need for a junk item to be thrown into the portal, which is why both junk items are recovered in this example.
12:13 Breaking the obsidian frame will also deactivate the portal.
13:32 If you have my *Instant Shulker Farm* , there is a bug in Minecraft that can make it behave like a mob switch. Check the description of that video to learn about the fix.
13:42 *Invisibility prevents blazes from shooting fireballs that can kill wolves.*
22:54 The portal may sometimes generate in a deep cave or in the sky over the ocean. Either way, you still need to follow the same instructions: Break the portal that you arrived in, and work your way to the desired coordinates (by digging a staircase up to the surface, or falling into the ocean) to build a scaffolding tower.
26:44 An *alternate route* for the second player to reach this AFK location is to use the killing chamber portal, but it can be dangerous depending on whether there are distant overworld players to force mobs on the bridge to despawn. If you take this route, make sure that the other player stands next to the iron door while the second player is getting into place, so that mobs do not spawn in the farm and teleport to the bridge while the second player is getting into place. And make sure that the iron door and gate at the bridge are both closed before starting up the farm.
27:05 Baby zombie piglins can run under the floating slabs and crowd near the turtle egg without despawning. The extra slabs direct the baby zombie piglins to instead run into the portal.
27:18 This spawnproofing eliminates the extremely improbable possibility of a ghast spawning here and flying all the way up to attack the player.
27:26 How to reach the spawning platform.

Minecraft Elegance: Cheap Sheep Wool Farm (Java 1.16.4-1.20)

ianxofour 2023-03-10 | An exceptionally inexpensive wool farm that uses a redstone torch burnout clock as a BUD to shear up to 12 sheep at a time. I believe this farm works in Java 1.16.4+. For versions earlier than 1.19, refer to the Note below at 6:50.

IanXO4 Discord Server: discord.gg/G9aa2YTTQX
Reference to Jetmaymendo: youtube.com/watch?v=HeOG6fUKWnY

0:00 Intro
0:22 Materials
0:39 Mechanics
3:10 Tutorial
7:51 Additional Info
8:19 Outro
8:41 Sugarcane and bamboo farms with burnout clock

NOTES
1:10 Mob griefing needs to be set to true for sheep to convert grass to dirt.
1:36 If desired, you can load 8 sheep in each chamber for a total of 16 sheep, allowing for one sheep of each color to be represented in the farm. Be sure to dye the sheep before loading. Also consider the 18- or 24-sheep versions of the farm, screenshots linked below.
2:50 A perfect layout of grass blocks naturally spreading onto the dirt under a trapped sheep will let the sheep produce about 50 wool/hr (600 wool/hr for 12 sheep). This farm is about 42 wool/hr/sheep (500 wool/hr for 12 sheep).
6:30 Water on top of grass blocks will convert the grass to dirt, so a layer of transparent blocks is needed to protect the grass.
6:50 Prior to 1.19, you can just place water against the leaves, as they cannot be waterlogged.
7:51 The rates assume that the farm is loaded and the player is within random tick range, so that the grass can spread.
Lightning strikes can burn leaves and kill sheep, so place a lightning rod a safe distance away from the farm.
Consider surrounding the farm with fences or wall blocks to prevent endermen from moving dirt/grass blocks.
8:01 The theoretical maximum rate of wool farms is about 70 wool/hr/sheep, limited by the rate at which sheep are willing to eat grass.
8:26 The daylight sensor intermittently changes the power level of the redstone wire across the day, which updates up to 2 blocks away, triggering the burnout clock so that it can shear the sheep more often. This increases the rates of the farm by 11% (555 wool/hr). Constantly clocking the dispensers will increase rates by about 16% (580 wool/hr), at the expense of some more redstone components, a lot of noise, and a bit more lag.
8:41 Some viewers have commented that the pistons could be placed in a row, relying on QC to power them. This works, but it's typically preferred to break the sugarcane or bamboo at the same level that it is detected so that items don't fall on the extended piston, which can scatter the drops so that they are more difficult to pick up.

18-SHEEP VERSION (705 wool/hr):
mediafire.com/view/jc0gcgfk95va68y/IanXO4_Wool_Farm_-_18_Sheep.png/file

24-SHEEP VERSION (930 wool/hr): mediafire.com/view/36h2fsu0l72xdp5/Supersized_IanXO4_Wool_Farm.png/file
Load the dispensers as you build the farm. The upper dispenser can be refilled by digging down from the collection chamber. The lower dispensers can be refilled by tunneling underground.

Minecraft Elegance: Versatile Tree Farm (Universal, Cherry, Nether, & Huge Mushroom; Java 1.16-1.20)

ianxofour 2022-10-11 | A highly simplified and versatile "universal" tree farm for overworld trees (including cherry), nether trees (huge fungi), and huge mushrooms, with competitive rates:

RATES (and bone meal usage rate)
Cherry blossom ~11500/hr (~4800 bm/hr)
Oak (from azalea) 9500/hr (4100 bm/hr)
Birch 9650/hr (10150 bm/hr)
Acacia 8500/hr (6200 bm/hr)
Oak (from saplings) 7500/hr (8600 bm/hr)
Spruce 7450/hr (8500 bm/hr)
Jungle 7100/hr (5050 bm/hr)

Huge Fungi are self-sustaining when combined with fungus farming and composting all byproducts to make bone meal.
Crimson 7000/hr (4350 bm/hr, 940 fungi/hr)
*Warped 7250/hr (4000 bm/hr, 975 fungi/hr) This is the recommended option for self-sustaining nether stems*

Red Mushroom 24000/hr (7100 bm/hr)
Brown Mushroom 5000/hr (1400 bm/hr, right clicking once per second)

0:00 Intro
0:18 Material List, *replace chain with fence post*
0:57 Mechanics
5:08 Build tutorial
11:51 Instructions
14:40 Upgrades
16:31 Outro
17:57 Thank you for 100k subscribers!

NOTES
1:16 If you have trouble recovering enough saplings, make sure that the gamerule setting for tntExplosionDropDecay is set to false. Also see the Notes for 13:28 and 17:45 below.
1:56 PAPER servers may need to set "allow-piston-duplication" to true to enable TNT duping in the configuration file (*.yml). If you use Alternate Current mod, you'll need to either disable the mod or modify the duper slightly: youtube.com/watch?v=povFs7-MjLQ
2:54 If you do not have access to bamboo to make scaffolding (like in a superflat world), you can build the clock in the sky next to the TNT duper. Have the observer look directly at the trapdoor.
3:49 Waterlogged player-placed leaves don't work well as a substitute for obsidian because tree-generated leaves can replace them and then decay to release the water.
7:24 Starting in 1.20, use a fence post instead of a chain to prevent occasional TNT damage.
8:22 Double check to make sure your lever is not backwards.
9:41 Confirming the Y levels is important. Don't skip this step.
12:00 The player will take TNT damage if you have the selection lever down while the nudging device is on.
12:50 The conversion of nylium to netherrack and its reversion can be seen at 1:46, 3:46, and 3:57.
13:28 For jungle saplings, use a stack of saplings to guard against back luck as you get started.
14:17 You may need to clear out low-hanging leftover blocks, like wart blocks and vines, before you start farming huge brown mushrooms, spruce, and acacia.
14:53 and 15:45 This is a dropper, not a dispenser.
16:01 Tthe player has no empty inventory slots to pick up stray bone meal or fungi outside of what is held in the off-hand and main hand.
16:12 The weeping vines and shroomlights can also be composted if you don't want to save them.
16:34 Use warped nylium to farm warped fungus, or use one of each type of nylium to farm a mix.
17:01 Comparator is in subtract mode.
17:45 Building up the walls around the collection pool will help catch more drops, improving the rates by 1-2% or so.

WDL: http://tinyurl.com/52eaxc6r
Litematica (DO NOT ROTATE): http://tinyurl.com/2d437jvx

REFERENCES:
Scorpio's Simple TNT Duper Summary: youtube.com/watch?v=KPH1UCvyrkE
Nevermind Flame's Flower and Fungus: youtube.com/watch?v=_4l9wVEvmO0
NColyer's YT channel: youtube.com/c/ncolyer

Some other direct explosion tree farms:
zerotime_Ling: youtube.com/watch?v=y4r577-o4Rc
ilmango: youtube.com/watch?v=XaLDDU7rnbE
RS_DKH: youtu.be/BSCDtfkFahU
bilibili.com/video/BV1UY411M7YK

DISCORD SERVERS:
IanXO4: discord.gg/G9aa2YTTQX
Huge Fungi Huggers: discord.gg/EKKkyfcPPV
Tree Huggers: discord.gg/8bUbuuS
TNT Archive (Thanks to enbyd, intricate, pwouik, Sylkos for their help. Thanks to Jan, process, intricate, Sylkos, pwouik, and oreo for their pioneering work on simplified TNT dupers): discord.gg/c8WzppWjqe

Some bone (meal) sources include general mob farms, wither skeleton farms, and dedicated bone meal farms, typically using moss:
youtu.be/TmqLXovhDOQ
youtu.be/ixGwh1pJb9o
Hexatron: youtube.com/watch?v=eNYZiuVNBe0
Camyblank: youtube.com/watch?v=-yC_VQr1-l0
Silentbug: bilibili.com/video/BV18T4y1m7UB
Emilia (lag optimized variant of silentbug's): mediafire.com/file/66i99dvwfijod9u/emilia_12k_bm_per_mspt_.litematic/file

MadMan25's mangrove tree adaptation; you'll need a separate propagule farm. This is LOCATIONAL due to the position of planted propagules. You won't be able to bone meal propagules if they are on the west side of the target block. TEST FIRST at the matching X and Z location before building the farm:
discord.com/channels/871121857976352798/1022540171381571594/1029909233514319923

Ncolyer's +15% rates boost adapation:
youtube.com/watch?v=9kK9jnKBylY

Minecraft Elegance: Instant Lazy Mob Switch (Java 1.17-1.20)

ianxofour 2022-08-06 | An extremely simple mob switch consisting of a silverfish spawner, a trap, and a chunk loader. Any mob in a lazy chunk is not processed, so they do not despawn. This approach allows for great variety of mob switch possibilities that extends far beyond the 4 types of mobs that are normally used (zombified villagers that have been previously traded with, shulkers, withers, and wardens). Another 4 mob switch designs are included and discussed in the video.

*This mob switch is designed for vanilla and may not work on modified servers that have different lazy loading mechanics and chunk loading mechanics. Be sure to read the NOTE for 10:06 below.*

IanXO4 discord server: discord.gg/G9aa2YTTQX
WDL with 5 mob switch designs: mediafire.com/file/lrb0w9lc6ogaxmh/IanXO4_-_5_Mob_Switches.zip/file

REFERENCES:
strongholdfinder.com
chunkbase.com
Mercury's Chunk Loader: bilibili.com/video/BV17M4y1G7gZ
Dark's Chunk Loader v2: youtube.com/watch?v=d3nde-2H-rQ
Instant Shulker Farm: youtube.com/watch?v=4KzL5aw4MiE
ilmango's warden overworld mob switch: youtube.com/watch?v=8ty3HE3Vg8U

0:00 Intro to Mob Switches
0:27 Material List
2:05 Chunk Loading Levels
4:52 Selection of Stronghold Build Site
5:27 Build Tutorial
9:18 Stocking the Mob Switch, READ NOTES IN DESCRIPTION
10:18 Instructions for Use
10:59 4 Mob Switch Examples in WDL
12:24 Outro
13:33 WDL Commentary

NOTES:
2:05 A Minecraft world isn't actually infinite, but it is exceptionally large, at about 1 quintillion cubic meters of buildable space per dimension. Players can also travel above the build limit, with occupiable space of about 10^32 cubic meters per dimension.
10:06 Some servers have a slight delay in unloading the stronghold when you teleport away, which may cause the silverfish to despawn if there are other players in the overworld. To fix this issue, leave the stronghold through the chunk loader portal only when no other players are in the overworld.
10:10 A mob switch will affect all players on the server in that dimension, so it's important to be considerate in deciding where to build it, and when to use it. A mob switch will disable most mob farms in the dimension.
10:45 A chunk loading line from the spawn chunks can be used to automatically start the mob switch when the game or server restarts. Or you can use the /forceload command at the chunk loader.
12:29 Some other examples include mobs from spawners, vexes, endermites, mobs that teleport from other dimensions, mobs that exit boats or minecarts, lightning strikes that convert villagers and pigs into witches and zombified piglins, zombie reinforcements, zombification of villagers, duplication of shulkers, and summoning of withers and wardens.
13:33 The number of PILLAGERS in the trap can build up very rapidly, making this an attractive option for some larger servers.
14:25 This mob switch is unusual in that it does not require a player to be present when stocking the mob switch with VEXES. Be sure to nametag the evoker.
14:46 SHULKERS are a great option for either overworld or nether mob switches, especially if you already have a shulker farm.
15:14 WARDENS are also an excellent choice for either overworld or nether mob switches.
15:37 Use 2 observers looking at each other to repeatedly trigger the trapdoor instead.

Minecraft Elegance: Next Generation Copper Farm (Java 1.17-1.20)

ianxofour 2022-07-09 | A zombie reinforcements copper farm that can be built in about 90 seconds and can give you thousands of copper ingots per hour. Maximum rates will depend on the performance of your specific PC or server, but several thousand ingots per hour would not be unexpected.

IMPORTANT
Your game basically needs to manage two things when the farm is running:
1) Summoning productive zombies that will eventually convert to drowneds to make copper, and
2) Killing excess zombies to throttle the farm so that it doesn't ruin the game.
To maximize the rates for the farm, you want to *minimize the killing of excess zombies* so the lag from killing those zombies does not take away from making productive ones. Don't create huge spawning spaces for the farm because this just creates a lot of excess zombies that serve no purpose (and they bring excess armor into the farm, which requires more frequent culling). Most players need only the 2 linear spawning zones in cardinal directions.

IanXO4 discord server: discord.gg/G9aa2YTTQX
WDL with 4 examples of copper farms:
mediafire.com/file/himk4aozf0n1rj9/IanXO4_Next_Gen_Copper_Farm.zip/file
Hopper-Minecart-Based Collection for 1.19 (by Mirage Wedjak and Freeze):
mediafire.com/file/6fzpbj1qisq6l3n/IanXO4_Copper_Farm_Collection_System.litematic/file

PRIOR WORK REFERENCES:
Gnembon: youtube.com/watch?v=n8_uN03GD_0
Pl: b23.tv/SFOMTQj
MaoGe: b23.tv/ExKYte5
Turtle0628 (build at Y64 or higher): mediafire.com/file/rqf8byo6o2cve4w/turtle0628_Copper_Farm.litematic/file

0:00 Intro
0:36 Material List
1:08 Mechanics
7:07 Build Tutorial
11:39 Stocking the Farm
13:55 Instructions for Use
15:46 Culling the Farm
17:25 Upgrades
18:15 Farms Examples (see WDL) and Outro
19:27 How to move a zombie to the outer end islands

NOTES
1:25 Zombies that convert into drowneds will not drop tridents.
2:34 This carpet script will show the spawn zones when you right click the mob with a stick: /script download utilities/reinforcement_zones.sc
3:20 The sword can be made of any material. It does not need to be diamond.
7:20 Some modified servers have dimension-specific difficulty settings, so the End dimension may be in easy or normal difficulty when other dimensions are hard.
8:27 The spawn zones extend out to a distance of 40 blocks away from the attacked mob, but the actual zones are shorter than 40 blocks long.
9:27 You can use netherrack instead of soul sand for the fire. Soul fire isn't as bright and deals more damage to baby zombies that fall past the chain, but it doesn't really matter.
12:27 The zombie picked up seeds, which will prevent it from despawning. That said, most zombies are not able to pick up items, so I would not rely on this technique.
12:47 Backup zombies can also be trapped using boats placed near the farm.
14:33 Do not use Carpet mod for autoclicking. It's best to use an external autoclicker program, but Tweakeroo may work in many cases when set to 45 gt. If you are not permitted to use an autoclicker, set a metronome to 53 bpm and attack every other beat. If you are on a laggy server, you can try a slightly longer attack interval (such as 2400 - 3000 ms instead of the usual 2250 ms).
16:03 Sharpness conveys through an armor stand with Sweeping Edge, but Smite does not.
17:36 Thanks to Freeze and Mirage Wedjak for designing the hopper minecart collection system for 1.19. The schematic link is above, just below the WDL, which also has a closely related variant of the collection system.
18:05 Crouching down while attacking the armor stand will keep you from picking up XP orbs, which further improves client-side performance since the XP orbs will not need to be rendered. You will need to stand up on occasion to pick up the XP orbs to refresh your sword with Mending, and Unbreaking will allow you to stretch the durability of your sword between Mending sessions.
18:11 Using Tweakeroo to disableEntityRendering will drastically improve client side performance. Reducing render distance to 3 chunks will also help.
18:24 The spawning tunnels need to be 2 blocks wide because reinforcements spawn at the northwest corner of the block (so widen the tunnel to the north or west). Spawnproofing is not needed in the overworld tunnels because skeleton spawns cannot see any targets, so they do not shoot the arrows that could miss and hit a creeper instead, which would explode in retaliation.
18:38 Many baby zombies are ejected from the farm due to cramming if they climb a ladder while inside the farm (since their feet are no longer in a ladder block). You may see them yeeted on occasion.

Minecraft Elegance: Instant Obsidian Farm (32k/hr, Java 1.16.5, 1.17-1.20*)

ianxofour 2022-06-11 | IMPORTANT: The height of the snow golem in the boat was changed in 1.20.2+, so you need to adjust the build slightly:
imgur.com/a/0ZOp9nm
Note that a sticky piston is needed under the soul sand block.

A very simple obsidian farm that produces a stack of obsidian every 7 seconds. This farm may not work on modified servers, and changes to the design would be expected in order to make the farm work. See discussion below for more information.

IanXO4 discord server: discord.gg/G9aa2YTTQX
WDL (Refer to 11:52): mediafire.com/file/ljxsii81yaxh7ev/IanXO4_Obsidian_Farm.zip/file

0:00 Intro
0:19 Material List, plus 1 stair
0:53 Mechanisms
5:34 Build Tutorial
11:52 Instructions for Use (IMPORTANT)
14:59 Outro
15:21 Manual mining

NOTES:
2:12 The farm can also work with a snow golem as the target at the player station, but it requires that the snow golem in the stronghold to face in the opposite direction so that the wither doesn't come under attack from 2 mobs, which would trigger blue skulls. This configuration has slower rates because many of the snowballs will miss.
5:46 If you play on a modified server, you may have better luck with a different chunk loader design: youtube.com/watch?v=dJdEo2QKmzA
youtube.com/watch?v=FosDMBCaDh0
To make Dark's chunk loader on SPIGOT, you may need a second hopper minecart and hopper under the base of the portal to collect the boat.
7:15 Silverfish can become trapped in boats, which prevents despawning, but they can also infest blocks while inside of a boat.
7:30 If you've already destroyed all infested stone blocks, you can use a nametagged endermite instead of a silverfish. Repeatedly throw enderpearls until you get an endermite, and make sure that you nametag it before trapping it in a boat.
8:11 Make sure you attach the redstone torch to the block under the pressure plate.
11:08 A pool of water around the player will also work, but I don't use this approach because it carries a risk that if the water stream from the bubble column merges with the pool for any reason, you will not be able to remove the flowing water, and this will prevent the iron golem from reaching the wither.
11:52 You might want to bring a bucket of milk, too, in case something goes wrong. An easy way to kill a loose wither is to lure it over the void, and then quickly fly away so that it sinks into the void.
12:03 There are reports that a punch bow can knock the wither out of the trap.
12:21 Some modified servers allow items to group together at long distances, so you may need 2 different types of junk items to get the despawn timer started. Be mindful that the wither may behave differently on modified servers.
14:52 If you need to stop the farm early in single player, just quit and restart the game to unload the stronghold. Shoot the wither again with an arrow and then build the iron golem. On a multiplayer server, you can have a friend lower the snow golem out of the portal in the stronghold to make it safe for an iron golem to kill the wither.

PAPER SERVERS
At 11:25, expand the soul sand and water sources horizontally to a 3x3 array. You may need a second player instead of a chunk loader in the stronghold. This player can operate the piston with a lever so that you don't need a despawn timer. Otherwise, see the note above at 12:21. The wither behaves a little differently on Paper, so the farm is slightly more dangerous.

REFERENCES:
Rooftop Joe's chunk loader: youtube.com/watch?v=t8i0Ghg8UC4
Dark's chunk loader: youtube.com/watch?v=jY9L4Xrohm4
Wither trap: bilibili.com/video/BV1cZ4y1G7c6
Scorpio's channel: youtube.com/c/Scorpio03
Wither Archive discord server: discord.gg/wd594eEtfm
Mojang statement about mobs spawning in portals for future updates: minecraft.net/en-us/article/minecraft-1-19-pre-release-2

Minecraft Elegance: Voidless Void Trading (Java 1.17-1.19*)

ianxofour 2022-05-28 | A very simple void trading system that can be used in any dimension and is well suited to early game trading, wandering traders, single player games, and other special circumstances. This build is not compatible with many modified servers, such as PAPER and SPIGOT.

*Some unannounced changes were made in 1.19.4+. I'm in the process of troubleshooting and will update the video description at a later time.

Discord: discord.gg/G9aa2YTTQX

0:00 Intro
2:33 Mechanism, see REFERENCES
4:00 Build site selection (IMPORTANT)
4:30 Tutorial - Single player version
5:54 Cheaper version with mix of normal and powered rails
6:38 Tutorial - Server version
12:10 Instructions for use
14:17 Madman25's Minimalist Void Trading system, based on cubicmetre's end gateway concept

NOTES
4:00 Make sure you avoid the spawn chunks when selecting a build site.
6:38 For REALMS, use 80 rails for each villager track, and 146 rails for the player track (as of May 2023). For PLOUDOS vanilla, use 48 rails for each villager track, and 114 rails for the player track
12:44 Placing a workstation near the villager will allow the villager to refresh any trades that were locked out by accident (for example, by trading while the minecart is still moving).
13:05 It doesn't have to be glass. You can use any transparent block that blocks the center of the villager's red eye box. A top slab is a good choice since it still allows you to click on the villager.
13:20 Glass blocks is a useful trade from librarians.

REFERENCES:
CapnBjorkIII adaptation, optimized for wandering traders:
youtube.com/watch?v=WEo6LLwQdo4
Infinite trading via NETHER PORTALS showcased by Rays Works (no longer works):
youtube.com/watch?v=-fvsPE66EjI
Via END GATEWAYS by cubicmetre and Dr Rush:
youtube.com/watch?v=zhsSW1q3t2I&t=713s
Via ENDER PEARL STASIS CHAMBERS by cubicmetre:
youtube.com/watch?v=Uc9z03xjb7g&t=393s
VOID TRADING ON PURPUR SERVERS:
purpurmc.org/docs/Configuration/#allow-void-trading

Discounted trades:
youtube.com/watch?v=H796tqKgwjk
Hero of the village and curing zombified villagers will also give discounts.

Curved rails or piston bolts can be used to speed the minecarts, if you would like a small challenge for yourself. From a practical perspective, you should weigh this against the effort to build a traditional void trading system using end gateways.
youtube.com/watch?v=AGbtCnuX7yA
youtube.com/watch?v=MisPJiyNWH8

Minecraft Elegance: Looting Ghast Farms (up to 7200 tears/h, 9000 gp/h, Java 1.16-1.20*)

ianxofour 2022-04-18 | Looting ghast farms are highly obsidian efficient, so you don't need to build an obsidian farm in order to make a decent ghast farm. A special portal elevator for ghasts is demonstrated and can be adapted for most portal-type ghast farms. An example farm using 4 portals is shown in the tutorial, which produces 1100 ghast tears and 1400 gunpowder per hour using 364 obsidian blocks, which can be mined in less than 14 minutes with a diamond efficiency 5 pickaxe. The spawn area can be expanded up to 30 portals, using about 30 stacks of obsidian, and produces 7200 tears and 9000 gunpowder per hour.

There are reports on SPIGOT servers that ghasts do not spawn regularly in soul sand valleys, so this farm may not work properly.
On some PAPER servers, ghasts may retaliate with fireballs once the player attacks, and these fireballs may break the composters and glass in the killing chamber. In this case, replace the composters with upside down stair blocks made from a stone variant. Be sure to also spawnproof the top side of the upside down stair blocks (with a slab, for example). You can replace any broken glass blocks with wall blocks.

* You will need to add torches to prevent skeleton spawns in 1.19 - 1.19.2. Note the torches on the top of the portal frame and the torches next to the base of the portal frames.
imgur.com/jnXCiNj
imgur.com/a7vFQjW
Alternatively, you can use magma blocks as the spawning surface. Skeletons will still spawn in the portals, but will be instantly teleported away.

Discord: discord.gg/G9aa2YTTQX
WDL - 4 portals in spawn area:
tinyurl.com/yc6mxs6k
WDL - 30 portals in spawn area:
tinyurl.com/y6jz92ca
Litematica schematics - 30 portals:
mediafire.com/file/0gl8zkz22f9isez/IanXO4_Ghast_Farm_-_Overworld.litematic/file
mediafire.com/file/k2xhmp213mkwwn7/IanXO4_Ghast_Farm_-_Nether.litematic/file

References for spawn potential mechanics:
youtube.com/watch?v=4XNvnKDSoEw
youtube.com/watch?v=ZlefdidnABI

0:00 Intro
0:34 Material List
1:25 Mechanics
5:45 Build tutorial
14:07 Usage
14:26 Multiplayer Instructions
15:25 Upgrades
16:14 Outro

NOTES:
0:03 I had a cold when recording much of this video, so my voice is a little funny.
1:25 The farm could have been designed to have a spawning area under the nether roof, which would have been slightly more productive, but it comes at the expense of possible spawn potential interference from hostile mobs in the surrounding terrain and from striders in any nearby lava lakes. Construction of the portals would also be more dangerous due to the possibility of ghasts and skeletons shooting at you as you build.
4:00 If player will be flying close to the farm, you may want to cover both sides of the portal with glass so that ghasts cannot see out of the killing chamber. This prevents ghasts from shooting fireballs, which may break the composter(s) that holds them in place.
6:36 Press F3+G to bring up the chunk borders. Chunk borders are used to simplify aligning certain parts of the farm, but chunk alignment is not required, for example when upgrading a different ghast farm.
11:36 You can make your flint and steel last longer if you put more items into the hopper clock, since this lengthens the amount of time between alternating the portals. This approach is limited by ghasts entity cramming in the portal elevator if you lengthen the period too long.
16:15 Turning off the hopper clock will stop the use of flint and steel and let the farm operate without looting. Ghasts die from entity cramming in the overworld instead, and drops are teleported to the nether.
16:22 Fletchers may convert gravel to flint for you as an initial trade.

Minecraft Elegance: Instant Wither Rose Farm (2900/hr, Java 1.16-1.20)

ianxofour 2022-03-19 | Poisoning chickens is now obsolete. This incredibly simple farm takes seconds to build and is nearly self-sustaining, consuming only the durability of shears to make wither roses at a rate of about a stack every 80 seconds.

Discord: discord.gg/G9aa2YTTQX
Ender Dragon Trap: youtu.be/dxGmt8_Vbgg
Wither Skeleton Farm: youtu.be/ixGwh1pJb9o

0:00 Intro
0:36 Materials
0:45 Mechanics
2:23 Build Tutorial
4:23 Instructions for Use
7:27 Fast Pumpkin Carving, 2 repeaters at full delay

NOTES
4:50 Some modified servers like PAPER are configured with dimension-specific difficulty settings, so the End dimension may be in easy difficulty, even if other dimensions are set to normal or hard. This will prevent the farm from working correctly.
5:29 Hopper minecarts can be added to automate collection of snowballs and wither roses, but you need to have snowballs in inventory in order to craft them into snow blocks. Jumping into the chamber is a very easy way to quickly get the snowballs into inventory while also collecting the wither roses.
6:48 The lifespan of shears can be quadrupled with Unbreaking 3. It's up to you whether it is worthwhile to save 6 iron ingots this way.

Minecraft Elegance: Instant Bartering Farm Farm (800k+ dph, Java 1.16*-1.20*)

ianxofour 2022-01-24 | An extremely fast bartering farm can be made easily by building a farm to automatically stock it with hundreds of piglins. The drops are stored quickly using a manual mixed-item shulkerbox loader so that the drops can be sorted using a shulker box unloader and sorting system.
*If playing on 1.16 or 1.17, see Notes below for 9:58
*In 1.19+, piglins can pathfind out of the scaffolding, which causes some to die from entity cramming. The workaround is to replace the gate with a soul torch, and use a piston to drive in the top slab over the soul torch.

Discord: discord.gg/G9aa2YTTQX
World download: mediafire.com/file/750flkv2849s2cq/IanXO4_Bartering_Farm_Farm_-_128_Piglins.zip/file
Basic unloader and sorting system: mediafire.com/file/bhyw2tyf1a4r235/Bartering_Shulker_Box_Unloader_and_Sorter.litematic/file
Bartering loot table: minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Bartering

0:00 Intro
1:00 Material list
1:18 Mechanics
5:21 Build tutorial
11:45 Instructions for Use
12:50 Bartering without Shulker Boxes
13:25 Fast Pumpkin Carving, 2 repeaters at full delay

PAPER AND SPIGOT SERVERS have modified game mechanics that may impact the farm. Piglins with carved pumpkins may count towards the mobcap, so be sure to build the bartering farm more than 128 blocks from other mob spawning farms so that the other farms will continue to function. Some servers might be configured to make mobs cram despite being inside scaffolding. To fix this issue, set the configuration option fix-climbing-bypassing-cramming-rule: false. If you are unable to change the server settings, the farm will still work, but only with 46 piglins. Pathfinding may also be different, so piglins may have trouble falling into the trap. Adding more soul torches around the outer edge of the 4x4 pit seems to help.

NOTES
1:00 You only need 2 scaffolding. To reach the AFK spot, just pillar up on netherrack, which you can collect as you clear out the spawning room.
3:25 If you like, you can use Item Scroller mod to move your entire inventory at once.
5:21 The bartering farm can be placed near your gold farm for convenience, but it is best for the bartering farm to be far enough away so that the piglins are not loaded (causing lag) when you are not actually bartering.
8:19 A large number of piglins will create a bit of lag in the game. Using 128 carved pumpkins (for 128 piglins) is probably fine for most players and servers. I’m not sure there is much value in having more than 256. Also see comments above for Paper and Spigot servers.
9:58 The trap rate in 1.16 and 1.17 might be slower than in 1.18, so you may need to wait up to twice as long.
10:39 Rarely, you may find a baby piglin at the bartering farm, perhaps with a pumpkin on its head. Kill it before continuing.
11:04 If you have trouble nudging the piglins into the scaffolding, try powering the lever and depowering it again for another attempt. You can also use a piston to push the top slab into place.
11:54 If you’re playing on a Mac computer, pressing cmd-Q will quit the game. Use a different key binding for drop to avoid confusion.
12:15 Holding any item and shift-double clicking an occupied inventory slot will move all items of that type from your inventory to storage. This accelerates the storage process and often groups like items together. The shulker boxes are partially sorted as a result, as opposed to being completely unsorted.

THANKS to Hard for his amazing dedication to supporting the Minecraft community.

Minecraft Elegance: Practical Stacking Raid Farm (128k dph, Java 1.16*-1.20)

ianxofour 2021-12-29 | IMPORTANT: In 1.18.2+, the subchunk position is shown in brackets to the right of the player block location. imgur.com/uihUBAT

A very practical stacking raid farm that's about 20 times faster than a witch hut in Java 1.18+ and provides far more emeralds than you will ever need. Easy and quick to build in early game, made from accessible materials, lava cast for build efficiency, lag tolerant, flexible clicking automation, and relatively safe to operate.
* For 1.16, see youtube.com/watch?v=WUclcl_AnIo

RATES (Hard Difficulty):
128k total drops/hr
43k witch drops/hr, including 5300 redstone dust and 5300 gunpowder/hr
56k emeralds/hr
If using a client side autoclicker, the farm will throttle itself if there is server lag, which may lower the rates. These reported rates assume that every drop is collected in hard difficulty, but the sorting system in the tutorial loses about 2.8% of witch drops, and 18% of emeralds. Additional filters can be added for better yield.

Discord: discord.gg/G9aa2YTTQX
WDL: tinyurl.com/ysf4vdah
Litematica to match WDL: tinyurl.com/mr3ze5vh
With minor optimizations not shown in tutorial:
tinyurl.com/ys4psm5z

0:00 Intro
0:38 Material List, plus 5 villagers
1:35 References
1:50 Mechanics
9:43 Tutorial, READ VIDEO DESCRIPTION
30:27 Instructions for Use
32:06 Raid Captain Bank
33:21 Timer for manual clicking

NOTES
0:38 Don't use flammable temporary blocks near lava. FORGE may allow scaffolding to catch fire from lava, which is not vanilla behavior. The workaround is to pillar and bridge using other materials instead.
1:05 Carpet mod, Tweakeroo, or any autoclicker or macro program will work.
1:19 Client side autoclickers are perceived to be clicking faster by a lagging server, and this farm operates less efficiently at faster (and slower) attack intervals.
5:00 Ravager jockeys rise to within the 112 block radius, which pauses the spawning of raid mobs at wave 5 until the ravager dies. This helps distribute the raid captains so that they don't appear all at around the same time, which helps accelerate the farm in the beginning.
9:43 In 1.18.2+, the subchunk position is shown in brackets to the right of the player block location.
14:14 You will need to add extra chests to the storage system. A double chest will fill up with emeralds in a matter of minutes. You will need 2 hoppers to pull from the chest because it is filled at 2x speed.
22:30 It may be beneficial to put the villager inside the composter to ensure better alignment for the fall.
29:45 A severe lag spike can cause the armor stand to break. Keep the farm running by dispensing multiple armor stands at one time.
30:00 The junk items that pad the 2 hoppers must be different from each other.
30:30 It's normal for the raid bar to disappear, as the pressure plate shifts the raid center away.
30:41 It will take a few minutes for the farm to warm up; just keep attacking the armor stand.
30:47 Your sword should not have fire aspect.
32:28 Drive the boat backwards until it does not go any further. See notes for the raid captain bank below.
33:37 The last repeater is set to 3 redstone tick delay.

MECHANICS:
youtu.be/COxEcP-wKj0
youtu.be/oTC3RoPLogk

RAID CAPTAIN BANK
A captain is the first mob to spawn in a wave, and is thus picked up first by the boat. After killing BOTH the captain and passenger, crouch down and push the boat back against the trapdoor so that the bank will work properly next time. In 1.19+, use a boat with chest instead of a plain boat so it captures only a single mob. Thanks to Bread for this design. Tap the pressure plate several times when you are finished using the farm so that mobs on the upper shifting floor do not persist when you leave.
And thanks to MadMan25, for the idea to use an amethyst cluster so you don't need to push the boat back after each use:
tinyurl.com/2p9ftcbw

The farm may not work perfectly on MODIFIED SERVERS and may require adjustments to server settings. The farm may crash when using OPTIFINE. On PAPER SERVERS, ravager jockeys can glitch through the upper chamber, so you'll need to modify it. If armor-stands-tick is disabled, you'll also need to adjust the farm to use sweeping edge on a minecart instead. Both adjustments are represented in these files (Thanks to Hard):
tinyurl.com/p4wamdfz
tinyurl.com/2p8m7w39
Or follow these video tutorials (Thanks to Nash):
youtu.be/H4Nx1EF9BH4
youtu.be/U44GkhLGpuw
There are also other server settings that might impact the farm. Stop by my discord for more information if you have trouble.

A RAID PROPAGATION BUG sometimes occurs where the chain of raids is lost without further propagation of new raids. Try resetting the composter at Y224. Place a sticky piston directly underneath this composter, facing up. Activate the sticky piston with a button to get the villager to re-associate with the composter.
mediafire.com/view/rnunc233d8ghbib/POI_reset.png/file

Minecraft Elegance: Instant Guardian XP Farm, No Drain (180k XP/h and 90k drops/h, Java 1.16-1.20*)

ianxofour 2021-11-06 | Superfast guardian XP farm that doesn't require draining the ocean monument and can be built in under 30 min if you know what you're doing. Produces XP a little faster than you can absorb it, at 180,000 XP per hour, and can generate about 90k drops per hour (dph) with Looting 3 (50k shards+20k crystals+20k cod).

* In 1.18+, the rates are about 74k dph (41k shards+16.5k crystals+16.5k cod). You can add an additional spawning area to the farm to compensate for the lower spawn rates in 1.18+:
imgur.com/anUg2uS
Be sure to read the notes below for 6:30 and 14:17.

Discord: discord.gg/G9aa2YTTQX
World download:
tinyurl.com/3bn2wshw

0:00 Intro
0:45 Materials List and Mechanics, CORRECTION: 32 hoppers, and 400 scaffolding
5:28 Instructions for Use
6:24 Build Tutorial
16:38 Example of an enchanting area
17:03 Activating the farm
18:02 AFK Instructions for XP
18:33 Grinder alternative for drops, 72k d/h
18:54 Additional Tips

NOTES
5:28 You can get a sweeping edge sword as an initial trade with a weaponsmith. This shouldn't take more than a few minutes of rerolling the initial trade offers.
6:14 Many fishermen will trade raw cod for emeralds at the second tier.
6:24 A cartographer offers a map to find ocean monuments at the second tier.
6:30 In 1.18+, the monument is not necessarily centered in the 4x4 chunk area, so the chunk borders may not be a good substitute for counting blocks. For example, if the tutorial states to go out by 1 chunk diagonally, you'll need to count out 16 blocks instead. The farm does not require chunk alignment.
6:45 You can build the farm to use one of the "back" corners of the monument.
7:05 I actually choose the wrong "side" of the monument for the tutorial. The 2 islands in the background will permit spawning of other mobs at night, and I should use torches to light up those islands to fix.
8:26 The guard rails are 2 blocks high.
14:17 Rotate the gates by 90 degrees to avoid cramming issues in 1.18+. If you still have cramming issues after rotating the gates, try widening the portal elevator as in this screenshot:
imgur.com/8JFP2hM
The portal frame is widened, more scaffolding is added inside, and an extra gate is added to each side. The hopper clock is also now oriented vertically.
16:26 To prevent phantoms, place leaves over the double chest.
17:14 Once you lay down some of the soul sand, you can go to the killing chamber so that the mob cap becomes filled with guardians. The spawning area will then be devoid of guardians, allowing you to continue laying down more soul sand in relative peace.
19:22 Gnembon's guardian XP farm shares many conceptual similarities with this farm. His video is a great reference for players:
youtube.com/watch?v=8EaMID6R3X4
19:26 A cow in a boat can be a useful source of milk to rid yourself of mining fatigue, but it will also remove invisibility.
19:41 A well-known way to quickly find the 3 elder guardians in a monument.

MULTIPLAYER USE
For multiplayer servers, the farm works as long as no other player is in the nether, or if at least 1 other player is within 128 blocks of the portal elevator in the nether.

You can partner with a friend to greatly accelerate the rate of drops. Build a killing chamber in the nether, underneath the portal elevator, at the same X and Z coordinates. While one player AFKs in the overworld, the other can use Looting 3 in the nether to get 180k dph.

Modded servers often change portal mechanics, spawn radius, mob caps, etc. which will adversely affect the farm.

UPGRADES can be made to make the farm faster, but you are still restricted to absorbing at 180,000 XP/hr. That said, the following may boost your farm's productivity, for example, if you are looking to use it for drops:
- Surround each 7x7 square of scaffolding with a portal on each of the 4 sides, and make several of these units over the monument.
- Put a wall around the soul sand up to the scaffolding edge so that guardians cannot escape the bubble columns.
- Completely remove any kelp in your quadrant of the monument bounding box. Remember that kelp will grow back if you don't break the bottom piece.
- Place magma blocks on your quadrant of the monument so that any guardians that spawn outside of the collection areas will get pulled down. This causes them to despawn once they are more than 128 blocks from the player.

BUILDING OVER THE NETHER ROOF isn't permitted on some servers. You can build the portal elevator under the nether roof instead, with your feet at Y=117 when standing inside the portal frame. However, you will need to sacrifice the drop shaft in the overworld. Build the portal at the killing chamber right behind the iron bars, with your feet at Y=164 when standing inside the portal frame.

SHOUTOUT to friends on my Discord community who provided feedback during the development of the farm and on the drafts of this video. Thank you!

Minecraft Elegance: Instant Shulker Farm (Methuselah, Java 1.17-1.20)

ianxofour 2021-09-17 | IMPORTANT:
1) Don't place the minecart in the nether until you need a backup shulker, as mobs may spawn and bump into the minecart and send a shulker into the overworld part of the farm, which causes it to break.
2) If your shulker isn't at full health when loading into the farm (for example, due to hitting itself with a bullet), use a splash potion of healing or regeneration on it before starting the farm.
3) There is a bug in Minecraft that can cause shulkers to accumulate in the backup area in the nether, effectively creating a mob switch. An easy way to prevent and fix this issue is to go to the end of the back up area and pillar up on 9 soul sand blocks, then place a wither rose under you, and place a soul sand block over you:
imgur.com/5UN7HVF

This extremely simple shulker farm lasts *several hundred hours* on average without restocking, averaging ~100,000 shells (or ~200,000 duplications) before failure. Can be built in about 30 min, not counting time to move and load the shulker. Can be upgraded to automatically reload to run indefinitely. Tutorial for easily moving a shulker from the End to Overworld.

Discord: discord.gg/G9aa2YTTQX

LITEMATICA FILES AND WORLD DOWNLOAD:
tinyurl.com/x7mpzcdf
tinyurl.com/ydus2r54
WDL: tinyurl.com/yhbprjjw

The farm produces 236 shells/hr, which is enough to store over 200,000 items per hour. Most players do not need a faster shulker farm because you won't be able to fill the shulker boxes faster than the farm can produce them.

0:00 Intro
0:45 Materials, plus minecart
1:05 Mechanics
5:21 Build tutorial
13:14 Shulker loading, READ VIDEO DESCRIPTION
18:25 Longevity and productivity
18:51 Restocking
19:41 Overview of restocking portal
19:58 Exit Portal example with different surrounding terrain
20:04 Alternate grinder using wither roses
20:59 Zombie piglin choir

NOTES
1:53 The scaffolding protected the new shulker from being hit with its lid closed.
5:21 *Remember that EXISTING PORTALS in the overworld and nether may interfere with the farm if they are too close. Choose your build site accordingly.*
5:35 If you don't build in a spawn chunk, you should build a chunk loader for the farm near the build limit in the nether and matching Y level in the overworld. Even if you build in a spawn chunk, using a chunk loader will keep the farm running when there are no players in the overworld. River biomes are a good choice if your spawn chunks are in hot biomes.
8:52 The grinder can be placed under the nether roof as well, but the reloading system assumes that the nether side of the farm is higher in altitude.
9:14 I made a math error when dividing the Z coordinate by 8, but the farm still works.
15:48 In 1.19.4+ Paper servers, Shulkers in minecarts cannot teleport through end gateways. Here is a workaround: imgur.com/0PdPFPZ
16:00 If someone enters the End dimension, the rails on the platform will be removed by the game, but the rails will remain intact when using a gateway.
16:35 I should have worn elytra.
17:48 If you think your shulker isn't at full health, use a splash potion of healing or regeneration on it before starting the farm.
18:25 There is a LOT of variation in the longevity of the farm, and some players will get a lot luckier than others. My best estimate is about 100,000 shells on average, based on 1700 hr of tick warping, plus statistical analysis of shulker health, and some theoretical considerations.
19:41 Make sure that the portal is more than 8 blocks away from the farm below so that shulkers cannot teleport there. The sign protects the underside of the soul sand block from teleportation while letting the minecart fall through.

MISSING BOATS &
ALTERNATE GRINDER
The boats will break on occasion due to being hit by a shulker bullet. This normally happens very rarely - maybe once every several hundred hours. The farm only needs 1 boat to operate, but if you notice that a boat is missing, it is best to turn the farm off and reinstall the missing boat. If you have wither roses, use the alternative grinder design at 20:04, which doesn't have any boats or minecarts that could break from stray bullets.

REFERENCES:
youtu.be/jaC0YUpKlIs
youtu.be/4nNXxyz8yXQ
youtu.be/uLR15b8wgAo
youtu.be/xaD8Qyi942Y

BUGGED SHULKERS
Very rarely (maybe once per thousand hours) a shulker may not open its shell, and yet it will be able to fire off shulker bullets. The scaffolding will protect this shulker from harming itself, but the farm will not produce shells. This is easily fixed by restarting the game or server.

Minecraft Elegance: Next-Generation Honey Farms (Java 1.15*, 1.16*, 1.17-1.20)

ianxofour 2021-08-11 | This video describes a new type of honey farm that has highly efficient bottle handling, yet is simpler and easier to build than previous honey farm designs. It's exceptionally compact design allows you to put up to 64 beehives in a 16x6x16 space. Produces about 12.9 honey bottles per hour per beehive.

Depending on your server, you may need to shut down the farm with the lever when not in use, so that it doesn't lose bottles when the farm is reloaded. This seems to be a more common issue if built in a spawn chunk. You can chunk load the farm to fix the issue.

Litematica file:
mediafire.com/file/26mn0odw99lpk7e/IanXO4_Next_Gen_Honey_Farm_-_64_hives.litematic/file

* BUGGED BEES
The most likely issue to arise in earlier versions (1.15 or 1.16) or modified servers involves an old bug where baby bees would clip into surrounding blocks when they grow up (and thus suddenly increase in size), allowing them to escape or suffocate. To get around this bug, you need to load the farm with adult bees instead of baby bees. On PAPER servers, find the only bee hive that doesn't have a repeater on top of it (near the clock), and place a wall block on top to prevent bees from escaping. You may also need to remove the top block of the partition between the flowers.

Discord: discord.gg/G9aa2YTTQX

CONTENTS
0:00 Intro
0:51 Mechanics
2:11 Build Tutorial
5:07 Breeding bees inside the farm
5:50 Sorting system upgrade
6:46 Empty bottle injector upgrade
7:23 Nether or End honey farm, 64-hive example
7:43 Bee breeder tutorial

NETHER AND END DIMENSTION HONEY FARMS
Bees in the Nether or End may refuse to leave their hives after a few hours. This can be fixed by restarting the game or server.
bugs.mojang.com/browse/MC-168329

PERFORMANCE AND LAG INFORMATION
The 29-tick fader clock is asynchronous with the propagating redstone signal, which uses 4 tick delay repeaters. This means that only a few modules are activated every redstone tick, for example, a 64-hive farm will have only 2 or 3 modules activated at a time, with the remaining 61-62 modules inactive. There are no mspt spikes in this farm design despite the use of a clock. Large farms will probably be limited by entity lag from bees, as opposed to the redstone. This farm limits the entity lag by constraining the space for the bees so that they dont need to push each other to reach flowers or hives. This screenshot offers insight into the performance of the farm: mediafire.com/view/ug3rgyw9a92c2mr/2021-08-11_22.59.46.png/file
The concepts in this video can be used to make a dustless version of the farm, if desired. The tower at 2:17 is an example.

ADDITIONAL TIPS AND INFO
5:23 Crouch down when breeding so that you don't accidentally change the delay on the repeaters.
6:28 Any 15 junk items that stack to 64 can be used to pad the item filter.
7:43 Bee breeder. youtube.com/watch?v=YoHEyA45jJA
8:25 Wait for baby bees to grow up before continuing so that they cannot escape the breeder.
9:10 It's preferable for the baby bees to enter the beehives because baby bees cannot breed until they grow up after 20 min. Adult bees, on the other hand, are ready to breed again after 5 min.

THANKS to 12904 for helping me test the farm!

Minecraft Elegance: Instant Wither Skeleton Farm, No Spawn-proofing 135 skulls/hr (Java 1.16-1.20)

ianxofour 2021-07-09 | IMPORTANT: If your rates are a lot lower than expected (or you see wither skeletons bunching up along a wall near the golem), lower the portal at the spawning platform by 1 Y level (without adjusting anything else). This fixes a sporadic pathfinding issue.
* In 1.18, rates are about 100 skulls/hour. Be sure to remove sources of light from the spawning platform area, such as torches, fires, and lava. In 1.19, rates are restored to original speed.

FORTRESS FARM UPGRADE AND REFERENCE: youtu.be/jKWp56FmBdI

Discord: discord.gg/G9aa2YTTQX

FAQs:
"Can the rates be improved with wither roses?" No, wither roses cannot be planted on nether bricks, and nether bricks are necessary to let fortress mobs spawn in the bounding box. Also, the farm is spawn rate limited, not mob cap limited, so wither roses wouldn't help regardless.
"No wither skeletons are spawning." A common build error is to forget to subtract 1 Y level at 7:20. Make sure you are standing on nether bricks to figure out the bounding box; fences don't count. Having multiple nether fortresses next to each other can mess up the bounding boxes.
"Why don't the mobs despawn in the overworld?" A player needs to be present in a dimension in order for the game to make a mob despawn in that dimension.
"What are the rates for coal and bones?" About 3850 coal/hr and 6100 bones/hr.

World download: tinyurl.com/2p92tmd4
Zardor's collection system (Join my discord first): tinyurl.com/yj8mycup

0:00 Intro
0:24 Materials list
0:52 Farm mechanics
3:54 Finding a fortress
5:45 Get down from the nether roof.
6:48 Determining the outer bounding box, see FAQs
7:35 Build tutorial
13:45 Usage instructions
15:04 MULTIPLAYER INSTRUCTIONS, see pinned comment.
15:36 Advanced fortress finding tips, see description

NOTES
1:20 MiniHuD tutorial: youtu.be/Z0Li5CPAyns
1:40 This fortress is partially located in a basalt deltas biome, but the farm can still be built in a soul sand valley and is more than 100 blocks away.
2:02 Spawn potential video: youtu.be/4XNvnKDSoEw
4:11 It is much more common to find a good build site in a soul sand valley than it is to find one in a warped forest. To simplify, you can focus on soul sand valleys.
7:35 Put out any nearby fires and clear any nearby lava around the spawning area to keep light levels low. *Temporarily* place torches along the outer edge of the spawning platform to limit spawns while you build. (Seeing at least a few fortress mobs spawn during construction is a good sign that the platform works.) Fire resistance and/or invisibility potions will also help.
It's OK to carve away terrain to make the spawning area; just keep 3 air blocks over the platform, and 2 air blocks over the turtle eggs. Make sure there's enough room overhead for wither skeletons to pathfind to the portal, too.
12:25 In hard difficulty, zombie piglins can break wooden doors, so use an iron door with a lever instead.
13:30 The cobwebs slow down the wither skeletons and keeps them aligned so that they don't reach the other portal before the cooldown period ends. The bridge can be shortened to ~7 blocks in length so that the farm starts up faster.
17:08 Increase the productivity by 10% by adding 2 wolves near the southern corners of the spawning platform to scare the wither skeletons out of a blind spot that prevents them from seeing the golem because of the portal frame.
18:16 Example AFK area if pillar X coordinate is odd, instead of even.

ADVANCED FORTRESS FINDING TIPS
Once you've entered a soul sand valley, set down a torch and press Shift+F3 to bring up the debug pie chart. Look carefully at the small text under the chart and then press the number on your keyboard corresponding to "tick". In this case the number is 4, but it might be different on your game, so you should double check. Now press the number on your keyboard for "level", and then "entities". (In 1.16, you need to select "tick" again.) The text below the pie chart will show the list of the entities that have been processed by the game since you started the pie chart. You're looking for blazes and wither skeletons to suddenly appear on this list, which tells you that a fortress must be within 128 blocks of your location.

Press F3+G to bring up the chunk borders and scan the biome in an organized fashion, keeping watch of the pie chart list. When you see blaze and wither skeleton show up on the list, set down a marker and travel about 3 chunks away from the torches around you. (Since the torches mark areas that you've already covered, the fortress must be in the direction opposite of them.) Use the trick at 5:45 to get down from the nether roof.

Huge thanks to Harper for brainstorming ideas for this farm and extensively testing during development.

Minecraft Elegance: Looting Slime Farms, 6000 dph (in Swamp) to 42000 dph (Java 1.16-1.20*)

ianxofour 2021-06-11 | IMPORTANT: When you are looking for a build site, make sure that your feet are no higher than Y 69 when standing on the future spawning platform. Slimes will not spawn at Y 70 or above. Note that the swamp hills biome does not spawn slimes.

* Java 1.18+: The looting portal elevator remains very useful in 1.18+. Swamp-based slime farms can be vastly more powerful in 1.18+, but this video is not a good reference for leveraging those mechanics. The build tutorial works in 1.18+, but is mostly applicable to 1.16 and 1.17. For 1.18+, you can skip the cats, wolves, turtle eggs, snow trenches, and the trapdoors around the golem. Within the circle of dirt/grass in the spawning area, replace any blocks that have light level 0 with podzol and place brown mushrooms on top:
imgur.com/uuz2BpP
Brown mushrooms can be farmed using this: youtu.be/6xe4I4EqnFw
Or use glow lichen in this pattern: imgur.com/2TBIvEw
Building a roof to darken the spawn area will allow slimes to spawn during the day. This video is a good reference for these changes:
youtube.com/watch?v=Gip81npGJp8&t=1738s

Discord: discord.gg/G9aa2YTTQX

MULTIPLAYER INSTRUCTIONS:
This slime elevator will work without issue in a single player world, or if you are the only player on a server. If there are other players on the server, it will work properly if nobody is in the nether, or you can have a friend or alt account stay near the nether elevator to prevent the slimes from despawning. Refer to 13:50.

Comparisons and links:
IanXO4 swamp-based slime farm (6k dph, full moon) world download: mediafire.com/file/tj54wzh8yjwcehc/IanXO4%2527s_Looting_Slime_Farm.zip/file
IanXO4 edit of gnembon slime farm (42k dph, Thanks to Hard for providing the WDL): mediafire.com/file/nqplm2xhc3r8al4/IanXO4_Looting_Gnembon_Slimefarm.zip/file

Emdy's excellent slime farm reference: youtube.com/watch?v=Gip81npGJp8

Techman88 swamp-based (1700 dph, full moon) youtube.com/watch?v=ARI5QJQkZyA
Logicalgeekboy (1600 dph) youtube.com/watch?v=XnSHyn1oNRU
Ilmango portal-based (17k dph) youtube.com/watch?v=cerBKl6Gzeg
Gnembon (17k dph) youtube.com/watch?v=42QvewJqKF0

Comments and tips:
1:36 There isn't enough room for spiders to leave the portal, so they never have a chance to cool down, and they can't re-enter the portal.
2:38 Zombified villagers and baby zombified piglins also appear.
2:49 Shoutout to Techman88 for his farm design that inspired how this farm uses trapdoors to shield the iron golem's eyes.
3:26 The baby zombie can see the iron golem under the trapdoors, but is unable to pathfind to it because of the snow.
5:00 Zombie piglins will show up at the AFK portal, but they do not come from the spawning area. They show up due to their natural spawning that occurs in all overworld portals. These zombie piglins are harmless and will die when you kill them in the chamber.
12:00 Use an autoclicker or macro to attack about every second if you want to actually "AFK" (away from keyboard). A minecraft night lasts 8 minutes, starting at 13188t. If you AFK in this slime farm at the start of a waxing gibbous moon night for 50 minutes (including Minecraft daytime), you can expect around 2k slimeballs. The actual rates will vary slightly depending on regional difficulty; setting your world to hard difficulty will increase the productivity.
12:06 Techman88's swamp-based slime farm produces about 225 slimeballs on a full moon night, which is about the same as this farm on a *crescent* moon night.
12:49 The 4 hoppers can handle 36k drops per hour if you direct them into separate chests. If you have higher drop rates in your farm, use double speed hoppers.
13:35 See paragraph below.
13:50 See the multiplayer instructions above in the second paragraph of the video description.
14:13 Lure a nearby cat by standing still while holding out raw cod or salmon.
14:51 Any meat can be used to breed wolves.

LOOTING GNEMBON SLIME FARM
Portals can only be 23 blocks tall, so you'll need to stack 2 portals, one on top of the other, in order to cover one side of the slime chunk. The horizontal obsidian beam between the upper and lower portals will block big slimes from entering that portal. You can work around this by staggering the placement of the horizontal obsidian beams between different platforms so that the big slimes can still reach a portal on one of the other sides of the platform that is not obstructed. Big slimes will almost always get to one of the other portals just by randomly jumping around. Medium and small slimes are not obstructed by these obsidian beams. You could probably eliminate the top 4 or 5 platforms with little impact to the spawn rates. There is a layer of string matching the top platform to increase pack spawn rates. Torches on the platforms do not interfere with slime spawning, so you don't need to be concerned with placing too many.

Minecraft Elegance: Instant Gold XP Farm, 360 gold blocks/hour (Java 1.13*-1.20)

ianxofour 2021-05-14 | IMPORTANT: At 6:00, do not go through the nether portal in the spawning area. It should remain unlinked with the overworld so that the zombie piglins can't teleport anywhere yet. At 9:29, build the portal at Y=191 or higher. Also, use a lava bucket to destroy swords in the killing chamber to prevent lag.
* The farm has been reported to work in 1.13-1.15, but I have not tested it below 1.16.

This incredibly simple and powerful gold XP farm can be made easily in early game, taking less than 25 minutes to build (if you know what you're doing), using exceptionally few materials. It gives enough experience to go from level 0 to level 30 in about a minute, and about 360 gold blocks per hour.

This farm produces 50,000 items/hr (24,000 nuggets/hr + 650 ingots/hr = 360 blocks/hr)
For comparison, gnembon's gold XP farm produces 90,000 items/hr, but requires 36 times more materials to build.

Discord: discord.gg/G9aa2YTTQX

World download:
mediafire.com/file/ahlyp62zlrxk72r/IanXO4%2527s_Instant_Gold_XP_Farm.zip/file
Camyblank's and Scorpio's collection system for this farm:
youtube.com/watch?v=POoqKpcxzxU
Zardor's collection system (Join my discord first):
discord.com/channels/871121857976352798/890667905082073178/1089341323376595134

0:00 Intro
0:35 Materials list
0:58 Farm mechanics
3:35 Build tutorial - Spawning area
6:00 DO NOT GO THROUGH THIS PORTAL
6:40 How to cross Y126 and Y127 bedrock to reach the nether roof
7:17 Build tutorial - Killing area
9:14 Build tutorial - Overworld Bridge
9:29 CORRECTION Y191 OR HIGHER
10:36 Usage instructions
11:23 Multiplayer instructions
11:51 Returning to the spawning area
12:24 Collecting turtle eggs
13:09 Collecting ender pearls

PAPER AND SPIGOT servers often disable entities in playerless dimensions, which results in mobs cramming to death and teleporting their drops to the kill chamber. You can work around this issue by having a friend AFK within 128 blocks of the overworld bridge, or you can convert the overworld bridge into a kill chamber.

Comments and corrections:
0:35 Any slab will work; it does not need to be a smooth stone slab.
0:59 I use the term "AFK spot" to describe the player station, but it is not technically for being "away from keyboard". This isn't intended as an AFK farm, as it would require a fairly complicated sorting system to manage all the drops.
1:47 If mob griefing is turned off, zombie piglins will no longer try to trample the turtle egg, so the farm will not work.
2:10 New mobs don't spawn when the mob cap is reached, but it doesn't force existing mobs to despawn, so this bridge can fill up with 100 or so zombie piglins without issue.
3:08 If you start have lag issues before the items can despawn, you can destroy them in the chamber by using a bucket of lava.
4:04 The blue vertical lines mark the corners of chunks, so I use them to guide digging the perimeter of the room. It's OK if you build out the floor over a ravine if you need to.
4:08 I've never found lava above Y=117 in the nether wastes biome, which is the altitude of the bottom spawning floor.
6:00 Don't go through the nether portal in the spawning area. It should remain unlinked with the overworld so that the zombie piglins can't teleport anywhere yet. If the spawning area portal is linked with an overworld portal at this point, you may find potentially hundreds of zombie piglins after you enter the portal at 9:14 in the tutorial. To fix this issue, use the entrance/exit portal to go to the overworld and then return to the gold farm before using the portal at 9:14. This forces any zombie piglins to despawn from the overworld.
9:14 Build the portal at Y=191 or higher, not just at "about Y 190". If you've already built the portal at Y=190 or lower, you can fix the issue by raising your entrance/exit portal by 5 blocks.
10:54 All gold farms basically require you to craft gold nuggets into ingots and blocks. So if you don't do it during the farming process, you'll just have to do it later. Zombie piglins still accumulate in the killing chamber while you craft, so stopping to craft does not impact the farm's productivity if you do it fast enough.
11:51 To return to the spawning area, repair the nether portal that you destroyed near the overworld bridge. Be sure to destroy the portal again when you leave, otherwise the farm will not work.

Minecraft Elegance: Raid Captain Bank, an upgrade to Instant Raid Farm (Java 1.16-1.20)

ianxofour 2021-04-22 | A raid captain bank is useful addition to a raid farm that lets you skip going to a pillager outpost before starting the raid farm. The bank stores a few of the captains that spawn in the raid farm, and you kill these captains instead of the ones at the pillager outpost. This lets you build raid farms in more convenient locations, like near your base or trading hall. It also means that the raid farm can be used more easily as an XP farm, since the farm can be started and stopped with greater ease. And you can completely skip the tedious process of searching for a pillager outpost by getting the first bad omen effect through a patrol instead.

Discord: discord.gg/G9aa2YTTQX

Instant Raid Farm tutorial:
youtu.be/hVHFIfZAL54
This raid captain bank also works on the Rays Works raid farm design. Build the bank at least 12 blocks higher than where the player stands when attacking mobs. There is room for 3 boats per level since it doesn't use a redstone torch tower.

0:00 Intro
1:30 Materials
1:41 Build instructions
2:04 FYI, mobs cannot see through glass.
3:23 Loading captains into the bank
4:12 Dealing with evokers
4:37 Just to keep things simple, it's worth sacrificing the captain so that you kill the evoker in the same boat. But if you really want to save the captain, just place the lava on their heads and immediately pick it up. Both the evoker and captain will take enough fire damage to get to about 6 health (3 hearts), which lets you kill them individually with one hit.

The Y level of the captain bank keeps captured evokers far enough away so they cannot attack you while you are killing mobs in the dropshaft. Any evokers that are aware of you may attack as you go up the ladder. If this happens, just quit the game and rejoin. Alternatively, you can preemptively quit and rejoin the game after the raid ends to completely eliminate the risk of an evoker attacking.

Minecraft Elegance: Superfast overworld exploration (2200+ bpm) Water Skiing (Java 1.16-1.19)

ianxofour 2021-04-02 | Sustained high-speed swimming technique for early game overworld exploration. "Water skiing" lets you swim 2200-3100 blocks per minute while maintaining a clear view of your surroundings, without stopping to breathe and without building anything beforehand. Great for finding special biomes like jungles, mushroom fields, and badlands. Also great for screwing around and having fun. Watch this tutorial to learn about this valuable skill that will transform how you travel in the game.

Discord: discord.gg/G9aa2YTTQX

0:00
0:54 Mechanics of water skiing
3:48 Launching tutorial
5:00 Breathing while swimming
5:53 Steering
7:06 Starting your exploration and navigating
9:03 Autosaves and server lag
10:25 Recovering the lead and dolphin
11:19 Changing speed, and towing additional mobs/players
12:41 An elytra demonstration loosely related to water skiing

6:09 If needed, you can lower your mouse sensitivity to make it easier to steer.

8:20 I do not recommend using a name tag on your dolphin. Name tags are relatively expensive in early game, and dolphin are fairly easy to find in the ocean. If you do use a name tag, consider using "Grumm" or "Dinnerbone" as the name so that the dolphin is rendered upside down, which makes it much easier to spot your dolphin in a crowd of other dolphin. Dolphin are notorious for suffocating themselves as they incessantly try to play with items (see 2:11 for an example), so you'll need to take care to clear the area of items when you have them tethered.

8:47 Another cue that you are going in circles is that the game no longer has trouble rendering the chunks since there is no longer any delay in creating them, and may have the chunks in cache. Also, seeing water or lava flow from the side of a mountain is a clear sign that the chunk was freshly created; it's a sign that you are NOT going in circles.

9:57 The fish in the distance stop for a moment when the autosave occurs.

10:09 I suspect an autosave sometimes occurs shortly after you stop water skiing, which sometimes causes the lead to break as you decelerate. This autosave does not affect the regularly scheduled autosave that still occurs every 5 minutes.

10:17 The game stutters right when the lead breaks, and there is a spike on the FPS monitor. Look at the land, the underwater mobs, and the surface of the water. I know that this is an autosave because of similar symptoms that occurred 5 minutes before and 5 minutes after this instance.

11:19 Travelling quickly in the game may put a lot of stress on your gaming system. Reducing your travel speed and render distance may help your system keep up, but remember that limiting the render distance might make it harder to spot the very things that you are searching for in the first place, so you'll need to find the right balance.

11:05 Your lead may also break if your dolphin veers off to play with other nearby dolphin. This is not common, so I don't try to avoid other dolphin while water skiing.

12:26 Each of the wandering trader's llamas will drop a lead when they die, which is fairly reliable way to accumulate leads in early game. To craft leads from scratch, you'll need slime balls and string. A single large slime, which you can find in a swamp at night, can get you half a stack of slimeballs if you use Looting 3.

12:42 This effectively allows multiple players to share a single set of elytra wings, though it can be dangerous. Open the elytra wings and swim at the water surface while looking up slightly, using dolphin's grace (tap sprint) and depth strider 2 to accelerate to take off speed. Then quickly look up about -35 degrees and use rockets to gain altitude. I suspect additional passengers, riding on saddled pigs, can be chained together in a line with leads. Dolphin's grace makes it easier to take off while towing a saddled pig, but it isn't absolutely necessary. To do this without a dolphin, use a rocket to get to take off speed instead (about 28 bps), and then look up at -35 degrees and fire a series of rockets.

Pretty cool that it was featured on screenrant:
screenrant.com/minecraft-ride-share-airborne-elytra-pigs

Minecraft Elegance: Instant AFK Raid Farm, 3000+ emeralds/hr (Java 1.16-1.20)

ianxofour 2021-02-26 | ***Read the FAQ in the video description***

This powerful raid farm is optimized for early game, requiring few materials and only 18 minutes to build (if you know exactly what you are doing), yet the farm can be run AFK and is just as productive as other raid farm designs that are much more complicated. This farm can be upgraded with a Raid Captain Bank, which allows you to run this farm without ever finding a pillager outpost:
youtu.be/viRZUhC2_zE

Discord: discord.gg/G9aa2YTTQX

World download:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/0djexlejv23ar9n/IanXO4%2527s_Instant_AFK_Raid_Farm.zip/file
Use "/effect give @s minecraft:bad_omen" to give yourself the bad omen effect.

Litematica schematic. DO NOT ROTATE. This is not a good substitute for the build tutorial because of the use of lava and kelp to make the bubble column and drop shaft.
http://www.mediafire.com/file/fghlg2gowdvra2p/IanXO4%2527s_Raid_Farm_-_DO_NOT_ROTATE.litematic/file

FAQs:
"Why do vexes keep killing me?" You need to kill raid mobs in one hit so that evokers don't summon vexes. The most practical way is to use a sword with sweeping edge enchantment, and make sure that you only attack about once per second. If you do not have an appropriate sword, taking a Potion of Invisibility may be helpful instead. You can also reroll your initial trade with a weaponsmith until you get an iron sword with sweeping edge.

"Why don't I have many mobs?" Ideally, you should play on hard difficulty. Normal and easy difficulty will also work, but the rates are much lower. Also, make sure that you wait for the horn to stop blaring before flipping the lever so that all the mobs have a chance to spawn.

"Why don't I have any mobs?" Make sure that the job site has the same X and Z coordinates as the northwest corner of the spawning platform, and make sure that the job site is claimed by your villager. Make sure that the spawning pad is not flooded when you are trying to start the raid. And make sure that you are not playing in peaceful difficulty. Make sure that you do not have land within 69 blocks (cylindrical distance) of the job site, as the raid can spawn there instead of at the farm.

"How do I stop the farm?" Just drop down to trigger a raid (which removes the bad omen effect) and leave.

"I'm still having problems." Try out the world download or litematica file to check your build. This raid farm may not work perfectly on modded servers. Leave me a comment and I might be able to help.

"I lose the bad omen effect when dropping down to the ocean and a raid does not start." The village needs at least 30 seconds after the horns stop blaring to cool down before another raid can start. If you try to start another raid too early, the bad omen effect is wasted.

"My raid bar disappears as I go up the bubble column." The boss bar always disappears when you are far enough away from the villager's workstation. Watch at 12:25 to 13:05 for an example.

0:00 Intro
0:34 Materials
0:58 Mechanics
4:12 Build tutorial - Cobblestone tube and Spawning platform.
6:42 Build tutorial - Redstone
7:42 Build tutorial - Killing platform
9:27 Engineering control to stop flooding of the spawning platform before leaving
10:20 Build tutorial - Bubble column
12:17 Instructions for manual use
14:10 Instructions for AFK use. When you are done using the farm, just drop down and leave.
14:45 If needed, you can lower the mouse sensitivity in your controls to help you fine tune your aim.

Doublemoses (great explanation):
youtube.com/watch?v=GFx2nc4Ehas
Rays works (great build that this farm is conceptually based on):
youtube.com/watch?v=TDnppbTrdks
Gamepedia (good documentation of mechanics):
minecraft.gamepedia.com/Raid

I use smooth stone in this video to make it easier to count blocks, but you can substitute with a different type of solid block (like dirt).

The outer edge of the 5x5 spawning platform is made of glass blocks to prevent spawning of ravagers, which are wide enough to clip into the walls. The torch above the dispenser prevents spawning on top of the dispenser face, which is needed for the same reason.

For each wave, there are 20 attempts to spawn raid mobs at location above the x and z coordinates of the village center, with a random 0-4 added to each coordinate. You would need a 5x5 square to guarantee success of every attempt, but this is unnecessary because there are 20 attempts. Using just 9 solid blocks, like in this design, means that the wave will spawn 99.99% of the time, which is good enough for practical purposes.

Pulover's, TinyTask, and AutoHotKey are free macro recorders. Gaming keyboards and mice usually come with macro software as well that can be downloaded from the manufacturer's website. EssentialClient is a mod that can be used to run macros in-game:
github.com/senseiwells/EssentialClient

Download for Razer Synapse macro:
mediafire.com/file/9l49q4fvlsiludn/Raid_Farm.xml/file

Minecraft Elegance: Instant Mob Farm with Scaffolding (Java 1.16-1.19.2*, DOES NOT WORK IN 1.19.3+)

ianxofour 2021-02-03 | IMPORTANT: Starting in 1.19.3, mobs no longer spawn on scaffolding. In this case, just build the spawning platforms with top slabs instead of scaffolding. The central signal tower of observers, dispensers, scaffolding blocks remains the same.

A mob farm design that is optimized for ease and speed of build while remaining expandable to up to 18000 drops per hour (in 1.16 and 1.17) in a single tower (25 platforms) without digging a perimeter. * In 1.18+, the farm produces 13500 drops per hour (including 3000 gunpowder, 2700 bone, and 2000 string per hour). Jungles are much easier to find in 1.18 and are commonly located next to deserts.

Discord: discord.gg/G9aa2YTTQX
World Download:
mediafire.com/file/8vy7ov0ex9jsvta/IanXO4%2527s_Instant_Mob_Farm_-_Rev1.zip/file

0:00 Intro
1:08 Materials list
1:21 Design and special features
4:58 Build tutorial
8:59 Bubble Column Upgrade

Gnembon:
youtube.com/watch?v=guvMmdeZqiI
ilmango:
youtube.com/watch?v=ByrJhPEGmOo
LogicalGeekBoy:
youtube.com/watch?v=tD5Dd6VDr7c

FINDING BAMBOO
Bamboo can be found in jungle biomes and in shipwrecks. In 1.18, jungles are far more common and are often located next to large deserts. Pre-1.18, you can search for a jungle biome by following the coast of an ocean in a boat or by "water skiing", which is a superfast swimming technique:
youtu.be/c9lvHXZ6Rlw
Stop by any shipwrecks that you see along the way. Underwater shipwrecks can often be seen more easily at a distance because the distinctive shape of the ship offers contrast against the distant underwater background. For example, the outline of the bow can can be seen at 0:31 to
0:35. Bamboo might be found in the supply chest, which is located right behind the mast near the bow of the ship:
minecraft.gamepedia.com/File:Shipwreck_internal_structure.png
You'll need to search 6 or 7 of these chests on average before finding bamboo, and not every shipwreck will have a supply chest. Still, odds are that you will find bamboo in a shipwreck before you come across a jungle biome, as not every ocean will have a jungle coast, so following the coast of just one ocean does not guarantee that you will find a jungle.
Dolphin will also lead you to underwater chests if you give them raw cod or salmon, but the chest may be that of buried treasure or ocean ruins, and not necessarily that of a shipwreck.

STOPPED MINECARTS
Some mobs may survive the fall and stop the hopper minecarts temporarily. However, mobs avoid standing on rails, so the interference tends to be brief. A mob that falls next to a stopped minecart will restart the minecart, and if either minecart is moving, the other will be restarted as well. Inside the rail loop, place a turtle egg on top of a fence post (or wither rose or sweet berry bush) to lure zombies away from the rails (see screenshot in Note 4:30 below). There is enough spare capacity in the collection system to address any brief backlog of drops.

NOTES
0:05 This basic farm produces up to 3300 drops per hour, but operates at that rate only at night.
3:20 The explanation in the video is a simplified version. The 3 pulses visible from the redstone lamp actually corresponds to a series of changes in the flowing water.
4:30 The 92.5% collection efficiency can be improved to 98+% by placing soul sand under the rails and also replacing any block next to the soul sand that is adjacent to 2 rails:
mediafire.com/view/8zieohq0ml6ueyl/IanXO4_Instant_Mob_Farm_-_soul_sand_and_turtle_egg.png/file
Soul sand prevents items from "splattering" when a mob dies from fall damage. Alternatively, a 5-wide diamond frame of hoppers will collect over 99% of drops.
4:58 If building in a desert, be sure to double check the biomes in the area of your build, as the beach biome will look very similar but produces zombies instead of husks.
6:29 Shut off the clock first, before working on expanding the farm.
6:49 Extending the roof out to 25 blocks from the center technically would be best for spawn rates to take advantage of all pack spawn possibilities, but the improvement is tiny for a lot of material and effort.
7:09 The optimum delay is probably 14 repeaters at full delay, instead of 13, but I kept the design at 13 to keep the layout of repeaters simple.
7:28 The powered rails are 9 blocks away from the trapdoor, meaning that there are 8 blocks in the space between the trapdoor and the powered rail.
7:44 This is a hopper *minecart* unloading system, not a "hopper unloading system". You may not need to install the unloading system at all if you don't afk for long.
8:33 A pillar from the roof to AFK point, like at 3:12, is technically better for spawn rates than using a bridge, but the difference is not practically noticeable.
9:14 Lava flows down at 1.5 sec/block, so it takes a little over 3 min for the lava to reach the ground.

Minecraft Elegance: Instant Trading Hall with Villager Breeder (Java)

ianxofour 2021-01-17 | An automatic trading hall design that requires minimal work to set up and integrates seamlessly with a breeding village. Coupled with a few "instant" iron farms, this becomes a powerful build in early survival. This video was recorded in Java 1.16 and still works in 1.17. The strategy doesn't work as well in Bedrock because the villagers maintain their claim on a bed even if it remains inaccessible, so you will need many more beds.

Discord: discord.gg/G9aa2YTTQX

Reference for villager behavior:
minecraft.gamepedia.com/Villager#Behavior

Tips, post-production notes, and corrections:

4:38 - You can add a trapdoor under the villager by first raising the villager with water, and then placing the trapdoor underneath it, similar to what is done at 5:52.

4:50 - Just "golden apples" are needed to cure zombified villagers, not "enchanted golden apples". The zombie in a minecart starts on a powered rail that is activated by pressing the button on the steps. This allows you to stay out of view as the zombie is transported to the villager. A mob that rides in a minecart doesn't despawn, so you don't need to worry about any nametags for this zombie.

5:58 - If 2 villagers become trapped in a stall, just make a step so they can escape. The villager that has a claim on the job site will either stay behind or return to the job site later to work.

In 1.17+, a lightning rod about a chunk away from the farm will protect the villagers from lightning. Otherwise, build a roof over the villagers to protect them from lightning. A lightning strike within 4 blocks of a villager will convert it to a witch, and there's no way to convert it back.

Breeding farmers need to be able to pathfind to the pillows on 3 unclaimed beds within about 40 blocks of distance, and there must be at least 2 blocks of clearance over the bed so that baby villagers have room to jump on it.

Here is the easiest iron farm to build, by far:
youtu.be/-oYyJ6jfSPU
Just a few of these iron farms will provide a steady source of emeralds for all your trading needs. The weaponsmith and toolsmith reliably have iron ingots as a second tier trade, and most armorers also have iron ingots as a second tier trade (3 ingots per emerald, when traded in high volume). It's a good idea to have a mix of these 3 iron traders so that you can just buy all of your diamond gear instead of having to mine for them. And when its time to zombify and cure villagers, target the iron traders first so that you get 1 emerald per iron ingot. This triples your income and effectively makes all other trades in the game cost a third of what they used to. And on top of emeralds, iron trading will give you a lot of XP.

Another key profession is the librarian, of course. Most of the stalls in your trading hall should be filled with them. Just make sure that on your first librarian, that it has a bookcase as one of its initial trades so that you can buy more bookcases to make more lecterns as job sites. Overwhelmingly, you should not settle for anything less than the top level of an enchantment. Don't lock in Sharpness 4 only to regret it later when you find Sharpness 5. You'll need around 25 librarians to get all the useful enchantments in the game, with the exception of Soul Speed, which comes from piglin bartering. Librarians also sell nametags in their final trade tier, which is extremely useful.

Farmers will provide golden carrots, which will probably be your main food for the rest of the game.

Clerics will provide ender pearls, glowstone, red stone dust, and bottles of enchanting. These are essentially bottles of XP, letting you get even more XP from trading, or you can stockpile the XP for later use or you can use it for repairing your mending gear on the go.

Here is a link to the schedule that villagers follow every day. Searching for job sites and breeding usually occur during the wandering phase. Gathering occurs around the village bell and serves to concentrate a lot of villagers in a small area right after they have harvested crops so that they can breed when the schedule switches to wandering again.
minecraft.gamepedia.com/Villager#Schedules

Minecraft Elegance: Ender Dragon Death Trap - Simple, Safe, Fast (Java 1.14.2*-1.20**)

ianxofour 2021-01-08 | This incredibly simple and reliable trap is among the safest and fastest ways to kill the ender dragon. This works only in Java. This technique was featured on Dream's Manhunt series (Speedrunner vs 5 hunters finale):
youtube.com/watch?v=44wLAzydRFU

* I've tested in 1.16+. A report has been made that it works in as early as 1.14.2.
** An invisibility potion may be used (without wearing armor) to minimize any chance that the dragon will attack while you are setting up the trap. This is a more important factor in 1.18+, as the dragon AI seems to be more aggressive than in previous versions, and you may become injured if standing too close to the dragon while it is in the trap.

Discord: discord.gg/G9aa2YTTQX

0:00 Intro
1:18 Materials (195 dirt blocks, 1 obsidian, 1 water bucket, pickaxe, bow, 80 arrows, optional empty bottles)
2:28 Build instructions (Pillar up to Y145, bridge to place obsidian at X0 Z0, remove last dirt block in bridge, place water on top)
4:30 Capture and kill
5:30 Demonstration on punching the ender dragon to death

The bow can be enchanted with Punch 1 or 2 without disrupting the trap.

If you use this trap to repeatedly kill a respawned dragon, you may need to block off any water flowing down from the trap so that the end crystals can be placed on the exit portal, or just pick up the water from the top of the trap after the dragon dies. Also, you may wish to invest in building a bubble column out of end stone to get you to Y145, so that you don't have to rely on pillaring or ladders, which may be destroyed by the dragon if it flies through.

Minecraft Elegance: Instant Trident Farm (Java 1.16-1.20*)

ianxofour 2021-01-03 | Start to finish, this trident farm can be built in as little as 20 minutes (if you know exactly what you are doing), and will probably get you a trident within the first 10 minutes of use. It's best suited for survival players who only want a few tridents and don't want to invest a lot of time in making anything more than a basic farm that gets used a few times.

*The farm works in 1.18+, but the build tutorial assumes that the build limit is still at Y255 (feet at Y256), so be mindful of how you follow the tutorial instructions.

Discord: discord.gg/G9aa2YTTQX

Some post-production notes:
Press F3 to verify that you are building the farm across a river biome. Look for "Biome: minecraft:river". The parts of the farm that are in the river biome will spawn drowneds. River biomes spawn drowned at much higher rates than ocean biomes, and drowneds in the ocean are limited to spawning below Y 58, but this restriction does not apply to rivers.

The farm works for collecting nautilus shells as well.
Here is ilmango's river biome trident farm for some technical background:
youtube.com/watch?v=5ZCBqjvMtNs

Slime blocks can be used instead of honey blocks to spread water, but you can't ride on slime blocks. To set the ice without using a flying machine, bridge across with a line of dirt and replace it with ice and torches on the way back.

0:00 Intro
1:55 Materials list
2:41 Build tutorial
4:10 Setting down ice and torches
6:06 Finishing the build
7:11 Building the platform
7:33 Tips for hunting

Minecraft Elegance: Iron Farm on Day 1 of Survival, Java 1.16-1.20

ianxofour 2020-12-23 | A simple, practical iron farm in survival that is optimized for early game constraints. Does not work on Bedrock Edition.
- Minimal building material requirements (30 easy-to-obtain items need placement)
- Fast build time (less than 1 Minecraft day)
- No iron needed beforehand
- No lava needed
- No nametag needed, any zombie will work
- Easy loading of villagers and zombie into farm

FAQs:
"The fence gate catches fire." Make sure you don't forget the sign on top of the gate, which fireproofs the gate so that it doesn't burn. If it still burns, I suspect this is recent bug in Forge. One workaround is to place string on top of the signs to fireproof them, or craft the signs from nether stems.
"The zombie doesn't get in the boat." The bottom step of the staircase needs to be even with the floor of the chamber. The zombie needs to be at the same level of the boat in order to get it in.
"My zombie keeps despawning!" An iron golem is probably spawning in the zombie area and killing it. The golem then suffocates and dies. This happens when part of the zombie chamber is not spawn-proofed. The boat should be in the center of the room in order to stop the golem from spawning there. And there needs to be torches at the base of the steps, as well as on the steps.
"Iron golems are spawning outside of the pool." The villagers aren't deep enough underground. You can fix this issue by spawnproofing within 8 blocks horizontally from the beds. You can use buttons, flowers, slabs, or redstone dust, for example; or you can convert the ground to dirt path with a shovel.
"Iron golems aren't spawning at all." There's a good chance that an iron golem has spawned inside a cave within 8 blocks of the beds, and this golem is preventing further golems from spawning. Find the cave, kill the iron golem, and spawnproof the cave or fill it in. If that isn't the issue, try breaking and placing the beds again.

Efficient yield of 175 ingots/hr, and easily upgraded to 335 ingots/hr with lava. Rates in 1.18 seem to be slightly lower at 320 ingots/hr.

Discord: discord.gg/G9aa2YTTQX

0:00 Intro
0:51 Mechanics
3:33 Finding a village
3:49 Collecting beds and site selection
4:08 Materials
4:23 Build instructions
6:38 Upgrades
7:47 Demo of iron farm built and working on Day 1 of survival

NOTES
4:58 Don't use a bamboo raft.
5:53 Instead of using a hoe to turn the dirt into farmland, starting in 1.17, you can use a shovel to turn dirt blocks into dirt path blocks. This is a little more convenient since you don't need to craft an additional tool and you don't need to wait for the block to become hydrated.
7:17 Preventing other iron golems from interfering. Use a lead on a golem so that it stays close to the village bell, which is a hot spot for the gossip that often summons a golem. (Destroying all other beds in the village will also work if you don't have a need for them, such as for breeding.)
7:31 The fence should be a rectangle that goes out at least 16 blocks horizontally from the villagers. Find the 2x3 area on the surface that is directly over the underground beds, and then count 16 blocks in each direction to see how far the fence needs to go.
7:35 The 2 iron farms are mirror images of each other and there are 9 blocks in between the spawning pits. This keeps the iron golems in one farm more than 16 blocks horizontally from the villagers at the other. Here is a compact 4-farm setup (the beds are under the planks):
imgur.com/OuU9Uka

Iron farm mechanics:
youtube.com/watch?v=BSwe-jerWX8
youtube.com/watch?v=_O6q53zmCMY

Bad Piggies: Around the World (S-4) Grapple Climbing (SpiderPig)

ianxofour 2013-07-25 | This is a general climbing device that can be used to climb up and down walls and cross ceilings. It is based on the pivoting action of the climber as it alternates between the grapples for support, which is readily evident when it traverses the ceiling. The boxing gloves are used during accent and decent along walls in order to help position the climber for shooting the next grappling hook. The spring dampens the tension between the grappling hooks when they are both engaged, which is an important feature that keeps the device from pulling itself apart or slamming itself against the wall.

Bloons TD5 (iOS): Bloontonium Lab (Hard) Round 31 Regen Farm

ianxofour 2013-07-24 | Conventional regen farm designs are usually extremely expensive, as they rely on heavy firepower to eliminate the tremendous number of bloons that flow out of the farm. This video shows a regen farm design that uses dynamic feedback to regulate itself so that bloons flow out at a more manageable pace. This approach drastically reduces the cost of the regen farm so that they can be routinely created in Round 31 (the earliest possible round for regen farming) on just about any track. Regen farming early in the game helps secure additional funds that can be used to ensure eventual victory on the track. You'll only need to make a few thousand dollars on the regen farm to make a big difference, especially if you invest wisely. Or you can just come back after a couple hours and buy a Temple of the Monkey God.

A regen farm operates based on the fact that certain bloons contain 2 regenerating bloons inside. When the parent bloon is popped, the 2 children bloons may regenerate to produce 2 new parent bloons. The process is repeated to create a large number of bloons. Some of these bloons are sacrificed for points, are the rest are "recycled" in a loop on the track so that more bloons can be made in a self-sustaining fashion.

In this regulated regen farm design, the downdraft from a heli pilot (0/3) is used to recycle bloons on the track. If there are too many bloons in the farm, the heli pilot can't shoot them fast enough, so it is soon overrun by the bloons. Since the heli pilot automatically shoots at the leading bloon in its range, it pivots to shoot away from the farm, which causes newly approaching bloons to be blown back without being shot at. Since these recycled bloons are not popped, they do not replicate, so the number of bloons in the farm decreases until the heli pilot is no longer overrun. When the heli pilot is no longer overrun, it turns back to shoot at the approaching bloons. This causes them to replicate so that the number of bloons increases until the heli pilot is again overrun. The farming process is loosely regulated in this fashion to maintain a fairly stable regen farm that typically generates about $1000 to $2000 per minute in fast forward mode.

When starting the regen farm, the heli pilot may be too powerful on Round 31, which has only 2 zebra bloons as "seeds." Its guns will often overpower the seed bloons before the farm can get started, so there are a number of steps to jumpstart the farming process. The first step involves using a dart monkey (0/0) to shoot at the initial zebra bloon(s) so that they replicate before reaching the heli pilot. This dart monkey should be sold after the initial pass of the zebra bloon(s). The glue gunner(s) (1/0) slow the bloons down to give them more time to regenerate. The ice tower (1/0) creates a shield of frozen bloons that the heli pilot cannot shoot through, and the ice tower may also be used to further slow down the recycled bloons if needed by upgrading to 1/1 or 1/2.

The bloons that flow out of the farm can be destroyed by any reasonable means, but I tend to use spike factories, as they can be very compact and are easily placed near the end of the path, if necessary. As you earn more money, the spike factories are readily upgraded to mitigate the risk of being overrun by a surge in bloons. Dartling guns (3/0) are also useful for popping bloons, but they are less compact than spike factories, and they can be difficult to control unless you use the level III specialty upgrade on the Dartling Ammo Dump, which allows you to lock the dartling gun aim.

This video demonstrates a regen farm in Round 31 of Bloontonium Lab played on hard mode, which is often viewed as the most difficult track in the game. I start with a centrally located monkey engineer and upgrade the sentries after Round 2 (to 1/0) and around Round 16 (to 2/0). All other funds are invested in banana farms and associated upgrades. I use the level IV specialty upgrade for the Engineer's Workshop to keep things simple. If you don't have at least the level III upgrade, which allows you to pop lead bloons, you should add corrosive glue gunners (2/0) before Round 28.

Bad Piggies: Torque Burst with Boxing Glove

ianxofour 2013-06-22 | The boxing glove not only generates a lot force along the punching axis, but it also generates a lot of counteracting force when the glove is deflected off axis. When a vehicle performs this on itself, the off-axis deflection of a boxing glove will generate a HUGE burst of torque on the vehicle for a brief moment. Punching the back side of a metal wing is a fairly reliable way of deflecting the glove, but any off-axis deflection will work. I offer some examples to demonstrate the how "torque burst" can be used to perform some extreme maneuvers in an Osprey-type helicopter, airplane, and lowrider. The soda bottle in the low rider allows the frame to flex.

Bad Piggies: Steam Engine Train

ianxofour 2013-06-14 | The construction of this train is fairly realistic in that the leading locomotive actually pulls the train of unpowered cars, which are reversibly coupled to each other through articulating connectors.

The main difficulty in the design of this train is getting the cars to couple correctly. There isn't much room on the starting slate, so the cars are designed to fall/slide into interlocking positions. The suction cup wheel allows the engine to have a throttle by using different combinations of the suction cup wheel and regular drive wheel. The suction cup wheel sticks to the ground, so it also helps keep the engine from flipping back when it pulls a very heavy load. The soda bottle is the smokestack for the engine, and it will briefly emit "smoke" when actuated. The metal airfoil in the front of the engine represents the cowcatcher (also called a pilot), which is used to clear obstructions from the rail.

I don't use rope as the connectors in this train because, in my humble opinion, they seem too long to give a realistic look, even though others have used them effectively to create very long trains. In particular, PiGineering has an impressively designed road train consisting of a tractor and 3 trailers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSwLrq3ENwo

Bad Piggies: Ice Fishing (and Earthworm)

ianxofour 2013-06-10 | You probably know already that explosions can cause some game pieces to phase through the floor or walls due to the high speed. In this video, I phase functional vehicles underground using carefully designed explosions that don't wreck the vehicle.

The first example is a case of ice fishing, where the pig uses a propeller on the end of a series of springs as an auger to penetrate the "ice". This arrangement doubles as the hook and fishing line, which hang down from the ice fishing house. The fish is sent underground by the initial explosion, and it is propelled by hyperdriving. I shut off the propeller as the fish is passing through the spring in order to pull the fish into the ice fishing house. If you are not familiar with hyperdriving, you can learn about it in this video description:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7G-Patj1lgo

The second example is an "earthworm" that can tunnel across Field of Dreams. It also uses hyperdriving. The yellow umbrella next to the green electric engine dilutes the power of the motor so that the earthworm moves more slowly.

Hyperdriving isn't absolutely necessary for subterranean vehicles, but it makes the process a lot easier. Hyperdriven vehicles without engines are lighter, so fewer explosives are needed to accelerate them, and they are less likely to break after phasing.

Many game parts are difficult to send underground. The pig, egg, King Pig, and wheels all seem to have difficulty penetrating the ground. Moreover, if they do penetrate the ground, they often break off from the rest of the vehicle due to the excessive force that is required.

Bad Piggies: Helicopters Using Spring-Punch Release

ianxofour 2013-06-06 | The main innovation in this video is the use of a boxing glove to gently "break" the vehicle by punching across a spring. I demonstrate this with several helicopters that are modeled very loosely as small versions of the CH-54 Tarhe, which is a heavy-lift helicopter.

The spring-punch release mechanism gives the helicopter an elegant way to release a securely fastened load. Note that the spring is asymmetric, and you can flip the spring around to control which end of the spring will break. Here are several applications:

1) A helicopter drops a signal flare (red rocket) and smoke grenade (soda bottle). The rocket and soda bottle automatically right themselves on their mounting brackets when fired.

2) A helicopter transports a small car, which detaches and is driven away by the egg. This is a nice demonstration of how intentionally breaking a vehicle can be used to modulate the amount of power in a vehicle or contraption. In this case, the car's engine helps power the helicopter until it is dropped off. Once the car has separated from the helicopter, the helicopter doesn't need as much power because it is no longer carrying a load.

3) Spring-punch is so gentle that it can be used for releasing TNT-based armament, such as missiles and bombs. The helicopter fires a compact missile to destroy King Pig's car.

4) A helicopter drops a bomb on one rover and shoots another.

5) Sometimes you miss, so it's nice to have multiple ways of shooting a target. This helicopter carries a missile, bomb, and gun in a very compact design. This helicopter is closely related to one in a previous video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfpmZ_RhEuY

Bad Piggies: Heavy Bomber Strikes Runaway Egg

ianxofour 2013-06-02 | I've previously demonstrated a bomber that can carry 2 bombs in the S-1 sandbox:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMHiqTIjANU

This video has a scaled up version of the bomber using Field of Dreams, which has a larger starting slate that can also accommodate a small rover with a runaway egg. The balloons over the bomber are used to gently lower the plane so that the TNT bombs slide into the weapons bays without exploding. In case you didn't know, the weight of a vehicle with balloons will suddenly increase when it makes contact with the ground. Since the front wheel of the bomber touches the ground first during the bomb-loading operation, the rear wheel needs to be padded with a sand bag underneath so that the lower balloons don't pop when the bomber suddenly drops as a result of the additional weight. The lower balloons keep the TNT in place during flight, and the wheels on the bomber keep the balloons from rolling out of position. Pop the lower balloons to drop the bombs.

The egg's escape vehicle is a small rover that uses the suction cup wheel, which has more traction than the standard drive wheel. This added traction on the front wheel allows the rover to pull away from the bomber at start up so that it doesn't disturb the loading of the bombs. Using both drive wheels and suction cup wheels on the same vehicle also allows you to tune the speed of the vehicle if needed (e.g., front wheel drive, rear wheel drive, or all wheel drive).

During the bomb-loading operation, the TNT boxes often get jammed as they slide into the weapons bay, or a lower balloon may pop due to contact with the ground. As a result, it can take many attempts (e.g., a few minutes) in order to correctly load the bomber so that it can perform a conventional takeoff on the runway. The last clip shows a more robust way to load the bomber, but the takeoff is less realistic.

Bad Piggies: Cornhole Toss

ianxofour 2013-05-29 | The boxing glove can be used to propel objects in the game. Unlike TNT, a boxing glove is reusable, which allows for repeated tossing. Here is a contraption that feeds a series of wheels into a tossing machine for a game of cornhole toss. To make the game a little harder, I toss the wheels with some added momentum from the moving contraption.

Bad Piggies: Road Hogs R-7 (Under 20 Seconds) Leaderboard Tutorial

ianxofour 2013-05-18 | This video shows you how to get to almost the top of the leaderboard for Road Hogs Level R-7. (At the time of release, I am #4 out of 27,000+ players on the iOS Game Center who haven't clearly cheated.) I've already made a video showing how to get near the top of the leaderboard for R-1 and R-3:
youtube.com/watch?v=HQcQnzDKpKw
youtube.com/watch?v=2I9W04LiMGk

This video applies the same general concepts, so I encourage you to read the video description for R-1, which offers important insights.

The flight vehicle rides on an inverted sled in order to reach the clearing on the left, where it can launch for a flight to the finish line. The left side of the sled pivots up during launch, which starts the clockwise rotation of the flight vehicle. I then shut down the plunger wheels so that the continuing motion of the sled doesn't rotate the flight vehicle counter clockwise. The flight vehicle is designed to have some rotational feedback so that it doesn't keep spinning once in the air.

This design is will get you close to the top of the leaderboard, but it is not optimal. I encourage you to experiment in order to find a design that suits you. There are other flight vehicles that you can try, and you may even find it to be faster to remove one of the engines. I encourage you to test your flight vehicles in Field of Dreams so that you can more easily check for rotational feedback. You can also try different propulsion mechanisms for the sled (rocket, soda, engines, punch box, or combinations thereof), but be aware that a sled that slides left quickly will require the flight vehicle to reverse its momentum so that it can take off to the right. You can also separately actuate the left and right rockets on the flight vehicle at slightly different times in order to force it to rotate. My best time using a vehicle based on these principles is 18.21 seconds.

Finally, I offer a big thanks to Araldian for collaborating with me on this video. He has done vastly more experimentation with these designs than I have, and he deserves a tremendous amount of credit. He has a time of 17.16 seconds using a vehicle based on the principles in this video.

Bad Piggies: Zero Seconds in Road Hogs R-7 (Fastest Possible Time)

ianxofour 2013-05-11 | You need to use 2 tricks in order get a time of 00:00.00 in Road Hogs level R-7.
1) The game timer doesn't start until after the pig has moved a small, finite distance.
2) Ordinarily, when a vehicle breaks apart, only the portion of the vehicle that remains with the pig can trigger the finish line. However, if you detonate TNT in order to separate portions of the vehicle without breaking any part of it (i.e., there is no "snap" or "krak"), the game still thinks that all of the vehicle's parts remain together.

If the pig doesn't move much as a result of the TNT explosion, the game timer never starts, and the other part of the vehicle is free to traverse the level.

Fortunately, the iOS leaderboard automatically rejects a time of 00:00.00, so it won't count in the rankings. I'm sure many of you can figure out how to get around this, but you really shouldn't go ruining the leaderboard for everyone.

This effect is closely related to hyperdriving, which is described here:
youtube.com/watch?v=7G-Patj1lgo

Here is a closely related video:
youtube.com/watch?v=2P3Hwp56nOc

Bad Piggies: Statue of Liberty

ianxofour 2013-05-04 | The statue is too tall for the starting slate, so I need to piece it together. The balloons to the right of King Pig push him to the left at start up, so that he is better centered with the body. The overhead balloons help lift the top of the statue while also providing horizontal stability. Fire the rocket to light the torch and take a quick photo before the statue tips over.

Bad Piggies: Multiple Rocket Launcher vs. Tank

ianxofour 2013-04-27 | This multiple rocket launcher uses 2 missiles of interesting design that I wanted to share. Both designs are very compact and feature a degree of control so that the missile can be aimed during flight.

The first missile uses a red rocket to lift the missile off of the launcher. Due to the balance of the missile, it tilts forward and accelerates so that the horizontal stabilizer levels the missile again. At this point, the leading red rocket is activated to propel the missile to the target. I use a metal box for the body to intentionally shorten the range of the missile. Use a wooden box instead if you want farther range.

The second missile uses a balloon to control its aim. Balloons stabilize the pitch of whatever they are attached to, so I pop the balloon when I want the missile to pivot toward the target after launch. The stabilization effect of balloons to diluted when additional balloons are used at start up, even if the additional balloons are attached to other objects, or even if they are not attached to anything. As a result, this particular missile works only if there are no other balloons on the starting slate. You can tweak the missile by substituting the wooden box with a metal one. The added weight slows the missile during take off, which allows you to have a total of 2 balloons on the starting slate.

Another interesting feature of the multiple rocket launcher is the brake. Yellow umbrellas will protrude when fully open, so I use a pair of yellow umbrellas under the chassis to bring the launcher vehicle to a complete stop when launching the missiles.

Bad Piggies: A-10 Thunderbolt II Strikes King Pig in APC

ianxofour 2013-04-17 | This plane is designed to mimic the A-10 Thunderbolt II (also known as the Warthog), which is designed for close air support against armored vehicles. There are numerous similarities:

The engine is mounted high so that its exhaust passes by the vertical tail and over the yellow airfoil, which serves as a horizontal stabilizer. In the real A-10, this helps mask the engine's infrared signal from heat-seeking missiles fired from the ground.

The engine is tilted up slightly by contact against the upper wing. The real A-10 also has engines that are mounted at an upward angle. This helps balance the fact that the direction of thrust is above the aerodynamic center of the plane.

The cannon is mounted in the front by the pilot. The TNT explosively propels an "armor-piercing" spring projectile, which actually can phase through materials due to its high speed.

The plane has been designed for low-level flight so that it can effectively target ground vehicles with its cannon.

I demonstrate the A-10 by targeting an armored personnel carrier (APC) carrying King Pig. The outer layer of this APC consists of metal boxes, which provide for a degree of protection. The spring from the A-10 phases through the armor and delivers its kinetic energy directly to the interior of the vehicle, where it blows out the APC engine and ejects King Pig. The plane is out of balance once the weight of the TNT is gone from the front end. This causes the plane to maintain an upward pitch, even when gliding without power. In order to land the plane without stalling, I use an umbrella on the underside of the plane to pitch the nose down.

Bad Piggies: Bomb Squad

ianxofour 2013-04-13 | This vehicle is designed to pick up and move TNT boxes. I demonstrate a "rescue" of King Pig by picking up a dangerously close bomb and moving to a safe distance. This requires you to nudge the King back so that you can get a firm grip on the TNT box. I also show how the vehicle can pick up TNT boxes in a small stack and restack them in a different order. Both of these demonstrations are difficult to perform, so try it for yourself if you enjoy a challenge.

The inverted rotor serves as a brake, and it secures the vehicle to the ground when the arm is being used. The umbrella expands to gently press a TNT box against the protrusion of the airfoil. The umbrella needs to remain folded when the vehicle is in forward motion so that its drag doesn't cause the arm to swing up.

Bad Piggies: Star Wars Podracer

ianxofour 2013-04-09 | This vehicle is designed to mimic a podracer from Star Wars: Phantom Menace. It's actually quite difficult to achieve stable flight with a podracer design because the leading engine units lack horizontal stabilizers. This vehicle maintains its stability by using umbrellas on the pod to pull back on the engines. The podracer is trimmed to fly in a fairly level fashion, and it is designed so that pulling on the upper or lower cable will adjust the pitch of flight. Close the bottom umbrella at start up, so that pressing the umbrella button simultaneously toggles both umbrellas between opposite open/close positions.

Bad Piggies: Square UFO (Flying with Weird Physics)

ianxofour 2013-04-05 | The square UFO is designed to use internal bootstrapping as propulsion. For a description of bootstrapping, please read the video description here:
youtube.com/watch?v=Z_co1u4NuqY

This UFO will behave a little differently each time you start it, so it may take several attempts to get it started. When it has started appropriately, the the drive wheel will shift its position on the umbrella if the UFO pitches up too much. This causes the UFO to pitch down again, which is the feedback mechanism that allows the UFO to fly in an oscillating fashion. The UFO can be controlled, albeit with difficulty. You can close the umbrella if the UFO is pitching down, and this will cause the UFO to glide down until it passively starts to pitch back up. You need to open the umbrella again at this time in order to generate the thrust to prevent stalling. The air bellow can be used to pitch the UFO up, which is actually a way to indirectly cause the UFO to fly down. When the UFO pitches up hard, there is a stronger downward rebound of the pitch afterward, and this rebound can be used to pitch down by closing the umbrella. I know... it's crazy.

Bad Piggies: Tow Trucks

ianxofour 2013-03-29 | These tow trucks all share a similar design. The boom is based on an articulating set of springs and soda bottles that is counterweighted by a V8 engine and a pair of controlling propellers. An inverted rotor is set underneath the tow truck to serve as a brake and to stabilize the truck while the boom is in use.

Each tow truck has a degree of specialization to accomplish a specific task. The first tow truck uses the end spring to latch onto a contrived umbrella bumper on the target vehicle. The connection is reversible, so the vehicle can be dropped off at a later time. The tow truck does not have a reverse drive; I use the momentum of the boom as it is lowered in order to back the tow truck into position.

The second tow truck features a more realistic wheel-lift system that uses a spring to cradle the drive wheel for towing. The unrealistic part, of course, is that you need to drive the target vehicle onto the cradle. To facilitate this, I attach an air bellow on the end, which performs several nearly simultaneous functions when actuated:
1) The air bellow pushes the cradle toward the truck so it is lodged into a secure position with the air bellow angle down. This helps the target vehicle drive onto the air bellow.
2) The air bellow is thinner when actuated so that the target vehicle can more easily drive onto it.
3) The air bellow automatically re-inflates so that it lifts the vehicle up, which allows its wheel to easily drop into the cradle.
A significant drawback to this design is that the connection cannot be readily reversed.

The third tow truck is intended for heavier loads. It uses an umbrella and tiny wheel as a locking mechanism so that the boom doesn't swing back due to the load inertia. The boom has some trouble lifting the heavy load, so there is definitely some room for additional optimization of this design.

Bad Piggies: Extreme Egg Toss

ianxofour 2013-03-23 | This video is the aerial version of a Hail Mary pass:
youtube.com/watch?v=pmnPMbprBOg
The goal is to catch an explosively thrown egg while in the air and return it to solid ground safely. The plane is designed for speed: It has 2 propellers and 4 V8 engines inside a wooden frame; and a take-off sled is used so that the weight of a rear landing gear doesn't slow it down. The springs are used to catch the eggs, and they also help trim the plane for appropriate pitch. Each of the springs can potentially be used for catching the egg, as shown in the video. But beware - it's a dangerous job, and you'll end up crashing spectacularly more often than successfully catching and returning the egg. But it's fun either way.

Bad Piggies: King Pig Hunts Giraffe on Safari (with Shotgun)

ianxofour 2013-03-18 | The giraffe is based on a previous walking vehicle:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHOBz-RJke0

Carmen Les Toreadors previously illustrated the use of tiny wheels as projectiles in Bad Piggies:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDMlnrSjE6U

A pile of tiny wheels serves well as a load of shot for a shotgun, but the pile easily spills if moved around. The pile of wheels can be managed effectively by containing them in a spring as a shotgun shell. The spring is really best suited to hold 3 tiny wheels as shot, but a fourth wheel may be added if desired (for example, using a balloon to deflect it into the spring). This really isn't very advantageous, as the trajectory of the fourth tiny wheel typically deviates significantly from the others. This can be seen in the slow motion replay, as the fourth piece of shot is the only one that misses the giraffe.

Just like in real life, the shotgun is most effective at close range.

Bad Piggies: Road Hogs R-5 Leaderboard Tutorial

ianxofour 2013-03-11 | This is a relatively unrefined design for Road Hogs level R-5. Nonetheless, at the time of release, this is good enough to get a ranking of #5 out of 8000+ players. Just like in R-2, I use a modified Osprey design, which is a particularly fast, responsive, and easy-to-control vehicle:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sRklatkX_o

The small wheel allows the vehicle to rapidly cross the narrow gap near the top by letting the bottom of the vehicle roll against the ground. When it's time to descend, I activate the rotor that is pointed in the downward direction in order to accelerate the descent. The umbrella acts like a brake for this descent, and it rights the vehicle so that I can effectively control the lateral motion again. My best time for this level is 25.31 seconds, but I'm sure it would be easy for others to optimize this vehicle further. The inclusion of rockets, for example, would likely trim a second or more.

Bad Piggies: Road Hogs R-2 (Under 15 Seconds) Leaderboard Tutorial

ianxofour 2013-03-10 | This video shows you how to get to almost the top of the leaderboard for Road Hogs Level R-2. (At the time of release, I am #3 out of 44,000+ players on the iOS Game Center.)

This vehicle is an optimized variant of the original Osprey, which is a particularly versatile vehicle that is easy to fly:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD4xB_JsXEw

The balloons help the vehicle rise more rapidly, and the rockets boost the vehicle's speed in the relatively straight regions of the map. Pop the balloons as you approach the finish line so that you don't overshoot. You can also try adding extra balloons to see if they help you. My best time (14.26 sec) is actually with 8 balloons (4 on each side), but I find this configuration to be significantly harder to control.

Bad Piggies: Road Hogs R-3 (Under 11 Seconds) Leaderboard Tutorial

ianxofour 2013-03-08 | This video shows you how to get to almost the top of the leaderboard for Road Hogs Level R-3. (At the time of release, I am #1 out of 28,000+ players on the iOS Game Center.) I've already made a video showing how to get near the top of the leaderboard for R-1:
youtube.com/watch?v=HQcQnzDKpKw

This video applies the same general concepts. The vehicle is designed to gently bump the ground at start up in order to start the clockwise spin. My best time using the approach shown in this video is 10.34 seconds, but I'm confident that others can get a better time. (The performance for my best time was done before the last update, which introduced leaderboards for R-2 and higher, so the time was not recorded in the iOS leaderboard.)

Bad Piggies: Road Hogs R-1 (Under 11 Seconds) Leaderboard Tutorial

ianxofour 2013-03-05 | This video shows you how to get to almost the top of the leaderboard for Road Hogs Level R-1. (At the time of release, I am #4 out of 323,000+ players on the iOS Game Center.) I've already made a video showing some important considerations for designing fast vehicles, which you can read about here:
youtube.com/watch?v=LnObyoseGow

Now we're going to take those concepts to the extreme.

This vehicle produces a tremendous amount of thrust, but it needs a mechanism for steering. Andrew Haffelder shared with me the brilliant strategy to rotate the vehicle as part of the launch process. This approach is more than just pointing the vehicle at an angle; the vehicle needs to be accelerated slightly more on the left side than on the right, so that the vehicle slowly SPINS clockwise at the start of the flight.

This rotation changes the direction of thrust during the initial take off so that the vehicle can transition to horizontal flight. If the rotation were to continue throughout the course, the vehicle would eventually overrotate and come crashing down. Thankfully, this doesn't happen. I think the wind resistance on the upper half of the vehicle slightly exceeds the resistance on the bottom half. This effect slows the rotation and may eventually reverse the direction of rotation. If you launch everything just right at start up, you can balance the rotation of the vehicle to give the optimal lift and forward motion, and the vehicle will make its way to the finish line in record time. DH Kim has achieved a time of 9.99 seconds using the first vehicle in this video. If you approach the finish line a little too high, you can adjust the trajectory by shutting down the engines as needed.

The last clip shows a concept design for further optimization. I start the level by hovering so that the game timer doesn't start until the booster has fired. The booster then falls away after it is spent. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get an improved time from this strategy yet, and I think it is because the vehicle starts out level instead of angled right. Maybe you can refine the design further (for example, by using an umbrella to steer), or perhaps you'll have better luck.

Bad Piggies: Fast Flight Tips for Road Hogs 1, 3, 4, and 6

ianxofour 2013-03-02 | These vehicles should be able to get you to the top 100 of the leaderboard (as of March 7, 2013), but they are not completely optimized. I wanted to share some of my progress so that others can start improving on these designs. My goal is not just to get 3 stars - There are other vehicles that are much easier to fly if 3 stars is all you are interested in. Here are some considerations for designing extremely fast vehicles:

Flying lets you take a more direct path to the finish line, so it is faster than staying on the road. Try to keep a smooth trajectory for the whole trip. This minimizes the distance you need to travel.

Just about everything you put on the vehicle will increase its overall drag, so be careful about what you chose to attach. For example, you can usually make a separate device to help your vehicle get in the air so that it doesn't need to carry a landing gear.

The vehicle should be made of wood, not metal, in order to minimize weight. You'll probably have every box filled with either the pig or an engine. This is the "tissue box" principle that has been successful on PiGineering.

Rockets are very good at accelerating at low speeds, but they don't do much when you are already at high speed. Their drag slows you down when they aren't in use, so it would be great to find an elegant way to let the rockets fall away after they are spent. I tend to use rockets early in order to get to "cruising altitude."

The timer doesn't start until after the pig has moved a short distance, so it can be beneficial to set up your vehicle so that the pig doesn't shift his position much at start up. This is particularly important if you use rockets or soda bottles to launch because the rockets/soda don't start firing until a couple seconds after you activate them. It is usually best to coordinate the starting of other propulsion mechanisms (like the propeller) to match the firing of the rockets/soda.

Try different configurations of your vehicle to see what variants tend to offer better performance. I like how the vehicles in this video flex during flight to help generate lift.

Try different arrangements of the pig and engines inside the wooden boxes to see what gives the best balance and speed.

Memorize the map, so you already know what's coming. As you fly, use the landmarks and the background to gauge your elevation. Clouds are great elevation markers, and this is critically important when flying through R-6. It's like shooting a bullet through a needle.

Here are some ideas for possible improvement:
Adjust the steering to be more responsive. This minimizes the amount of time that the umbrella is open (when it produces the most drag).
Perhaps you can avoid putting the pig in a box, so you don't have to waste weight/drag just to hold the pig. I'm not sure if the pig has more or less drag when it is outside of a box.
Have a booster stage(s) that falls away, or make a launching device.