Vine farm seems really slow?

[Six]

I'm not sure if I'm missing something in the vine growth mechanics, but my vine farm seems to be producing at a pretty slow rate. It's 16 saws, placed as shown below:

Spoiler

Show

Looking at one wall -


Looking at the other wall -

Even having bumped it up to 16 saws, it looks like it will take a loooong time to produce enough vinetraps for my mob farm. Any suggestions?

[Eriottosan]

Either make it massive or go crazy with a heck load of shears in you nearest swamp. I tend to prefer the latter, though I've been unable to play with the changes to iron yet, so that may not be an option premobtrap

[savagelung]

I also set up a vine farm for my first mob farm. It was modestly sized, requiring 64 vine traps per spawn layer and having a dozen total spawn layers. When I realized how slowly my vine farm was producing, I went and farmed them manually from a nearby jungle, which was exceedingly tedious. In the end, I farmed about 30 stacks of vines manually, and the rest were collected by the vine farm.

IIRC, vines have a small chance of growing when scheduled for an update during a block tick, and there are no techniques to speed up their growth. I can't say that with certainty, but that was all I could find in 10 minutes of research.

[Six]

Yeah, even a modest trap tends to require about a stack of vinetraps per floor, which equates to 3 stacks of vines. I set up some manual harvesting after seeing how slow the automated farm was going, which gives me around 2 stacks of vines per harvest:

Spoiler

Show

This is viable with iron recycling, but still takes about 30 minutes to an hour between harvests, and is really time consuming for less than a stack of traps per harvest.

[TheGatesofLogic]

Don't forget six, signs still work as an alternative(albeit ugly and gamey) way to get mobs to fall down the trap paths

[savagelung]

Don't forget six, signs still work as an alternative(albeit ugly and gamey) way to get mobs to fall down the trap paths

I don't know whether vine traps are tile entities, but I believe signs are, which can cause considerable lag in large numbers.

I definitely wouldn't recommend going into the jungle or a swamp like I did the first time.. If you're in the mob trap stage, you likely have a branch mine going as well. Go down old shafts and spread vines down the side, then go do something else before going back to collect them. Your mine should have ample space for placing vines, and it should be relatively safe. This strategy worked quite well for me with my second trap.

[The Phoenixian]

I've been given advice in the past to the point that you can in fact speed up the rate at which vines grow. The trick is that Vines can grow on multiple walls within the same block space, and that the vine on each wall will grow as it's own distinct entity.

I haven't had a chance to do an efficiency comparison myself, or if I have I've forgotten the results, but you may want to experiment with it.

[Six]

I've been given advice in the past to the point that you can in fact speed up the rate at which vines grow. The trick is that Vines can grow on multiple walls within the same block space, and that the vine on each wall will grow as it's own distinct entity.

I haven't had a chance to do an efficiency comparison myself, or if I have I've forgotten the results, but you may want to experiment with it.

Sounds like more Minecraft myths. Just tested it and they can only exist on a single wall, and if placed on another wall in the same block, the orientation gets changed. I think this myth might come from the fact that if there is a solid block above the block the vine is in, it will also appear to be 'growing' on the underside of that.

[The Phoenixian]

I've been given advice in the past to the point that you can in fact speed up the rate at which vines grow. The trick is that Vines can grow on multiple walls within the same block space, and that the vine on each wall will grow as it's own distinct entity.

I haven't had a chance to do an efficiency comparison myself, or if I have I've forgotten the results, but you may want to experiment with it.

Sounds like more Minecraft myths. Just tested it and they can only exist on a single wall, and if placed on another wall in the same block, the orientation gets changed. I think this myth might come from the fact that if there is a solid block above the block the vine is in, it will also appear to be 'growing' on the underside of that.

Nah, it's possible to place them that way, the guy who told me about it knew what he was doing there, but you have to let them grow into position rather than placing them manually.

Like so:

Spoiler

Show

If I recall correctly, you can also use the ceiling growth the spread them onto nearby walls but the vine spread algorithm has some problems with that which means there's quite a lot of babysitting involved.

[Rianaru]

Yeah, vine farms are just slow...just go crazy and make a huge one :) Took me two towers with ten rows of saws each, each row having 7 or 8 saws before I was seeing the kind of output that I wanted, but I was using it for a truly MASSIVE mob farm(50x50 footprint, maybe three or four dozen floors, etc.). Of course, that was before I knew that the best way to maximize mobtrap output is to light up the area

[Sarudak]

The problem with making a huge vine farm is that you need A LOT of iron for all the saws. And of course the way to get a lot of iron now is with mob farms. And of course for a mob farm you need A LOT of vine traps. Unless of course you're making a mob farm that's not dependent on vine traps in which case why are you making vine traps. I know for me this circular dependency has led me to give up on the idea of ever building a vine farm and I just end up shearing them by hand. It's boring but I have so many more important uses for the iron.

Yeah, vine farms are just slow...just go crazy and make a huge one :) Took me two towers with ten rows of saws each, each row having 7 or 8 saws before I was seeing the kind of output that I wanted, but I was using it for a truly MASSIVE mob farm(50x50 footprint, maybe three or four dozen floors, etc.). Of course, that was before I knew that the best way to maximize mobtrap output is to light up the area

Exactly what I mean. That's 160 saws. Or 480 iron. That's 67 stacks of iron ore! No way I'm going to have that kind of iron before I already have a massive mob farm setup. I would rather just grab some shears and spend an hour in a jungle/swamp and get an inventory full of vines.

[FlowerChild]

Multi-task man. Just because you are working on a mob-farm doesn't mean you absolutely have to finish all of it in one go. If you have even a small vine farm (I think mine only has 8 Saws), the vines stack up like crazy while you do other things. Also, it can be built in stages. Build some, start collecting iron from it, expand your vine farm, etc.

Yes, of course if you just sit there and wait for the vines to grow, you may as well go do it manually. The advantage of the automated system is it allows you to work on other stuff while they amass.

[Rianaru]

I was always a fan of building a mobtrap at the same time as a vine farm. Get the first part going manually, then use the iron you get out of it for more saws, get more vines, etc.