Viability of Lava Blade Mobtrap?

[MaxAstro]

So I'm lucky enough in my current world to have surface lava right near my base, with a nearby lake well above the level of the lava. As such, I'm considering using a lava blade as the killing point of my mobtrap.

I've never built such a trap before, and I was wondering if it has any major shortcomings I should be aware of? Obviously it won't work on endermen, but properly built it should catch spiders just fine, correct?

Is there any compelling reason to use a wall of saws instead?

[FlowerChild]

Main thing, which doesn't happen with saws, is that lava tends to burn a portion of your drops.

[DiamondArms]

I can think of two issues

1) spiders will climb into the lava and incinerate themselves(and their drops), since they're only 1-high.

2) light from the lava will fill the interior of your mobtrap.

Lava is an interesting (and cheap) way to set up the killing area, but it is also more likely to destroy some drops. Saws don't burn items, after all.

Also worth noting is to cover all flammable surfaces near your killing zone, as lava in close proximity tends to cause things to light up, in a bad way.

[erikdk321]

It might burn vinetraps as well.

[ion]

while in vanilla MC the lava blade was a must, in BTW is faster to set up a saw for killing that to channel lava to your mob killing place ( or you just build it over existing lava). also only the drops from one block high mobs may be burned by a lava blade. all the other mob drops are unaffected by it.

[grimper12341]

The portion of drops it burns isn't a whole lot. One of my old worlds still uses a trap with a lava blade, and it burns maybe 1 in 10 if that, which is more than made up by the high output of the trap itself. If you have that nice resource right there, I don't see any reason not to use it.

[Dorugami]

No one really likes spiders in their traps most of the time anyway. The only issue I can see is the light. That's gonna cut a butt-ton of spawn from your trap.

[ion]

No one really likes spiders in their traps most of the time anyway. The only issue I can see is the light. That's gonna cut a butt-ton of spawn from your trap.

you can just make the lava blade some blocks away. the light from lava wasn't an issue at all.

[EtherealWrath]

You could do it- with a water channel pushing mobs into the lava (keeping the light/fire out of your trap).

It'll save a fair bit of gold, and I considered it myself (several lava/water lakes next to my place)- but I went for saws; effective lava blades require gimmicky stuff like suspending it on signs/ladders/partblocks.

[SterlingRed]

Way back in the day probably in alpha, I build a lava blade trap that filtered the spiders out before the lava due to their size. I used cactus to kill them. Of course, that also caused me to loose some of their drops but it solved some of the clogging problems I had.

[MaxAstro]

Thanks for the advice, guys. I'm planning on building my mobtrap fairly early in the tech tree - I'm gonna use my first cauldron as the collector for it, so I will be a ways short of saws.

It's sounding like most of the drawbacks can be worked around - the light and flammables are a non-issue since I can solve the first by having a large drop from the spawn pads and the second by having a large drop to the item collection zone.

I've also got a really nice fishing spot near my base, so it's sounding like the advantage of having a good supply of rotten meat is going to be worth the drawbacks of the lower-tech trap.

And I can always reroute the lava and upgrade to saws later.

The spider clogging IS an issue, though. Might built the trap to exclude spider spawns, although I was hoping not to go that route, especially since FC is making noises about improving spider drops...