Mob trap rarely spawning

[Pentagram]

So I finally got round to building a mob trap (Around surface - y=62).
The collection point is at y=37.

I am getting spawns, but they're very rare, even when I'm ~100 blocks away
Does anyone know why? :/
Sometimes I can go around 20 minutes without anything spawning in there. I've lit up every single cave to my knowledge for a huge area around (to the point where Rei's minimap looks no different during the night.
I'm not getting any spawns in the minimaps range, so I don't think that's it.

Picture of 1 mob trap layer: ~100 spawning areas.

Image

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Thanks.

Edit: Just a note, there are 10 spawning layers

[BrainNoMore]

This is probably excess question, but did you light up caves?

edit: im sorry i didnt read it good

[Pentagram]

This is probably excess question, but did you light up caves?

I've lit up every single cave to my knowledge for a huge area around (to the point where Rei's minimap looks no different during the night.

:/

[BrainNoMore]

yeah sry once again i must be blind :P

[Itamarcu]

It happens to me too. I have no idea why.

Sometimes, though, I get "boosts" for a short while. You might want to light up all the caves in 100 block range of YOU (when you're waiting for spawns), not the trap, to minimize number of spawnable surfaces.

[Pentagram]

Yeah I seem to get dry patches then suddenly about 30 mobs, then another dry patch :| It's quite irritating.
I've had another look around (up to about 200 blocks away in a sphere) but everywhere seemed lit. I threw down a few more torches for the hell of it though

[Battosay]

How many more entities do you get when you switch from peacefull to another difficulty ?
If you have the usual +100 or so, it means that they still spawn somewhere else.
Also, try to walk around in the mobtrap, to see the Light levels, maybe there's some lighting issue.
(that's the BL value in the F3 mode)

[kazerima]

My current plans for a mobtrap is to dig out a 100 by 100 block crater from surface to bedrock, then fill in or light up everything inside it before building the tower at the very center.

[Rianaru]

Have fun with digging a hole for the rest of your life :P
I don't know if you know how long it takes to dig out a space from sea level to bedrock, but I did a 40x40 once and it took my over 24 hours in game. Granted I was using stone pickaxes because I didn't want to waste more valuable resources, but still. That's going to be a helluva long time digging out that hole.

[Mrchaim]

Have fun with digging a hole for the rest of your life :P
I don't know if you know how long it takes to dig out a space from sea level to bedrock, but I did a 40x40 once and it took my over 24 hours in game. Granted I was using stone pickaxes because I didn't want to waste more valuable resources, but still. That's going to be a helluva long time digging out that hole.

Industrial grade mining-charge production makes this a lot more palatable, just saying.

(Well, that and a sand-generator for quickly filling in lakes and lava pools of various kinds. And a bunch of block dispeners rigged up in a mining array.

[Rake]

I have the same issues sometimes with having hardly any mobs in sight. I also use Rei's minimap so I can turn on mob indicators to see exactly where they are spawning. There's been times that I've had fewer than 5 mobs visible in a ~100 block range around me. I haven't looked at F3 during that, but if I can't see them, the trap should be filling quickly. Then there's times where I have a ton of mobs in the trap. I do figure I still have some lighting up to do, but I have most of the stuff within 120 blocks of the trap lit up. I've just chalked up the weird spawning to the game's bugginess. It doesn't bother me too much because I'm starting over for 1.3 on an island and putting the trap out in the water so I dont have to worry about surface spawns at night.

Are the rest of you getting consistent output from traps, or is it pretty erratic at times?

[Pentagram]

I've found that the only mobs within ~120 blocks of my spawner that aren't spawning inside have been enderman. One or two creepers, so I've lit up those areas, but mainly enderman.

I'm going to hazard a guess and say that this is because my spawner has only 2 block height so they're looking for somewhere else to spawn/teleport to.

[kaikalii]

I would say you need not just 100 but a 128 block radius around the center of your trap to be lit up. Also, if you're not against it, I would recommend building an x-ray machine to find any caves that you missed.

[Last_Jedi_Standing]

The picture's pretty dark, but it looks like you've got a lot of half-slabs in there. Mobs can't spawn on those.

[Battosay]

That's to prevent spider spawning ;)

[DocHussey]

Hey Pentagram, I was having a similar issue, I discovered that if I built in a checkerboard shape, with one color being a spawnable surface and the other being vine traps, it worked better. Irregardless, my own issue seemed to be that the mobs would spawn and just "happen" to walk around the vine traps... Pathing my ass... But yeah, try that.

[odranoel]

i came to make a thread about this when i found this one! :p

i have a medium sized standard design trap, built on a large lake surrounded by mountains. with a 26 block high 4x4 (2x2 middle empty space) glass shaft in the middle and the standard 9 blocks out in every direction form that shaft. (8 for the water flow to the hole plus 1 for the surrounding walls.) so basically a 20 block wide wide cube with two levels of spawning pads. no too much not too little.


as far as i can tell i have lite up the majority of the caves around and underground. now i do get spawns but as i read some other people mention, my spawns are rather "erratic". like i start to get a nice little flow. and then they just stop. then little by little one or two will fall. and then it speeds up a lil bit, say a burst of 10 or 15, then stops again. id say its about ten minutes between cycle or so , im not sure, but i have to wait a few minecraft days to get a good amount of drops. (by good i mean like one or two stacks of gun powder or rotten flesh/bones.)

im am not sure if its because my trap is too small? or if their is some weird spawning element going on here. but as i see im not the only one getting these issues it my be a MC spawn issue. however in all this time i have only gotten 3 arcane scrolls, since they were introduced.(two blast protection, one smite) i imagine they weren't meant to be THAT rare, so i must not be spawning enough mobs. perhaps my trap is too small as well as some other spawning weirdness?

[Rake]

It shouldn't matter too much what the trap looks like. A potential spawning block is a potential spawning block. My trap is the same style as Pentagram's, with a few more spawning blocks around the edges, but only 4 floors for the time being.

We're not saying the trap isn't killing the mobs, but that they aren't even spawning in it, or anywhere, consistently. When I can look at a fully zoomed out minimap, at night, and see maybe 5 mobs on it, something is buggy with the game.

[Pentagram]

Thanks for all the replies guys, I'm glad to know it's not just me!
Hopefully it's not anything to do with FC's tweaks to mobs (if they're >30 blocks away they can still move) to re-enable spawners such as these.. (here) - just don't post there, would be Major necro lol.

It seemed to pick up after a while, I was getting mobs for around 5 minutes, then it stopped for around half an hour!

I have ran around the map finding any red dots on the minimap (Rei's Minimap indicator for mobs) and they're just endermen (Who can't spawn in my trap due to it being 2 high)

[Pentagram]

I've gone to the dark side, figuratively speaking.
Backed up my world.
I have used MCEdit to delete all torches from my world.
Selected all of my map which is generated(Ctrl + A)
I then used MCEdit to add torches 5 spaces away from bedrock to surface using a filter I found online.

If this doesn't sort out the mob spawning... I'm going to guess there's a problem!


EDIT: Yeah that worked. Looks like it's just small caves that are missing though. I guess the radius wasn't large enough when I lit up before..
*throws a chest of coal into lava to make up for the torches*