Blaze Balloon
 Blaze Balloon
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| About | |
|---|---|
| Owner |  abamacus &  Hornacious
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| Category | Infrastructure |
| Underground? | No |
| Public? | Yes |
| Size north to south | 30m |
| Size west to east | 30m |
| Height | 29m |
| Location | |
| Coordinates | X=2100 Y=32 Z=-100 |
| Dimension | Nether |
| Map Link | |
This public Blaze Rod farm was built by abamacus in October and November 2022. It can spawn almost the maximum number of Blaze mobs from a single spawner, so approximately 400 per hour at maximum TPS. (this number is estimated purely on the claims of other farms, and was not tested in MCO). On average TPS with Looting III, the farm can produce ~3 stacks of blaze rods per hour.
Access
The build is best visible from the "ground" around Nether coordinates <2086, 32, -116>. The main killing-floor on the balloon is at Y=56.
Here is the fastest way to reach the farm from /spawn.
- Take the Nexus to Orange 2 Borderlands
- Enter the Nether Portal
- Conventional travel:
- Take the [Lift Down] (on the Obsidian blocks)
- Run North 220m to Z=0, then North-by-North-East another 135m
- Take the [Lift Up] sign once
- Nether Roof:
- Take the [Lift Up]
- Travel directly to <2085, 130, -118>
- Take the [Lift Down] four times
- NOTE: one of these is an unsafe lift; if you are not standing entirely inside the block of the [Lift Down] sign, you may fall inside the blaze farm, where you cannot escape without either griefing or teleportation. Sadly the only solution to this would reduce the efficiency of the mob farm, which was deemed an unacceptable trade-off.
- Take the slightly offset [Lift Up] sign which is on a Red Nether Brick.
To get back to your safe Overworld home, take the [Lift Down] signs back to Y=6 where there is a convenient Nether Portal back to Overworld location <16630, 21, -921>. Players with Obsidian Kit will prefer to use this destination for quick access to the Blaze farm.
Description
There is a mob spawner in the top-middle of the inside of a "hot air balloon". Blazes fall down into the "basket" where the player manually kills them.
The balloon (outside) is Wool in colors of Yellow, Orange, Red, Purple, and Blue. The basket underneath it (outside) is Red Nether Brick with Iron Bars on top. Some distance around the balloon is stained glass depicting a ring of fire. (This was left over from a previous incarnation, but fit the theme well so was left in place.)
A series of lifts allows inspecting most of the build, as well as access to the Nether Roof above it all the way down to Y=6 for tunnel access and a Nether Portal.
Construction
The mob spawner is protected with glass blocks; otherwise the spawnable area is open air to maximize Blaze spawning. There are no blocks under this for several blocks, so the Blazes will fall outside of the 9x9x9 area which can prevent further mob spawning.
Below this, each 2 levels there are pistons on opposite walls, to push the mobs from North and South towards the middle, then from East and West towards the middle, until they all fall into a single space for simplest killing. It is raised slightly with an Iron Trapdoor to prevent the Blazes from targeting you the player, who can kill them from the ground at your leisure.
This killing-floor is at the maximum distance such that the player may stand at any point on this floor, and still keep the mob spawner activated.
There is a button which will suffocate the mobs in that one space for 42 ticks, which will almost but not quite kill a Blaze mob who was at full health, leaving 2 hit points left. The player is expected to manually kill the mobs with a Sword enchanted with Looting III, which will quadruple the number of Blaze Rods compared to an unenchanted weapon. (automatically killed Blazes will not drop any Blaze Rods)
CraftBook
The CraftBook which operates the Pistons, suffocation, and collection is all under the killing-floor, inside the "basket" of the "hot air balloon".
Piston Mechanics
- A single MC0420 Clock is set to activate or de-activate every 20 ticks.
- The primary "on" signal will control a MC1110 Transmitter on shortband "blazeballoon1".
- Conversely: a Redstone Torch is placed on the same block as the MC0420, causing the opposite signal to control a MC1110 Transmitter on shortband "blazeballoon2".
Suffocation Mechanics
- Player may press a Button on the killing floor, which activates MC1110 Transmitter on shortband "blazesuffocation".
- Under the floor inside the basket, MC0111 Receiver on shortband "blazesuffocation" triggers activation of MCU440 MONOFLOP
- The MCU440 will activate a MCX208 Advanced Door for a fixed amount of time, placing 2 blocks above -- one in the area of the Blaze head, and one directly above that block.
Collection Mechanics
- The killing floor contains a single Shulker Box, into which all Blaze Rods dropped in the area will be placed.
- A single MCZ203 Collector is placed under it to perform this collection.
- The Shulker Box is preferred here over a Chest, because all of the MCX207 and MCX208 signs will ignore the Shulker Box, but the MCZ203 can be directed to place items into it via coordinate offsets.
Craftbook Notes
All Transmitters and Receivers use a UUID wideband to prevent interference.
For MCU440, in-game it shows line 3 as set to "7:6:7:7", which is curious, since it was creating by setting line 3 to "7:6:1".
For MCU440, there should be an option to invert the output signal with a "mode" on the sign.
- According to Craftbook#Modifiers this should be possible with [MCU440]!.
- According to https://cbx.fandom.com/wiki/MCU440#Optional_Modes it should be possible with [MCU440]+.
- However, neither of these seems to have any effect on the signal produced by MCU440.
- Therefore, a Redstone Torch on the side of the block is used to invert the signal instead.
History
Hornacious had the claim to this mob spawner, not a "farm" but just a closed off area surrounding it. They gave abamacus full permission to build a Blaze farm at this location, provided that they never lost access to get Blaze Rods from the build.
The first version was loosely modeled on Anna_28's build, using pressure plate activated pistons. The look was all fire and darkness based. A primary problem with this was the height of the pressure plate and piston design, which was 3 blocks per layer rather than 2, so that a player at the kill-level would not activate the mob spawner itself.
A completely separate design was tried in October, with a box of size 11x(40?)x11 with minecarts. This had many issues specific to minecarts, and was ultimately abandoned. It was since determined that the current "balloon" design is equal or superior to the minecart design in every way.