Ghast Farm

Ghast Farm
About
Owner	abamacus
Category	Infrastructure
Underground?	No
Public?	Yes
Size north to south	65m
Size west to east	65m
Height	94+m
Location
Coordinates	X=-1456 Y=128 Z=2383
Dimension	Nether
Map Link

This public Ghast farm is in the shape of a giant Ghast, above the Nether roof. It was built by  abamacus in June 2023, with help from  Alyssa41096,  bartek_kx,  AdoreKitten (and briefly a few others). It can spawn all of the "normal" nether mobs, and in "AFK mode" will kill them all but is very slow, especially for Ghast drops which produce approximately 5-10 per hour. Alternately, a player can use a Bow in offhand to gain Looting III bonus, and use a [Lift] to despawn mobs instantly when no ghasts are present. When this is done efficiently in decent TPS, it can yield over 5 Ghast Tear per minute.

Access

For Nether+ kit, use /tpto -1456 4 2383 nether for quick access to the farm. (this is the despawn-lift destination underneath it by bedrock) For all other players:

• take Nexus Light-Blue 1 to Newport
• go through the Nether portal, which is 30m ahead and to the right
• move east-northeast 14m, just left of the stairs, use the [Lift Up] To Nether Roof
• turn around and follow the torch path, between the two tiny Brick pillars, 128m to the West
• take the [Lift Up] Ghast Farm sign

This is the item-collection room. From here you can take a [Lift] to kill with a bow, or a different [Lift] to the AFK room.

Mob Spawning Cap

Note that this Ghast farm operates entirely on naturally-spawned mobs. Therefore this is affected greatly by the presence of any other players in the Nether dimension. Any player in the Nether below height ~240 will cause mobs to spawn in their area. As normal, those more than 32m from that player will despawn randomly, but quite slowly. This means the much faster kill/respawn or despawn/respawn used in this farm will be dragged down to the rate of those mobs being randomly despawned.

Therefore, it is strongly recommended that any player attempting to use this farm first use the /nearestplayer command, and if anyone else is in the Nether, probably do not bother.

Alternately, the speed of this farm could be increased slightly by another player loading chunks in the nether, while near Y=256 at another location. This is due to how the total number of mobs within the mobs cap varies with the number of loaded chunks.

Design

The whole mob farm is built inside a 65x65x65 box, made to look like the body of a Ghast. In the middle along each wall are 8 floors with 4 blocks of air between them, so maximize (relatively) spawnable blocks for Ghast.

The two modes are AFK and Active. Which mode is active is determined by if a player is inside the AFK room using "Is player near?" (MCZ118).

In AFK mode:

• The floors all cycle, one disappearing at a time, to drop all mobs to the cactus below.
  • Placed/removed with Bridge (MCX208). The cycle is controlled by one very slow Clock (MC0420), which triggers in turn 8 MCU440 which each have ~1/8th the duration of the clock.
• Chest collectors around the cactus pick up items into 8 Chests.
• A single minecart travels a loop, using CartDeposit and CartCollect to bring all items into the middle area, where they are sorted into chests by item type. Cactus and some other items may over-fill the chests, and these items are automatically burned in lava using Dispenser (MCX202) activated on a slow Clock (MC0420).
• When a Ghast is detected (MCZ119), then all the space between floors is instantly filled with Stone with many Bridge (MCX207).

In Active mode:

• The floors do not cycle. When many mobs are present, the player should use the [Lift Down] DESPAWN MOBS.
• Collectors (MCZ203) are present on all floors, placing items into an additional 16 chests. (these are also collected via the normal minecart loop)
• When a Ghast is detected (MCZ119):
  • the Redstone Lamp under the player turns on
  • White Glass walls disappear (Door MCX208)
  • all floors disappear, removing any potential barrier between the player and the Ghast
• After all Ghasts are killed, the light turns back off and the walls are placed once more, at which time the player may wait several seconds to see if another spawns, or just take the Despawn Lift immediately.
• There is one additional purely manual feature, by right-clicking the Redstone Lamp near the player labeled SHIELDS UP!. This places/removes a barrier of White Glass immediately around the player, and can be used to block a Ghast's Fireball, or to take a moment to heal, go afk, etc.

Trivia

The "height" of this build is complicated.

• The main box of the farm is 65 blocks high
• 66 if you count the Carpet on the top
• 94 if you count the tentacles
• 248 blocks if you count the Despawn Lift -- both down to bedrock, and the small platform above.