Source
r/technicalminecraft•
puddyput

Playerless XP smelter

Java

Please help me fact check this concept:

I plan to set up a chunk loaded fully automated Azalea tree farm using bonemeal from a moss block farm and a TNT duper for mining the logs. As far as I know both can run in a chunk loaded area without a player present because of using bonemeal instead of random ticks for growing and the Azalea tree does not need the player to plant a sapling. The logs farmed by this can be fuel for a furnace array. I'm thinking of smelting up raw chickens as they are easy to farm. Chicken lay eggs when in a loaded chunk, so again no player needed. Smelting the chicken puts 0.35xp into the furnace. I did not do the maths (anyone feels up to it?) but am thinking that when running this 24/7 on the server I should be able to easily supply a few furnaces with fuel and chickens as a reliable xp source for mending my gear every other day.

What are your thoughts, am I missing something?

Posted Aug 19, 2022, 9:56 PM UTC

912
CaCl2•

For any permanently loaded farm lag-efficiency is important, that many chicken would be pretty laggy to load 24/7.

One alternative option would be to use bonemeal to grow kelp and smelt that. The xp isn't good but unlike making charcoal it works in a smoker for double speed smelting. Stone and basalt would be easy but low-xp options if you already have a TNT duper for the logs. Sea pickles are also a possibility but I'm not sure if they would have any advantages compared to kelp.

Bamboo grown by bonemeal could also be used as fuel instead of logs, bamboo isn't a great fuel but playerless azalea farms tend to be very inefficient in terms of bonemeal. If you want to use azalea it would probably be worth it to convert the logs to charcoal before using them as fuel even if you then also smelt some other item for more xp. (Using some of the charcoal as the fuel for the conversion)

One thing that can be a bit tricky is balancing the fuel and smeltable item production so that there isn't too much waste.

2
puddyputOP•

Thanks very much for your thoughts! Guess I'll actually look into bamboo + kelp instead I think, or maybe start with stone to see how well the bonemeal production can keep up.. But this seems like more reliable plans than my initial one already

1
FlyingHippocampJava 1.19.0•

The amount of chickens necessary to get any useful amount of xp would lag out any server. Here's some quick napkin math for what it would take to get 1 xp/min (1000 times less than an enderman afk farm):

  • 1 xp/min = 60 xp/hr
  • 1 raw chicken = 0.35xp, so 60 xp/hr = 180 raw chicken/hr
  • 1 chicken mob drops 1 raw chicken, so thats 180 chickens you need to kill per hr
  • chickens grow from baby to adult in 20 minutes, 20/60 = 1/3 so youd need 60 chickens alive at a time

So thats 60 entities in your world you'd need for every 1 xp/min you want. If you wanted your furnace xp farm to be 10x worse than an enderman farm, thats 6000 entities.

As for suggestions: your options are pretty much either kelp or cactus. For kelp, you can make a bonemeal farm, and while each kelp only gives 0.1 xp, you can make a pretty sizable farm without causing much lag. For cactus you would need to afk it, because cactus growth requires random ticks, but the upside is that cactus is the most efficient renewable xp source for smelting in the game at 1 xp/item.

2
puddyputOP•

Thanks, you're really putting it into perspective

2
FlyingHippocampJava 1.19.0•

I did the math because i wanted to be wrong. A good source of xp that doesnt require the player to be there sounds great and i wish it was realistic. If you're interested in what large scale cactus xp farms look like, check ilmango's SciCraft Peaceful series, i remember they did a huge one.

1
useful_person•

There's a playerless exp farm made by Dark on YouTube that uses villagers to harvest potatoes grown by bonemeal. Potatoes give 0.35 xp per potato if I remember right, so while it's not as good as cactus, it's definitely much better than stone or oak. If you hook up a bonemeal farm to a bamboo farm (or the azalea farm if you still want wood anyway), then that's the fuel issue solved as well.

Edit: in addition, it requires 9000 xp/hr to sustain a tool that's instantly mining as many blocks as possible per tick, so good idea to keep that number in mind.

1
puddyputOP•

I don't think you can bonemeal potatoes so that would require a player for them to grow, but thanks for your input!

-1
useful_person•

You can bonemeal potatoes with dispensers

3
HydroloxBomb•

This design is similar to what you described: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DYjXE2bcwZ8 It's fully player less and can act as a food source.

1
Carnage808OG•

i think chickens require a player (random ticks) to grow

you could just smelt the wood to charcoal

0
CaCl2•

Random ticks are for blocks, chicken are entities.

2
puddyputOP•

Oh right, I totally forgot they need to grow. Charcoal would make thinks easier to build, but less xp.. Thanks for the idea!

1