I am in the process of constructing a squid farm and have encountered some frustratingly low spawn rates thus far. I have set up a 20 block x 20 block, water filled area which is 16 blocks high. It was built between levels 46 and 62 which is the standard Minecraft squid spawning range. The squids fall through a barrier of signs at the bottom and drop 26 blocks to their death where their ink sacs are collected by a series of hoppers. The farm is located in a desert biome and is over 80 blocks away from the nearest natural water source. The surrounding surface area has been slabbed out 64 blocks in any direction to prevent mob spawning and I have also meticulously illuminated surrounding caverns with torches. Empire Minecraft mob spawning limits state that "Mobs are limited to spawning in clusters of 2. A cluster size is 20 blocks X/Z, and 16 Y. If there are 2 monsters within the cluster of where an entity is trying to spawn, the spawn will be cancelled. Natural spawning will continue until every player has 90 monsters in their range." Do these rules also apply for non-hostile entity spawning? I have satisfied all of these conditions and yet sometimes I go for painfully long periods of time with no squids spawning at all even while standing at an AFK location 30 blocks away. Am I missing something? If so, is there anyone out there more technically savvy than myself who can illuminate for me what I am doing wrong? Thanks!
Passive mobs follow those rules... mostly. However, squids are more... complicated. A few things to note 1. Passive mobs spawn on EMC are on a 100 block radius of the player (99% certain on this) 2. Squids share a world spawn check - I'm assuming you built this in the frontier. So, if another person is in the frontier and near water to spawn squid ANYWHERE on the map, it will affect your spawn rate. Whether they are 200 blocks away or 200,000 blocks away, this will happen. 3. I don't know your farm design, but squids are no longer affected by downwards currents, they have to hit a dry spot of air and fall naturally. 4. The cluster spawning rules on EMC are the biggest link to low farm rates here. Basically, either go big with the farm, or figure a way to make them clear the 20 block distance from farm quickly.
Thanks for the info. My design does allow the squids to drop out of the water area from the sides as well as the bottom so generally they don't swim around too long. But even with the area completely empty of squids sometimes they still don't spawn for long periods of time. I suspect the world spawn check and 100 block passive mob spawning radius are playing a role here. Looks like the best I can do for now is to fill all natural water areas out to 100 blocks and expand the scope of the farm as you have said to increase spawn probability.
Given the information above in the old posts regarding squids I accepted that their spawning rate is probably never going to be particularly high. World spawn check would prevent that. But I was able to create a squid farm with lower spawn rates that was at least functional. If you were patient and used AFK effectively it worked just fine. However, I'm bumping my post back to the top because now something seems to have changed and rendered it useless. No matter how long I wait there are no squids spawning whatsoever. I slabbed out a very large area and the local entity count is only 1. The water blocks are at the appropriate vertical level of 46-62. But there zero squids spawning. Zilch. Has there been some sort of change to the vanilla settings on EMC recently which might have caused this? At the moment I am completely stumped as to why it is happening.
My squid farm currently works (slowly, but it works). I don't think any changes have happened recently that messed with mob spawns.
Squid stop swimming if they are not close to player. You'll see this as a squid 'standing' straight in the water. When they spawn they get an initial burst of motion then go to sleep. For my squid farm I have a rail that cycles around to wake the sleepy ones. Having this rail meant I had to clear an even wider area of mobs.
Hmm. https://empireminecraft.com/wiki/changes-from-vanilla-minecraft/ As of November 2017 water entities are still not affected by entity activation ranges and the spawning limits and density checks appear to be the same. Dunno. I'm going to experiment with a circular AFK rail around the perimeter of the water blocks and see if that helps.
I did a farm too, and it is loaded when I am at my mob farm. It gives a few ink sack, not much, but enough for my needs. For more, you can go the grand-pa way : go for your swimsuit, eventually a few potions to see in the dark of the depth and stop the need to breath air, and go crazy on these squids with your super looting slicer. It's quite fun, quite efficient, and in no time you'll get all you need !
