[Tutorial Video] Simple Rapid Fire Dart Trap Batteries (Practical Wire Guide)

ZeroGravitas

The Destroyer
For those on the 1.3.0 UPDATE, please see this new guide with updated designs.

Notes on how the 1.3.0 update affects this guide:

  • Dart (and super dart) trap cooldown times have been increased from 3s to 3.33s (200 ticks). This breaks the firing pattern of all the designs shown below (with no darts firing half the time). Designs using faster mob types may be fixed by using a 1s timers instead and lengthening the plate run (increasing the number of traps). Alternatively, you will need to find the best plate in the run to wire back to the statue to automatically re-trigger a new mob after just over 3.33s (in place of the timer, like Diceman's bird powered design below).
  • Also, skeletons now de-spawn immediately when off screen at surface level (during the day), so only use them if you are going to stick close by.
  • Bunnies will now turn to run away from monsters within about 10 tiles of them, so be careful about placement of bunny engines.
  • New engine designs are under construction!
For console/mobile users still on 1.2.4, this old guide and it's designs should still work just fine! :):
sm0z34g.png
+ Kill Invasions fast! Farm Drops Efficiently. Kill Bosses, Whatever:
The video is pretty much self contained, but I've posted it here to answer any detailed questions and for people to post up shots of their own implementations; I'm certain you can make a setup far prettier and more interesting than my demonstration models!:
Description: With just one mob spawning statue (crab, fish, rabbit, skeleton or piranha), 6 to 15 dart traps and minimal wiring, you can take out ANYTHING! Full construction tutorial and usage examples (with instructions.)

+ VIDEO INDEX:
0:09 Build tutorial with skeleton engine.
4:08 Piranha engine ('optimal').
4:43 Finding other suitable spawn statues (mob speeds).
5:05 List of statues, trap numbers and type (optimal/frugal/stingy)/
5:14 Bunny engine.
5:26 Goldfish engine & Goblins in 40s.
5:45 Arena/farm set-up
6:21 Piranha engine (version 2 - 'frugal').
6:45 Crab Engine ('stingy').
7:06 Hard mode grind examples.
7:39 Farming example (Antlions).
7:54 Boss arena (Eye of Cthulhu, skeleton engine).
8:05 Further Applications... Autofarms by
DicemanX

+ All Six Rapid Fire Statue Engines Shown in Video:
Dart Trap battery Examples - All 6(a).png

Note: The optional, higher number of traps is when they are pointed to fire in the same direction as the statue spawned mobs's movement. A couple of extra traps must be added to avoid a gap in firing. This is because it makes the dart spacing narrower, compared to firing in the direction opposite to mob movement; the opposite trap staggering adds an extra 2 tiles distance between each dart.

Note 2: Skeletons always start off walking to the right during the day (not towards player, as in the night).

+ REFERENCES:
(1) Dart speed and Optimal Trap Separation calculated (my video).
(2) My Mob speed demonstration video (to calculate track lengths / trap number)
(3) Official Wiki - Monster Spawning (Distance limits slightly wrong by my reckoning.)
(4) Boss Autofarm videos by DicemanX!:
(4a) "Pre-hardmode Autofarm (5 bosses killed in under a minute)"
(4b) "Pre-hardmode AFK farm with Hoiks takes down 5 pre-hardmode bosses!"
(4c) "Super fast and compact Dungeon Guardian autofarm (kill time ~6min)"
(5 Not in Video) Yrimir does a similar trick: killing goblins in 40s, off-screen, using waterbolt. It can't actually be done any quicker than this, since the limiting factor is the spawn rate = '20' = ~3 goblins/s, with 120 kills to beat the invasion, that's 120/3 = 40s.


Alternative Statues.png

Originally posted on the old forum, see here for comments.

+ Addendum (2014-09-30) - Bird Engine (History) and Further Notes:
I started thinking about these engine designs after looking at DicemanX's WoF autofarm. He, in turn seems to have used the 1s timer bank primed by a bird engine design first published by Tuxlar in his Pumpkin Moon AFK grinder (Nov 2013) and shown in this (Spanish) video tutorial (from April 13 2014):
Notes:
  • This engine is very compact in height, since the bird only requires 1 tile of space.
  • It makes a very rapid stream of darts (about 5.3 tiles apart), which looks very cool, but requires 26 traps. You could get an even closer spacing by firing in the same direction as bird flight: ~3.3 tiles apart, requiring 42 traps. A bat engine would be the most extreme case for statue mobs: at 13.5tile/s flight speed, same direction would make dart spacing ~2.3tiles, needing 57 traps to fire a continuous volley.
  • Dart spacings significantly closer than 7.5 tiles apart run the risk of reduced damage output to small (stationary) targets. 1/6th second damage cool-down on all monsters means a maximum of 6 hits per second, and a dart speed of 45 tiles/s means: 45/6 = 7.5tiles. In practice the width of monsters provides a buffer, since darts 'penetrate', so damage drop-off is not immediate (with reducing spacing), rather dependent on monster width. Monster movement towards traps compresses effect spacing, and away increases it, making things messy. Since bosses are very wide, a much greater variation in dart spacing is tolerable (while still causing maximum damage). They also tend to move very fast, so for minimum kill times a closer spacing (e.g. using bird engine) is advisable.
Statue Mob Speeds (vlcsnap-2014-09-13-02h07m03s68).jpg

Above: all statue mob speeds (as demonstrated in my video also showing spawn distance limits). Useful for finding the right statue for your application and related calculations.
sm0z34g.png
+ FAQ:
Q. Can I use super dart traps instead?
A. Yes, you totally can. Same speed, same setup. They do double base damage, so a lot better against armoured targets, although they don't critically hit, like the regular kind [1.3 note - no traps can crit now]. Don't wait until the end game to make your dart battery though, they can be useful all game!
Q. Why are only 2 darts coming out while the rest hit the other traps?
A. You need to put actuators (yellow cross thingies) on all the traps, activate them once to set the traps to background, then remove the actuators.​
 
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i've found the concept of the statue engines to be an incredible find for me, i can't say i recall who's design i run the most, but they are all very fun to play around with. thanks for posting the in-depth optimization video, i may have to experiment with what you've shown us :)
 
By the way, in terms of the Dart Trap batteries, I first saw them in a very old thread in the guide section on the TO forums (actuating traps is an idea that came out shortly after actuators were introduced), but the first person that I saw using them in farming was Tuxlar:


I like to link the TerrariaITA video because it shows the actual construction of the battery, but it was Tuxlar that really started the ball rolling for me.
 
I just recently found out about your "hoiks" and in turn about your youtube channel.
I gotta say, your stuff is amazing.

anyways, after seeing the hoiks, I had a great idea for a PM farm. the only problem is how to set up the traps.
spear traps of course do the most damage, so using them seems like the best idea. the only problem is the timing to make them hit the monsters every 1/6 seconds.
if you know how to wire up statues or timers well to accomplish this, I would greatly appreciate the help. I already got so far as to realise you need to stack 12 traps and actuate them, while also spacing them a block apart horizontally.
 
Thanks Xoleuph! :happy:
spear traps of course do the most damage,
DicemanX is the one who's been building spear trap arenas all year. He's still refining his PM grinder though:
http://youtu.be/_Fw27CUlxQA
I've only played a little bit with spear trap batteries, but it's on my to-publish list. Current best effort it shown briefly in the item hoik video. Diceman was previously using 12 traps, actuated (as you say) and stacked horizontally (powered by a ribbon of alternating wire colours), but you don't need that many per stack, most of the time, since the small enemies die fast anyway and the big ones only need to have a spear tip inside of them at all times to ensure maximum damage output ('piecing', like darts, etc).

Be interesting to see what designs you come up with. Keep us in the loop!
 
Did you use Super Dart Traps for any of those? If not, are you able to use them instead of normal ones?
I didn't use any in the video because I wanted to demonstrate the great damage output you can get with just wiring up the basic ones well. (And you always end up with a load of these knocking about, while super-darts are hard to come by). But, you absolutely can just swap in the super-traps instead, which makes the setup more capable for hard-more grinding (as with many of Diceman's auto-farms).
 
Thanks for the great guides! A few extra notes on the bunny engine:
  1. It doesn't work as well during a blood moon - the statue spawns a corrupt bunny which jumps over some of the pressure plates (and moves faster?). Presumably the goldfish suffers the same problem?
  2. The bunny initially moves toward the player, which means a whole firing sequence is lost if you move from the pressure-plate side to the other side of the statue (because the bunny goes straight for the plates rather than bouncing off the wall like the previous bunny, and activates the traps before they are off cooldown).
I was attempting to use a dart battery to deal with ground mobs during the pumpkin moon, which is why I discovered #2 (I need to move around still to fight the bosses). Can be solved by having the bunny prime timers that fire the traps, removing the need to constantly spawn bunnies.
 
Sorry if it is posted elsewhere, I couldn't find it. I very much like the dart battery traps due to how simple they are and how small and effecctive. My only question is is there a way to get max damage using something that doesn't aggro on the player, but doesn't have to take a large amount of traps? Such as goldfish or bird but not nearly as long. If I recall correctly a bird would need around 57 traps in a row for optimal damage?
 
Sorry if it is posted elsewhere, I couldn't find it. I very much like the dart battery traps due to how simple they are and how small and effecctive. My only question is is there a way to get max damage using something that doesn't aggro on the player, but doesn't have to take a large amount of traps? Such as goldfish or bird but not nearly as long. If I recall correctly a bird would need around 57 traps in a row for optimal damage?

14 traps is usually enough to reach the hit cap if one is constructing a bird engine. Incidentally, no mob statues are actually required for batteries, but they are used for convenience. You could instead remove any speed boosting gear and walk over pressure plates spaced 1 tile apart to activate timers connected to dart traps in a battery. I was in fact planning to show this in an upcoming video which aims to show how you can money grind effectively without any mob statues (some of which can be very difficult to find and might not even exist anywhere in a given world).
 
14 traps is usually enough to reach the hit cap if one is constructing a bird engine. Incidentally, no mob statues are actually required for batteries, but they are used for convenience. You could instead remove any speed boosting gear and walk over pressure plates spaced 1 tile apart to activate timers connected to dart traps in a battery. I was in fact planning to show this in an upcoming video which aims to show how you can money grind effectively without any mob statues (some of which can be very difficult to find and might not even exist anywhere in a given world).

Don't you have to space them out quite far though with only 14? And can you do it without statues and still have it automated?
 
Don't you have to space them out quite far though with only 14? And can you do it without statues and still have it automated?

I space mine with 1 tile in between. You don't have to space the dart traps apart that much, so long as you can stagger their activations appropriately. A bird or player passing over pressure plates with 1 tile of space does the trick.
 
I space mine with 1 tile in between. You don't have to space the dart traps apart that much, so long as you can stagger their activations appropriately. A bird or player passing over pressure plates with 1 tile of space does the trick.

So the space with plates and traps would end up being 29~ blocks long then?
p being plates, D being dart traps, and | being wires. The top numbers are for counting actually block length and below the traps is for numbering them. It would be laid out like this?
.........1.........2
12345678901234567890123456789
p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D
..................1 1 1 1 1 1
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5

Edit: Interesting I'm going to try to edit it again because it ignores multiple spaces.
 
EjKV6Zu.jpg


If you remove the dart traps linked by red wires (and the pressure plates connected to them) you get the idea of the dimensions. This is also an example of a timerless bird engine.
 
[1.3.0.4 UPDATE NOTE] Dart (and super dart) trap cooldown times have been increased from 3s to 3.33s (200 ticks). Obviously this breaks the firing pattern of all the designs shown below (with no darts firing half the time). Designs using faster mob types may be fixed by using a 1s timers instead and lengthening the plate run (and increasing the number of traps). Alternatively, you will need to find the best plate in the run to wire back to the statue instead of the timer, to automatically re-trigger a new mob after just over 3.33s.

Other trap timings have also been changed, find them listed in the T-MEC trap characteristics table.

By all means post your best updated/fixed rapid fire dart trap designs below! :)
 
I have made a prototype of a rapid fire dart trap, here's it:
Capture 2015-07-31 17_40_11.png
Capture 2015-07-31 17_40_53.png

  • It doesn't work off window during the day
  • between the statue to the last pressure plate are 18 blocks (almost 3.3 seconds in the skeleton speed)
  • You can fill the empty spaces between the statue and the pressure plate whit dart traps or super dart traps
  • the hole at the end have the enough depth to hold the skeletons there
  • ignore the blue wire that go deeper than the others (i make a mistake)
  • the green wire up is for activate the battery
  • the green wire at the bottom is to spawn the next skeleton (it actuates like a timer)
  • sorry for the pet of the second image
 
It doesn't work off window during the day
Right, same new probablem I observed too then. But it does currently work off screen at night long enough to conintue functioning correctly?

So you killing many things with this? Got a shot of your whole setup (with completed rapid fire dart traps firing!)?

I have made half a dozen new, improved, more reliable designs based on a subtly different concept. I think I'm going to create a whole new thread for them. Watch this space...
 
So you killing many things with this? Got a shot of your whole setup (with completed rapid fire dart traps firing!)?
i have already one but is dark (and it doesn't have a full line of dart traps) so gonna take another one later and upload them
 
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