1.3 Strange Plant Auto-Farm: It Works!

[nachomc1473]

sure there are other bait farms, but why go out of your way to make one when you can just modify this one and still get a good result

Because it wont work. The jungle grass need times to grow, if the mud blocks deactuates after idk seconds, it won't grow.

 

[Blaine]

1) Why not run your wires straight from one side to the other? why did you put your wiring all along the edges?

It's far less work to connect the actuated tiers the way we did, especially with the maintenance shaft running down the center. It took only a few moments to wire everything together around the sides.

2) Possibly add a universal shut off (ie: a third wire running through all the actuators not connected to a timer) so you can actuate all the blocks for a final harvest before you go do other stuff

Well, for starters, wiring all 47 tiers with a third color of wire would take one person at least half an hour, and probably most of an hour. It's not worth the effort if you own a Rod of Discord, since you can just check the maintenance shaft. You could put a trapdoor below the maintenance shaft if you don't have a Rod. The farm also spawns only one plant at a time, every few minutes or so, so it's not a big deal to just log off (though I usually do check).

Depending on how high a Strange Plant spawns, it can take anywhere from a few seconds to almost five minutes to reach the bottom, so it IS possible to have multiple harvested Strange Plants in the farm.

3) Add a simple dart trap on every level (possibly connected to the shut off switch?) to harvest all the blinkroot that grows

I have half a chest full of Blinkroot, but that's actually a potentially good idea, for reasons I'll get into below. The traps will kill monsters too, though, and you generally don't want random monster loot, seeds, and plants to accumulate in the world or in your inventory. If you do that, you should probably trash the unwanted loot every so often and make sure you have one of each color of Strange Plant already in your inventory so that you don't lose any.

4) Since dye and strange plant checks are now done independantly why not add a couple layers of jungle grass for bait collection

This probably isn't a good idea, unfortunately. While they won't entirely prevent strange plants from spawning, what they will do is use up blocks for long periods of time. Strange Plants will not spawn on a block if any type of grass, herb, or dye plant is already there. The more empty blocks you have, and the longer they're empty, the more often you'll get Strange Plant spawns.

Because of this, dart traps to remove Blinkroot would probably increase the farm's efficiency. However, only a handful of Blinkroot usually ends up growing, so it's not a big deal.

 

[Trimerion]

@Blaine thanks for the concise reply, you have addressed the points I made with valid and well thought out responces, well done and thanks again for the effort in creating this farm

 

[Stahn Aileron]

I'm looking at your teleporter system for AFK collection. Have you considered using a Cascade Timer system? It would eliminate the need for a bird statue and let you either do a loop mode (at the last Teleporter you go to the first) or a back-forth mode (at the last Teleporter, you start going backwards.)

I haven't tested Teleporters with cascades yet (they don't have cooldowns last I recall), but in theory should be doable. I'd have to look at timer and teleporter stuff in the T-MEC community area to be sure.

 

[Trimerion]

@Stahn Aileron you do start going backwards once you reach the end, its just slower

 

[Stahn Aileron]

I was just noting a cascade system would let you choose either type of operation. Also, a cascade lets you use any of the timers. You can teleport at 1, 3, or 5 sec intervals. The timers automatically trigger themselves and you don't have to worry about timing the activation of each one (like you are with the bird statue). Plus it might a bit easier to break out of the cycling/turn off the timers. From the looks of it, your design would just have you walk out of the teleporter room once you return to the entrance.

Anyway, just voicing opinion and options.

 

[Blaine]

I'm looking at your teleporter system for AFK collection. Have you considered using a Cascade Timer system? It would eliminate the need for a bird statue and let you either do a loop mode (at the last Teleporter you go to the first) or a back-forth mode (at the last Teleporter, you start going backwards.)

I've heard of the term "cascade timer system" from somewhere, but don't know much about them. I'll look into it. I figured out the 10-second timer array and teleporter chain all by myself, but I might need a tutorial myself to figure out cascade timers. I may start experimenting at some point to see if I can reinvent them on my own, though.

When I originally designed the teleporter chain, it was for use in a very long Antlion Mandible farm, prior to 1.3 when Antlions were difficult to farm. It was important to teleport slowly at least one way down the chain; I discovered that moving very quickly greatly reduced Antlion spawns, because they didn't have much time to spawn at the leading edge, and might even despawn behind the character before Lihzahrd traps killed them (unlikely, but possible).

It's true that with my design you may sometimes have to "fight" the teleporter chain in order to return to the entrance on foot, but 1.) the world is used only for the farm, so you can just log out; and 2.) a Magic Mirror or equivalent will return you to the bed instantly for access to the safe, piggy bank, and switches.

 

[DicemanX]

The timer cascade you put together for 9.5s/0.5s intervals was a very nice piece of engineering! It helps to use this approach if you don't have access to any mob statues.

Since you end up using a bird statue anyways, you could also consider foregoing the timers altogether and just use the bird engine instead. With a bird flying down a long track, you can easily control the intervals between actuations, and control the length of the actuation itself, simply through the spacing of the pressure plates. Hoiks can be used to deliver the plants once they fall to the bottom .

Incidentally, your build is reminiscent of Brian Goo's herb farm:

http://forums.terraria.org/index.php?threads/project-one-click-hoictronic-herb-farm.15049/

The two can be merged together to have automated farming for literally everything that grows in the ground!

 

[Blaine]

I have 7-12 of every creature-spawning statue still in stock, but of course they despawn if they get too far away from the player. Even on this 204-block-wide farm, if I wait at the spawn bed, the bird won't reach all the way to the end. It could be tricky to implement something like that, but I'll look into it.

 

[DicemanX]

I have 7-12 of every creature-spawning statue still in stock, but of course they despawn if they get too far away from the player. Even on this 204-block-wide farm, if I wait at the spawn bed, the bird won't reach all the way to the end. It could be tricky to implement something like that, but I'll look into it.

The key is not to move from the bird statue, but instead use a hoik delivery system. I just tested hoiking of strange plants (was worried that they were size 1 items which sometimes causes problems) and it works smoothly. Also, the bird track doesn't have to be one long horizontal track - you can snake it (or just use a slower moving mob).

This gives you one more added bonus - if you're rooted to a spot waiting the plants to be delivered, you can construct a bait farm similar to this and catch bait to pass the time:

http://forums.terraria.org/index.ph...-loads-of-bait-please-read.25088/#post-610335

 

[ZeroGravitas]

Arh, DoktorTeufel, I presume! Nice to see you over on the new forums. Think I may have already invited you to come join our little T-MEC engineering group here (via the old forums). All are still welcome of course; much newness to suss out now, and I've not been able to be active, really.

Quick critique of your machine: seems like all the actuated glass is unnecessarily labour intensive; would an extra tile or so space not suffice to prevent blood-roots spawn blocking? (Or darts, or regular actuation?)

Also, I haven't the faintest about strange plants yet, but are we sure that an increased number of tiered surfaces actually increases their spawn rate? It was a common mistake in mob farms, where the tiers actually just get in the way. I'm not as au-fiat with plant spawning mechanisms though, so it would take testing or code reading, perhaps?

I see @DicemanX is already pushing hoik based solutions here too, as I did on your 10s timer thread where you kindly showed me your antlion mandible farm. Basically the same, sequential teleporter conveyor system, right? It's pretty cool, even if minecarts, or other things might be easier.

 

[Blaine]

Yep, I'm DoktorTeufel on the Terraria Online forums, and I definitely remember your hoiking sales pitch from 1.2. I did indeed just rip the bottom off the old Antlion farm (a museum piece now that there are huge nests on every world), and used it for the Strange Plant farm.

There was a definite "better safe than sorry" approach when building this farm. We wanted to ensure that absolutely no bloodroot would spawn, and that there was plenty of empty space available. Note that dart traps would kill enemies, too, dropping a fair amount of loot and potentially causing issues. That was a variable we simply wanted to avoid entirely. There's a lot that wasn't known about the code governing Strange Plants, but at this point it seems clear that they spawn about every five minutes in a given area if there's room, will not grow within 700 feet of each other, and can grow on a few types of soil and grass.

Since that world is Hardmode (we killed Wall of Flesh so that we could remove altars that were obstructing the building of the farm), pirates will invade occasionally and they WILL fill up the screen (and your inventory) with loot if there are dart traps installed.

Maybe we didn't need almost 50 tiers of dirt; that's testable by removing a bunch of tiers, then running the farm for a while to see if it's as efficient as a larger farm. I already have 14+ of every dye and approaching 50+ of each Strange Plant, so I might test it myself.

 

[Trimerion]

So the plants had 3 changes to them in 1.3.0.4...

• ALL dye plants now glow while spelunker potion is in use
• The strange plants and dye plant checks are now exclusive to each other, this means normal dye plants can be near strange plants freely
• the strange plants distance check from each other was reduced from 700ft to 480ft

Hope you'll all have fun finding them and getting @Skiphs 's fantastic dyes.

this is @Yoraiz0r's commentary on the strange plant spawning mechanics, hope this helps you guys

 

[Blaine]

Well, guess I'll have to fill back in 220 feet of the world we cleared. Thanks, @Yoraiz0r.

 

[ZeroGravitas]

Note that dart traps would kill enemies, too

Surely you could just not have dart traps on the bottom row, where any spawned enemies will drop down to and accumulate? Then have the darts on the other levels only fire very occasionally. Sure there must be plenty of options, but no biggie. Also, will these special plants spawn on-screen? (i.e. the bottom rows aren't wasted, are they?)

 

[Trimerion]

given that strange plants will spawn on mossy stone (I dont think anything else does) is there a reason apart from the time it would take to moss stone with the staff of regrowth that you are not using that medium?

Also, will these special plants spawn on-screen? (i.e. the bottom rows aren't wasted, are they?)

im not 100% sure they will spawn on screen, but with the automatic movement on the teleporters you move the entire screen left/right anyway so I dont see that being a concern

 

[Blaine]

Once, I did see a Strange Plant spawn on-screen, so it can and does happen.

 

[Relinquished]

This is probably a stupid question with an obvious answer but... couldn't you just use minecart tracks instead of teleporters?

 

[Trimerion]

@Relinquished actually thats a really good idea, especially if you making the plant farm wider, minecart tracks with bounce pads on either side.

 

[Relinquished]

Hrm... I was just testing this in a regular world (just c+p it with TEdit to a new world to see if it would work if I built it in my actual world) and it wasn't working. So I went around finding all of the other plants that might "interrupt" the spawns or something and then I left it while I watched an episode of Graceland. So when it still wasn't working I tried it on your original world and... nothing. Not a thing.

EDIT: Also, couldn't you just delete the whole teleporter bird engine thing and replace it with minecart rail with bumpers on the end? I feel like that would be a hell of a lot cheaper and easier. I'm just checking with somebody here first, in case it messes something up by deleting it.

EDIT 2: Ok, so what I did was I deleted the Obsidian (I have lots of obsidian so I just used that to build it) underneath the dirt blocks and then I left it overnight and it worked! I guess that's all it was: you have to have JUST dirt blocks and not anything directly below it. Whatever works, right?