Fully automated Plantera Farm (4-5 Planteras per Hour)

[Vazilin]

Hello everyone.

Yes, this is the post about AFK farm and no, i`m not DicemanX. Today i want to present to you my fully automated Plantera farm. Farm summons the Plantera, kills her and picks up the loot without any key inputs.

Even tho the post itself doesn`t provide a lot of usefull information, i still recommend to read it before watching the video.

Farm overview

Usually, people upload the blueprints or at least an overview picture of their farms with wiring. But my farm is so huge, that even 20 pictures merged together won`t cover the farm, let alone the whole wiring. My farm is not complex or anything like that - it`s just big.

* Farm overview (sort of)

That`s why i made a miniature model of my farm, so you can see all the wiring. The placement of some sections and scaling is different from the original, but process is absolutely the same.


* Miniature model with wiring
I didn`t included the spear and dart traps in to miniature model. They are part of the farm but they aren`t part of the system. They work independently

Farming Process

Like a normal, everyday Plantera kill, the farming process is divided in 4 Parts.

1) Waiting for Plantera Bulb to spawn

Waiting is done, you wouldn`t belive me - in waiting zone. Waiting lasts 6 minutes and 40 seconds. Time like this could be counted by timer like this.

Waiting zone is located outside the farm. You need to be outside the jungle, otherwise the bulb won`t spawn.

After 6 minutes and 40 seconds passed, player gets teleported to one of 3 Bulb farms (we´ve put farms inside your farm, so you can..)

2) Summoning the Plantera

Bulb Farm 1/2/3 is the place, where summoning procedure takes place

Plantera gets summoned by deactivating jungle grass block under the Bulb. Since the Bulb farms are very long and minecarts move very fast (even after only 1 boost), Plantera usualy dissapears. To keep Plantera in the line of sight, the farm is provided with "pausebarriers", which blocks player for 5 - 10 seconds and then launch him back on track.


* Pausebarrier

After Bulb farm player gets teleported to arena


3) Picking up the l00t from previous Plantera and killing the current Plantera

After Bulb farm player gets teleported to arena, where Plantera gets killed by spear traps.



* Spear trap system. Remember the times, when systems like this blowed your mind? Now it´s like "meh"

To avaoid Plantera and keep her away, farm uses a teleportation loop with 3 teleports


* Teleportation loop

Killing Plantera usualy takes about 2 minutes. The teleportation sequence, however, lasts 3 minutes and 30 seconds (controlled by a timer, like in wating zone)

After 3 minutes and 30 seconds player gets teleported back to waiting zone and process repeats

Video

Video contains more usefull information and overall makes more sence, than the wall of text. It should answer on most of your questions. If anything remains unclear, feel free to ask.

Video:

World download:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ps1pwpo27g02ior/World_6.wld?dl=0

How to start the farm (watch before downloading the world):

FAQ

1) What is the performance of the farm?

4-5 Planteras per hour. May seem like not a lot but i`ve put a lot of effort to reach this number. My first designs weren`t functional at all and my first functional design provided only 1 Plantera per 6 hours. If you leave farm for 6 hours (which is less than normal sleep/study/work time) you will still get 24-30 kills.

2) Why the Bulb patches are 2 blocks wide? That`s 33,(3)% less grow area and 200% more pain in the to build em

2 blocks wide patches prevent 3 block wide jungle bushes from growing. Why is that so improtant?
For example - We have a solid line of jungle grass block, which contains 9 bushes and 1 Plantera Bulb.
If we deactivate the line, only 1 random object from 10 total will dissapear. Which means, that there is only 10% chance for Bulb to be destroyed. Conclusion - bushes is bull.

3) Why there are dart traps?

I`ve never seen a Plantera Bulb near or next to Life Fruit. Same applies to Life Fruit. I`m not 100% sure, but from what i`ve seen, the presence of one affects the spawn of another. Darts cut off Life Fruits, while Plantera Bulb remains untouched

4) I`ve noticed a lot of chlorophyte around the farm. Is that some sort of decoration?

Artificially placed chlorophyte prevents the natural spawn of chlorophyte. There is a limit, of how much chlorophyte could spawn/exist per certain area. That`s the reason your jungle biome didn`t turned into huge piece of green ore yet

6) How much time you`ve spend building this farm?

Since i was getting all the materials by myself and was building without any mods or editors, it took me about 60 hours to build the farm + about 400 hours of AFK tests. Keep in my mind, that i was constantly upgrading, changing and adding new things/areas into the farm. Building the final version of the farm from scratch will take about 30 +-5 hours.

7) The farm looks neat. Should i build this in my world?

No. This farm have no practical use whatsoever. Its not only req. post Plantera gear but at the time you will finish building, you can easily get all the items from Plantera by yourself. If you still want to build it, then i highly recommend you to build miniature version at first.

 

[ZeroGravitas]

This really is audacious. So much careful thought, research, trial and error involved. Like the chlorophyte ore that I thought was just decoration until I read your explanation... Great job explaining all the ins and out here and thank you for going to the trouble of writing up a guide. You really should post a link to this (and/or the video) on Reddit. Also, post up for the creation compendium too; in my opinion we should try to get more mechanical builds featured there (and or reported in the Terrarian Times).

I feel your farm is perfect as it is, but a minor point about hoik use: I don't think there's any use in a bottom row of upwards hoik teeth (they should have no horizontal effect), the middle height teeth alone look to be enough for all instances. Having multiple rows in an application like this only confuses what steps are being taken (and where the cart will land). Obviously it does no real harm, regardless.

And a speculative suggestion for providing a nice steady minecart speed: nekojita chem demonstrated in this video (I think), that if you use 4 booster tracks and then 3 reverse booster tracks, you get left with a speed of 48-45tiles/s = 3tiles/s. Think that would be about right for your purposes? (Or too slow even?)

Yes, this is the post about AFK farm and no, i`m not DicemanX.

And... Zing! Lol.

 

[DicemanX]

A seriously epic piece of work - well done! Very nicely executed mechanisms as plantera is not that easy to autofarm. You also expertly demonstrate mechanisms that can potentially be useful in other hoiktronics builds, such as timer chains with automatic start-ups and shut-downs, and timed pauses during player "signaling".

I'll be sure to download this and give it a go!

Some minor questions and suggestions:

1) Have you ever encountered glitches where the bulbs don't get destroyed when you actuate the ground beneath them? I get this glitch frequently and have yet to identify if there's anything in the environment that might cause it. Here's a pic of actuated ground with an intact bulb:

Spoiler

2) Since you're armored up this might be a trivial point, but have you tried opening up the space around the teleporters in the Plantera kill room to prevent the arms from gripping anything around the player (except the bottom of the teleporter) and thus reducing damage?

3) Very minor point (and something I myself missed for the longest time): Obsidian Swordfish gives more crit chance to spears than the Katana .

I certainly look forward to more amazing stuff from you. Great start so far!

 

[Vazilin]

1) Yep, i encountered with glitch like this and described it in FAQ at the end of my guide/post.

2) Why the Bulb patches are 2 blocks wide? That`s 33,(3)% less grow area and 200% more pain in the to build em

2 blocks wide patches prevent 3 block wide jungle bushes from growing. Why is that so improtant?
For example - We have a solid line of jungle grass block, which contains 9 bushes and 1 Plantera Bulb.
If we deactivate the line, only 1 random object from 10 total will dissapear. Which means, that there is only 10% chance for Bulb to be destroyed. Conclusion - bushes is bull.

2) I´ve faced with a lot of problems while builiding this farm, but dying from Plantera tentecles was never in the list. In sake of lowering the armour requirements i can expand the space, but i still need somehow to tank Plantera in Bulb farm tunnels and wraths in waiting zone.
3) Yep, i`ve also found out about this yesterday. It amazes me, like after so much playtime and surfing in wiki, there are still things left, that i don`t know about. But 1% crit. is not an huge adventage. (and i don`t have this weapon anyway)

 

[DicemanX]

1) Yep, i encountered with glitch like this and described it in FAQ at the end of my guide/post.

Ah, I see (sorry, missed the FAQ explaining this).

Well this is certainly a major discovery! The glitch caused me to abandon a larger bulb farm in my all-boss challenge run, but it appears I can make it work again if I follow your approach. Very good catch!

 

[VictorLes]

Looks Great maybe ill test later

 

[Vazilin]

Well, thank you for annotations. Compendium thread looks really attractive, defenetly going to entry!


Was testing your suggestion about hoik barrier and it worked out pretty well.

This the most compact design that i came up with. Could be usefull for future projects, but fixing the current barriers in my farm would be the unnecessary time wasting, since they work absolutely the same.

About second suggestion: It is indeed very slow. The longest Bulb farm is 560 blocks long and with speed of 3 tiles/ sec it will take about 3 minutes and 6 seconds to ride thru.

 

[HDanke]

Well, thank you for annotations. Compendium thread looks really attractive, defenetly going to entry!


Was testing your suggestion about hoik barrier and it worked out pretty well.

View attachment 19311

This the most compact design that i came up with. Could be usefull for future projects, but fixing the current barriers in my farm would be the unnecessary time wasting, since they work absolutely the same.

About second suggestion: It is indeed very slow. The longest Bulb farm is 560 blocks long and with speed of 3 tiles/ sec it will take about 3 minutes and 6 seconds to ride thru.

You can place the timers right under the track, and move the teleporters 1 block down, this way the hoik system shouldn't be needed at all, and you save a bit of wiring. Would you mind if I make a 'pocket' version of this? Does seem quite an interesting design to work with.

 

[Arthurdigit]

Wow,looks very cool.
I like it.
I love wiring in Terraria so I should try it.

 

[DicemanX]

One thing I wanted to ask you about: were you able to work out what the maximum distance is between the bulb and where you are positioned? From my prior tests it's not enough for the bulb to be on screen when you destroy it - the bulb has to be close enough to you for plantera to trigger. However, it's been so long since I worked on plantera summoning that I don't recall what that distance was (it wasn't very big though) and wondered if you perhaps tested it yourself. If not, I can repeat my testing (I can do it quickly with the aid of TEdit).

 

[Vazilin]

One thing I wanted to ask you about: were you able to work out what the maximum distance is between the bulb and where you are positioned? From my prior tests it's not enough for the bulb to be on screen - the bulb has to be close enough to you for plantera to trigger. Thing is it's been so long since I worked on plantera summoning I don't recall what that distance was and wondered if you perhaps tested it yourself. If not, I can repeat my testing (I can do it quickly with the aid of TEdit).

Yes, i did tested it out. You`re absolutely right - it's not enough for the bulb to be on screen.

It`s the perfect range, within the Bulb will spawn. One more layer or row of Bulb patches in any direction and Plantera won`t spawn. And it`s not depends on screen resolution. With resolution 800x600 outer layers were out of sight and the Bulb, that was growing on those layers, still summoned the Plantera

 

[DicemanX]

The spawn dimensions don't actually conform to a box from my own testing. I did some testing again because last time I thought the spawn range was a circle. Here's what I found:

Plantera can spawn if:

The bulb is directly above the player and the number of tiles between the top of the player's head and the bottom of the bulb is 48 or less.
The bulb is directly below the player and the number of tiles between the player's feet and the top of the bulb is 45 or less.
The bulb is to the left or right of the player (the top of the player and top of the bulb line up) and the number of tiles from the edge of the player and edge of the bulb is no more than 47 tiles.

Of course it isn't clear where the measurements are from exactly (are there player and bulb centers for instance, and if so, where are they?). It would make intuitive sense that all the lengths would be the same horizontally and vertically from the player center.

Curiously however, the diagonal length appears much shorter. For instance, if a bulb is diagonally above the player at an angle close to 45 degrees, plantera will spawn if a bulb bottom is no more than 23 tiles from the top of the player's head and the bulb's side is no more than 24 tiles from the player's side. That's a tile-equivalent length of around 33.

Maybe @ZeroGravitas can make some sense of this, since he did some work on spawn limits?

Of course figuring this out won't be necessary for your plantera autofarm, but it will be useful for other grinders involving plantera summoning (I have 4 such grinders/arenas for instance).

EDIT: Hmm, if the player "center" (from which measurements are made) was in the middle horizontally, and 2 tiles from the bottom, and the bulb center was in the middle horizontally and at the bottom edge vertically, then all distances from the player vertically and horizontally would be 49.

 

[ZeroGravitas]

then all distances from the player vertically and horizontally would be 49.

Same as the biome block counting distance, right? 49 tiles = 782 pixels, so probably a nice round 800 pixels in code.

The assumption is that bulbs just spawn like trees/bushes/life fruit, right? I mused on weather the bulbs spawn in the player spawn zone like mobs, but with low probability. You always have to walk to the spot generally, so you'd have to do some fairly focused tests to know the difference (teleporting in and/or edge of world). Not looked into any of this though, in game or behind the scenes, so no idea.

 

[DicemanX]

Same as the biome block counting distance, right? 49 tiles = 782 pixels, so probably a nice round 800 pixels in code.

The assumption is that bulbs just spawn like trees/bushes/life fruit, right?

The distances are for plantera spawning - the distances are maximum distances a player can be from a bulb when the bulb is destroyed, beyond which plantera won't spawn. What's a bit perplexing is that the maximum diagonal distances are shorter than the horizontal/vertical distances, which makes it more difficult to optimize spawn areas for bulbs.

 

[ZeroGravitas]

The distances are for plantera spawning

Yes, I got that, sorry if i wasn't clear; talking about 2 different things.

the maximum diagonal distances are shorter than the horizontal/vertical distances

Have you figured it out closely enough to (a) be sure it's not a box shaped envelope? (b) figure out if it's a case of true distance, i.e. circular, or if it's a diamond shape, x+y=49, or whatever? (Which might hint at wire mechanics...)

 

[DicemanX]

Diamond shaped seems closest, but the expected distance on the diagonal would be 35 tile-equivalent distance and I'm getting 32 tile-equivalent distance. Of course the difference could be due to errors involved in determining where to actually measure from.

The x+y idea is also a good one, as the combined vertical and horizontal distance for the diagonal is close to the vertical or horizontal distance. I should try other diagonals to see if the x+y works out close to 49 each time. That might be exactly what's going on here.