Question [Question] Are temple bricks worth it?

ED209

ED209

Plantera
Hi.

So, I've just built a new underground snow biome farm, and I've added the 80 temple bricks needed to up the spawn rate. This, however, always leads to jungle bats being spawned in addition to the "local" mobs (in this case ice tortoises and the like).

The question I have is this; is the number of jungle bats spawned larger, as a percentage, than the increase in spawn rate that comes from placing the temple blocks? If so, would it be better not to place the temple bricks and have 100% biome-specific mobs?
 
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ED209 said:
Thanks, but where are you getting that from? I did try a quick search for some info but there wasn't anything too specific.
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Bats count as half a spawn. So having 10 bats is the same as having 5 of any other enemy. As ling as you kill them they wont mess the spawning of other mobs...
 
It changes by the situation. Temple Bricks are worth placing them if there's something forcing to only spawn its respective enemies or you need Jungle mobs, then go use use them. But, if there's a different situation(yours count in this) just use Water Candle and (optionally)Battle Potions. But, firstly we need to understand what's your reason for that farm. If you're looking for the Key, it's independent of mobs, also it's independent from "merged" or "collapsed" biomes. Meaning, using Temple Bricks in a Snow biome creates a farm for both Jungle and Frozen Keys, you can also add Corruption/Crimson/Hallow to add a third product :)
Finally, if the reason is the Key, use Temple Bricks+Water Candle+Battle Potion in the Cavern layer of the Frozen, then have an incredibly high spawn rate. Of course, make sure you have enaugh items to deal that AWESOME crowd! Have fun farming!
 
SteveisNoob said:
It changes by the situation. Temple Bricks are worth placing them if there's something forcing to only spawn its respective enemies or you need Jungle mobs, then go use use them. But, if there's a different situation(yours count in this) just use Water Candle and (optionally)Battle Potions. But, firstly we need to understand what's your reason for that farm. If you're looking for the Key, it's independent of mobs, also it's independent from "merged" or "collapsed" biomes. Meaning, using Temple Bricks in a Snow biome creates a farm for both Jungle and Frozen Keys, you can also add Corruption/Crimson/Hallow to add a third product :)
Finally, if the reason is the Key, use Temple Bricks+Water Candle+Battle Potion in the Cavern layer of the Frozen, then have an incredibly high spawn rate. Of course, make sure you have enaugh items to deal that AWESOME crowd! Have fun farming!
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It's not just for the key mould, but it is on my shopping list. I'll use some hypothetical numbers to rephrase the original question:

Let's say the standard spawn amount is 80 per minute with temple bricks, and 100 with.

If over 20 mobs spawned per minute are jungle bats, then I won't get as many frozen shells etc. as if I would have without the temple blocks.

Also, regarding the key mould; if I have temple blocks in the farm, the odds of a frozen mould go from 200:1 to 400:1.
 
Temple block are mostly worth it (unless you REALLY hate the Jungle Music). As SteveisNoob mentions though, if you want non-jungle mobs to spawn exclusively, you need to cover up the jungle blocks with whatever mob-specific spawning blocks you need. (Luckily, Temple blocks don't directly spawn Maneaters and Angry Trappers. Those require actual Jungle Grass.)

I rarely lay my Temple block down bare. I usually place then underneath other blocks, making sure no Temple block has an exposed top surface. This prevents Jungle mobs from spawning.

In your case, cover up the Temple Block with snow. (Or just keep the Temple blocks onscreen at all times.) Oh, you MIGHT need to find and cover any mud blocks as well. Not sure if they can spawn jungle bats. And definitely drain any nearby water from the area if you're in Hard Mode. The game has a bug (maybe) about Arapaima spawns. For some reason, they ignore practically every spawn control limit (like NPC suppression). It was an issue in 1.2.x that I reported. Haven't checked to see if it was fixed or not in 1.3.x.
 
Stahn Aileron said:
Temple block are mostly worth it (unless you REALLY hate the Jungle Music). As SteveisNoob mentions though, if you want non-jungle mobs to spawn exclusively, you need to cover up the jungle blocks with whatever mob-specific spawning blocks you need. (Luckily, Temple blocks don't directly spawn Maneaters and Angry Trappers. Those require actual Jungle Grass.)

I rarely lay my Temple block down bare. I usually place then underneath other blocks, making sure no Temple block has an exposed top surface. This prevents Jungle mobs from spawning.

In your case, cover up the Temple Block with snow. (Or just keep the Temple blocks onscreen at all times.) Oh, you MIGHT need to find and cover any mud blocks as well. Not sure if they can spawn jungle bats. And definitely drain any nearby water from the area if you're in Hard Mode. The game has a bug (maybe) about Arapaima spawns. For some reason, they ignore practically every spawn control limit (like NPC suppression). It was an issue in 1.2.x that I reported. Haven't checked to see if it was fixed or not in 1.3.x.
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The bats are spawning on the snow & ice I've laid down. They start spawning off-screen the second the jungle music starts playing (which I do hate, by the way). All 80 blocks are on screen.
 
Sounds like Jungle bats are glitched a bit as well, like the Arapaimas were/are. I would suggest other snow-biome related blocks, but that probably won't help.

Oddly enough, after I've thought about it, I actually haven't done a Jungle/Snow biome combination. Haven't had much of a need for one. (I had wasted time farming for a Frozen Turtle Shell in the traditional method, before I knew about and started taking advantage of the Temple/Jungle block mechanic.)

In this case, I'd second @SteveisNoob and switch to a Water Candle/Battle Potion set-up instead. Though if you can kill things fast enough, spawn-rate mob percentages are less of a concern compare to raw spawn rates overall. You lose some efficiency, but the RNG is a prick anyway. How quickly can you kill off the mobs?
 
Stahn Aileron said:
Though if you can kill things fast enough, spawn-rate mob percentages are less of a concern compare to raw spawn rates overall. You lose some efficiency, but the RNG is a :red: anyway. How quickly can you kill off the mobs?
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Oh, that's true, spawn rates are also affected how many enemies have spawned. You also need to kill "extremely" fast the enemies for maximum efficiency. Thanks @Stahn Aileron
 
Stahn Aileron said:
Sounds like Jungle bats are glitched a bit as well, like the Arapaimas were/are. I would suggest other snow-biome related blocks, but that probably won't help.

Oddly enough, after I've thought about it, I actually haven't done a Jungle/Snow biome combination. Haven't had much of a need for one. (I had wasted time farming for a Frozen Turtle Shell in the traditional method, before I knew about and started taking advantage of the Temple/Jungle block mechanic.)

In this case, I'd second @SteveisNoob and switch to a Water Candle/Battle Potion set-up instead. Though if you can kill things fast enough, spawn-rate mob percentages are less of a concern compare to raw spawn rates overall. You lose some efficiency, but the RNG is a :red: anyway. How quickly can you kill off the mobs?
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Stahn Aileron said:
I actually haven't done a Jungle/Snow biome combination.
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It wasn't so much a combo, as a snow biome in which I placed the 80 temple bricks need to boost spawn rates.
Stahn Aileron said:
switch to a Water Candle/Battle Potion set-up instead
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That's my standard farm set u anyway; placed water candle, held water candle, temple bricks and battle potion.
Stahn Aileron said:
How quickly can you kill off the mobs?
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Pretty damn quick; mimics & ice tortoises die in less than 2 seconds.

As an update, I've just removed the temple bricks to see how it would work. The drops I'm picking up are far less now, I was getting around 2-4 frozen shells every ten minutes or so, but now I'm noticing quite a reduction.
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SteveisNoob said:
Oh, that's true, spawn rates are also affected how many enemies have spawned. You also need to kill "extremely" fast the enemies for maximum efficiency. Thanks @Stahn Aileron
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They're dying very quickly indeed, but that's the case regardless of the biome.
 
If jungle doesn't work out for you, try corruption to see how that works. I've got a farm that's half corrupt ice, half hallowed ice, and part granite. It switches dominance towards hallow, corruption, or neutral depending on which edge (center in the case of neutral) of the farm I stand at. Personally I use the farm for granite blocks and souls of night/light, but I get a boatload of other drops like Amaroks, Trifold Maps, biome keys, etc.
 
Stahn Aileron said:
Sounds like Jungle bats are glitched a bit as well, like the Arapaimas were/are. I would suggest other snow-biome related blocks, but that probably won't help.
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There are certain mobs in Terraria that spawn based on biome rather than the surface. Jungle Bats and snow biome mobs are examples.
 
DicemanX said:
There are certain mobs in Terraria that spawn based on biome rather than the surface. Jungle Bats and snow biome mobs are examples.
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Simply we can say them bats, or flying enemies, to make it even more general. It's because of the game doesn't check for a ground surface to spawn a flying enemy.
 
SteveisNoob said:
Simply we can say them bats, or flying enemies, to make it even more general. It's because of the game doesn't check for a ground surface to spawn a flying enemy.
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I think that only counts for harpies & wyverns.
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DicemanX said:
There are certain mobs in Terraria that spawn based on biome rather than the surface. Jungle Bats and snow biome mobs are examples.
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That's what I've found. I'm just trying to find out if the extra mobs from using temple bricks are all bats, and whether it's worth it or not. I left my snow farm running for a while and ended up with 3 jungle key moulds and no frozen ones.
 
Last I recall, only Sky biome mobs are not block-base spawned. Pretty much everything else spawns on a block first. (Or in a block in the case of worm-types, I think.)

@ED209 I think with you being able to kill anything quickly, raw spawn rate is far more important than mob spawn ratios. At time point, it's a question of efficiency over time overall rather than efficiency per mob. A poor analogy:
  • I could invest $1 to make $100 per month or
  • I could invest $50 to make $100 per day
The former is efficient from a resource perspective (1:100 ratio vs 1:2) while the latter is far better in terms of time (profit of $99/month vs $1500/month). In other words, the first option is resource-efficient but fairly ineffective; the second option is highly effective, but not very efficient.

You're not resource-constrained (I don't think), you're timed constrained. Killing more in a given time will work out better than worrying about spawn ratios (unless the ratio is absurdly lopsided for some reason.) Killing 5 frozen tortoises in 10 secs still lags behind killing 6 of them and 4 Jungles bats in the same 10 secs. (Numbers are exaggerated, but you get the idea.)

Anyone remember/know the Jungle biome spawn modifiers? (i.e. Max mob # & spawn rate multiplier.)
 
Stahn Aileron said:
I think with you being able to kill anything quickly, raw spawn rate is far more important than mob spawn ratios. At time point, it's a question of efficiency over time overall rather than efficiency per mob. A poor analogy:
  • I could invest $1 to make $100 per month or
  • I could invest $50 to make $100 per day
The former is efficient from a resource perspective (1:100 ratio vs 1:2) while the latter is far better in terms of time (profit of $99/month vs $1500/month). In other words, the first option is resource-efficient but fairly ineffective; the second option is highly effective, but not very efficient.

You're not resource-constrained (I don't think), you're timed constrained. Killing more in a given time will work out better than worrying about spawn ratios (unless the ratio is absurdly lopsided for some reason.) Killing 5 frozen tortoises in 10 secs still lags behind killing 6 of them and 4 Jungles bats in the same 10 secs. (Numbers are exaggerated, but you get the idea.)
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This so full of win. It's incredible. Your examples were flawless. I may quote this some day in the future.

+1 Internets
 
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