Pixlriffs – Cave Spider String Farm! ▫ Minecraft Survival Guide S3 ▫ Tutorial Let’s Play [Ep.46]

Hello everyone my name is pixel riffs and welcome back to the Minecraft Survival Guide I hope you’re all having a good day welcome back to the Temple of storage this Grand storage Hall and thank you so much for the support on the last video it really means a lot that

You guys are enjoying the building content honestly if I had spent a little bit more time thinking about how to structure the tutorial I feel like I might have explained the building process or the shapes and stuff a little bit better but I’m glad people really enjoyed that video and seeing this whole

Place come together now I’m thinking about the stuff that we’re actually storing inside of here and that’s motivated a lot of the recent videos when it comes to resource collection and what we are going to put in here and one of the things I really feel like we are

Missing currently is over here or in fact it’s not over here because I don’t have a great deal of it we need more string I’m kind of lacking in string or a reasonable way to collect string other than just running around at night and killing spiders I’ve been doing a lot

More killing of zombies recently in our quest for a trident I’ve killed a lot of drowned and got a lot of rotten flesh that way obviously we have a skeleton spawner so while there aren’t that many bones in here they’re all stored in storage over there or broken down into

Bone meal or bone blocks and we’ve got bits and pieces of gunpowder trickling in here and there we will get to farming a little bit more of that in future these last few chests aren’t really storing anything but I figured spider eyes might make a little bit of sense

But we currently have more spider eyes than we do string we’re going to change that today because I know where I can get a decent supply of string from in one of the previous episodes of this series we stumbled upon this abandoned mine shaft where clearly I haven’t explored thoroughly enough because

There’s a couple of diamond doors in the wall around here but what we are really here for is actually this we have two cave spider spawners in very close proximity to each other and similar to the skeleton spawner Farm we have already set up we can set up these

Spawners to provide ample amounts of string not to mention the fact that the cobwebs around here could be broken down into string at a pinch but this is not exactly a renewable resource where the string from cave spiders is but I will say my main problem with this is that

Cave spiders are kind of a pain in the butt to deal with if we end up spawning a few around here you will see what I mean cave spiders can poison the player and are capable of getting into very narrow spaces they are only one block

Tall and one block wide so it’s actually quite difficult to contain them if you want to set up some sort of XP farm where you can use a sword and looting to slash at them and get hold of some more drops however mobs can die in a variety

Of different ways it doesn’t just have to be a player kill let’s for the sake of this example try to kill a cave spider using lava I’ll place the lava in front of the cave spider and simply let it burn to death avoiding its other

Attacks as I do kind of badly but that’s how it works there we go the cave spider died of effectively environmental damage but it still dropped some string and even though I’m the person who placed the lava the game doesn’t necessarily know that so it’s entirely possible to

To kill mobs using environmental damage and have them drop certain items they will not drop absolutely everything it is possible for them to drop so cave spiders will not drop spider eyes if they are killed by something other than the player but that affords us the opportunity to farm exclusively string

If we kill these spiders using environmental damage and don’t actually touch them at all there are some mob drops that are exclusive to players killing them specifically the rare ones like say if a zombie drops a carrot a potato or an iron ingot it can only drop

Those from a player kill so you can’t make an iron farm just by having the zombies drop into lava you would have to kill them manually but in the case of these spiders if all we want is the string we can drop them into something that’s going to kill them more

Automatically now lava is not the best substance with which to do that because the lava can potentially destroy the items that drop into it as well so if we end up just leaving a pool of lava underneath one of these spawners then all of the drops are going to be

Destroyed at the same time but there are plenty of ways of killing these spiders automatically whilst preserving the drops and so we’re going to work on one of those today the first thing I will do is check exactly how far up in the world we are we are negative 35 which means we

Have approximately 23 blocks or so before we reach the lowest point of the world where the Bedrock layers start to happen and that is just enough room for us to be able to do something to these spiders using full damage and if a fall from that height doesn’t kill any cave

Spiders that drop from the spawner we might be able to do something about that but first we dig as with other spawners that we’ve converted into Farms we’re going to dig out a four block space around each side of the spawner creating a 9×9 square and in this case we might

Actually dig out one more block making it an 11 by 11 Square centered on the mob spawner because spiders can climb walls and if one of them generates right up next to one of the walls it could potentially try and pathfind climb up the wall and that would not only prevent

It from dying and dropping some string it might even hold up the spawner from creating more spiders so while the spawner will only create mobs in a 9×9 area centered on the spawner we’re going to dig out an 11 by 11 here just to be

Safe in addition to that I did a little bit of thinking and a little bit of maths between clips and we actually don’t need to dig this all the way out to bedrock because cave spiders have less Health than regular spiders do and even regular spiders have a little bit

Less Health than the average zombie creeper or skeleton so we don’t need to worry too much about dropping them a full 23 blocks which is typically the amount of height you give a zombie or a skeleton to drop to get into half a heart of health so the player can deal

Lethal damage to it the average entity doesn’t take full damage until it has dropped four blocks that is the time at which the game starts applying half a heart of damage and it will increase that by an additional half a heart every additional block that you fall and since

Cave spiders only technically have six hearts of Health that means that there are 12 points of damage we can deal with them we need to drop them 12 blocks plus the additional four blocks before they will start to take any full damage we can dig a hole down 16 blocks and in

Theory theory that will deal enough damage to kill the cave spiders right now we are standing at a wide height of negative 36 that is the lowest point at which this spawner will generate spiders they can generate the spiders one block above or one block below so in order to

Deal lethal damage to the spiders we need to subtract 16 from that meaning our kill floor is going to be at negative 52. I think technically it could be a negative 51 because you start taking full damage after falling three blocks the fourth block is the one that

Deals the first half a heart but it’s just nice to work in even numbers sometimes anyway that’s enough maths let’s dig a hole so sometime later we have two pits dug out on either side and it turns out they overlapped ever so slightly in the corner here but that should not be a

Problem since the spiders are simply going to be falling and dying either way now in order to test this just before we make any final changes I am going to try and knock out the Torches that I’ve attached to either of these spawners I’m gonna have to use scaffold in from the

Side here to take out this one and hopefully any other torches around here should be easily taken care of as well I think the furnace right now that’s cooking up some iron so we can make some Minecarts is part of the problem but there’s also an open area up here which

Is probably delivering some lights to the center and maybe this mine shaft Channel up here is contributing as well I’ll do the same on this spawner I can just about reach the torch on the other side and then Retreat safety equal take the Scaffolding in a second and there we

Go yep we have a cave spider falling and dying on that side if we take out this torch as well Yep looks like they’re able to fall and die on that side as well and that one looked like it spawned on the lower half of the spawner’s spawning radius so that should pretty

Much confirm that anything that falls down here is going to be dying pretty quickly the torch down there should not be a problem by the way the torch down there is not providing enough light to really affect anything up here since the Torches down there provide 14 blocks

Worth of light and this is a 16 block drop underneath the spawner we’ve obviously got some light coming in from up here and over there on the side so we need to make sure that’s taken care of to completely take advantage of the spawn radius what I think I’ll probably

Do if we want to make sure that we can see these spawners working we’ll simply box these in with tinted glass once we can acquire large quantities of that and that’s going to make it nice and easy to observe the spawners in action whilst making sure they’re completely sealed

Off from any light in their environment and now we’ve made sure that both of those are at an adequate height we need to make sure that we are collecting all of the string automatically as it is generated by the spiders falling and dying so having lit up the spawners on

Either side we’re going to take down the scaffolding pickup all of the string and Scaffolding we’ve dropped down here and we’re actually going to dig out a couple more blocks of the floor to place in a couple of the things I have brought with me now in the event that a spider does

By some fluke manage to hit the wall and climb up it to safety we want to make sure that when that spider drops back down they are going to take adequate amounts of damage or if for whatever reason a spider does not take the full amount of full damage I don’t think

That’s likely to happen but just in case it does we can consider filling the blocks of the floor here in with Magma blocks as long as we crouch on these we’re not going to take any damage from them ourselves but of course any spiders with any HP left falling down here we’ll

Just take a couple of points of damage until they die nice and swiftly I’ve gathered four stacks of magma blocks I figured that was going to be enough to cover both of these 11 by 11 areas and those are what we are going to place at

This height right here at negative 52 16 blocks below the spawner underneath that we’re going to have a system of powered rails which are going to have Hopper mine carts traveling along them picking up all of the string through the magma blocks and delivering them to a set of

Hoppers that’s going to Output into a chest and since each of these spawners has an adjoining kill floor over here we should be able to have the hopper Minecart’s output into a set of Hoppers over here which is going to mean we can feed both of them into the same system

So we’re going to start the powered rail in the corner opposite where these two spawners overlap will pop a powered rail on there and then this section here is going to be one long strip of powered rail which simply has two regular rails at one end here to allow it to turn a

Corner and connect to another strip of powered rail before we lay out the entire thing though we’re going to dig out the central section of the floor and put in some kind of component which will power the rails above it since I want to save on Redstone components at this

Stage because I don’t have a great deal of redstone blocks I don’t have a whole lot of redstone dust that I can turn into those kind of permanent static power components we’re simply going to be attaching levers to the underside of every Oak plank in this row Pro and that

Should power every strip of powered rail that runs over the top of it as this Minecart makes a circuit of this room now with all of the levers switched on if we have done this correctly anytime we lay the powered rail over this there we go we should see it light up now

Strictly speaking you don’t need all of this powered rail to make sure that the minecart stays in motion as long as the cart is going to turn around at the other end you can just create a few sections of powered Rail and swap out the rest for regular Minecart rail if

You don’t have the budget for all of this powered rail but honestly the main thing you need to craft powered rail is bars of gold you need gold ingots and if you just go and raid a couple of ruined Nether Portals out there in your world

You should find that you have a decent amount of gold just from collecting the gold blocks that appear in those in my case I got eight from raiding an ocean Monument recently I had a bunch of from ruined near the portals and I had a bunch just from mining gold in the lower

Levels of the world you can also find an abundance of gold in Badlands biomes if you want to go and look for it there as well so we’re going to have this collide with the wall right here we’re going to probably do some slightly different maneuvering with the mine carts on this

Area just to make sure that the track will double back and it will end up in the same area as this one but we’re going to make sure that we have a row of Hoppers underneath the floor here and underneath the minecart rails so that the minecart can drop off any string it

Collects on these Hoppers and it doesn’t have to be interrupted in its return journey in fact I’m going to reorganize that ever so slightly because if we put this double chest here and just take out the last three blocks of this row we should be able to make sure that the

Hopper’s output into the double chest here we will need a solid block on top of that double chest in order to make sure that the minecart can return on its Journey so unfortunately we won’t be able to open that double chest for now but that will make it a little bit

Easier for us to input any string from this section into the same chest because all we have to do with the minecart rail on this side of our chamber is have a couple of Hoppers that it runs over facing into the chest like so or even one connected right there that’s going

To be feeding back into the two that are pointed into the chest and then I’ve had to store a couple of the building resources in this because I’ve been mining a lot of blocks here then we should be able to just put that block over the top this rail will return the

Minecart on this side and we’ll set up another set of powered rails which are going to propel the minecart on this side okay so now both sets of Minecart rails are all arranged and we need to make sure that we have a hopper Minecart traveling each one we just got to put

That at one end here and that’s going to go off on its way collecting anything that falls on the blocks above it at some point you might decide you want to switch these Hopper mine carts off and that’s usually a good idea considering that occasionally if you unload the

Chunks of an area where a hopper Minecart is still running it can lose all momentum it will not remember next time you return to the area that that hover Minecart was running and occasionally that can cause these collection mechanisms to break because the hopper Minecart will get stranded on

A section of the track it won’t be collecting everything from the entire room and you’ll need to come down here and nudge it to get it moving again in order to fix that problem we can isolate this final Minecart rail in the track and hopefully this is going to connect

No it’s going to connect to the one on the side okay so I’m gonna have to remove that section there make sure that that’s connected and then replace this powered Rail and now this Minecart rail will only travel if we end up powering this block here on the corner so we can

Basically isolate that with a lever and if we turn that off the minecart rail here is going to return to its stationary position and if you wanted to you could run some Redstone wire underneath there maybe connect to a redstone torch that’s going to provide power to the block above and that would

Allow you to turn on and off sections of powered rail like this you could even do the same thing with this section of rail over here although that’s going to turn there as well so we’re going to have to make sure that we can connect those

Properly there we go okay so now let’s say for example we attach the lever to this block the one that’s directly above the chest that will Now activate the powered rail for this section and you can imagine having a lever that simply switches both of them on or even coming

Down here to switch on this lever and looking over and switching on the lever on this block as well in order to get the items out of this chest once it’s got a full block over it we simply have to put another double chest underneath

There and connect the two of them with a hopper so simply putting a hopper underneath there is going to allow us to access the contents of this chest even if there is a block here making sure that that Minecart can return and now it’s finally time to remove the Torches

That are down here and to instate the magma blocks which are going to Glow with a faint light but they’re not going to produce enough light that it’s ever going to affect the spawners especially not at this range magma blocks do give off two block light which is actually a

Worthwhile thing to include in these spawners because it simply prevents anything else from spawning down here on your Killing Floor without you having to light the area up with torches or anything like that and there we go I can step out carefully onto this full floor of magma blocks we have our secondary

Minecart switch over there if we want to I can probably wire that up a little bit later but for now I’m simply going to let this first Minecart run along its track and head upstairs to make sure I can grab the rest of the iron and start

Up a second one while I’m up here waiting for the iron to smelt I’m also going to dig on down through here and set up a system of scaffolding that’s going to allow me to access that chest later and breaking that scaffolding we can also confirm that items are getting

Picked up by the hopper Minecart and deposited in the chest right here so that’s perfect because with our second Minecart running over here we should not have to worry too much about this system we simply need to be able to get down here to pick up the items in this chest

Which is eventually going to be some string now the only task that remains is to hop up here and remove or block off any Torchlight from above which is going to make sure that the spawner down there can operate with complete efficiency as for the tinted glass I figure I’ll set

It up in front of this wall here and that wall there and then we can have a kind of control room for the spawner where we can test whether or not the spawners are working when we stand there and then dip down to the storage system

Whenever we want to pick up the string so from over here I should be able to just scaffold out to that torch break that and instantly the spiders are spawning and dying on the magma blocks and we should see the string getting picked up by the hopper Minecart that

Scaffolding can disappear shortly as well we’ll use the same material to cut off any light from this section of the mine shaft so we can make sure the area around here stays relatively well lit and we can knock out this torch as well where we’ll see the same thing happening

Now as with the other spawners occasionally you might find that a spider spawns directly on top of the spawner block it will normally just walk off eventually it’ll get curious in path find a way but as you can see with that one there it was more curious about

Pathfinding towards me if you want to avoid that simply put a slab over the top of the spawner or something that will block anything from generating directly on top of the spawner now let’s head on down and see if we’ve got any string waiting for us in the chest down

Here it’s certainly getting a little bit noisy down here with the Minecarts both running but as we can see 16 string not too bad and we can also collect any of the building materials that we knocked out in the process of course in order to activate this Farm we need to make sure

That we are standing within 16 blocks of both of these spawners it’s a 16 block circular radius from what I understand and so we need to make sure that we are ideally standing at roughly right angles to each of the spawners and the spawners are going to be producing spiders every

10 to 40 seconds so this thing will produce string kind of passively in the background all you need to do is create a safe space for yourself to stand so that you can step away from the computer make yourself some coffee have dinner even go to bed and you’ll return to find

A decent amount of string waiting for you the last thing that’s left to do in this area is tidy up get rid of all of this building material that we salvaged from digging out these two massive craters and do something about the Aesthetics of this place install that

Tinted glass window so we can observe the spawners in action and set up an AFK area that is safe for us to relax while the string Farms itself hey folks welcome back so a short time later we have our tinted glass windows looking into the spawners we still need

To do a little bit of tidying up in that back corner maybe but I’m fairly certain that no significant amount of light is getting to the spawner from there and the results seem to speak for themselves I’ve spent a couple of hours AFK this afternoon away from the keyboard just to

Make sure that I know what kind of output we’re getting from this farm and yes I have done a little bit of tidying up I have put in a nether portal down here so that we can warp directly to this instead of having to take the circuitous route that I was taking down

Through our starter cave to find this abandoned mine shaft instead we can simply step through to the Nether and we’ll find a stairwell in here kind of similar to the one that we set up for the skeleton Farm it’s actually neighboring it fairly closely because both of these things are pretty close to

Spawn the one to the skeleton Farm is down there the one to the spider farm is just down here and I’ll probably work on securing these and combining them into a set of color corridors that we can travel through at some stage so that it makes it a little bit easier to visit

These Farms without tangling with the nether mobs but if we come down here past the spider themed floor down into the collection area you can hear the Minecarts are still rolling so that sounds all good and inside the chest we have over a single chest of string and

We’re working on the full double chest already the rest of it will end up piling up in the chest above of course so we can grab a little bit more in the knowledge that any more that comes through is going to just collect in that top chest and now we have enough

Strength that we can use it for various other crafting recipes and projects not the least of which is some more scaffolding I’ve been putting off making some more scaffolding even though we have a bamboo Farm now because I simply did not have a great deal of string so

I’ve been reusing the same 40 or so scaffolding for basically every project I needed it for and yes a little bit of wool and wool carpet was enough to make this theme a little bit spidery themed I kind of like the way that came together we can also convert string into will a

Short notice if we didn’t have access to the sheep farm that I’ve already set up we could use string for candle wicks and that kind of thing there’s a bunch of stuff that we can use string for in the foreseeable future so I think it’s really good that we have a string Farm

Now I need to move a bunch of these building materials back and I was considering setting up a little bit of redstone just to connect those two switches for the Minecarts but honestly it’s been fairly consistent going back and forth to the nether whenever I come back the Minecarts are still running so

It seems like that behavior is like a little bit smoother and we can rely on it a little better I don’t mind going down there and poking a minecart every so often and if need be we can always figure out a way to connect those switches a little later in your own

World if you’re not working with this exact set of caves spider Spawners the areas that you need to build around them may not even overlap so you might not have to encounter that problem at all and you can just isolate the two powered rails by whichever way you feel

Necessary but this is going pretty well it looks like and this is where we’re gonna leave this episode of the Minecraft Survival Guide folks I hope you’ve enjoyed taking a look at this cave spiders and frankly I think this is one of the best approaches to cave spider spawners don’t worry about

Turning them into XP Farms just get hold of a decent amount of string passively by letting the spiders take care of themselves and enjoy the benefits without getting poisoned in the process thanks so much for watching my name has been pixariffs don’t forget to leave a

Like on this video If you enjoyed it subscribe if you want to see more and I’ll see you folks soon take care bye for now