John sat happily watching the strange setup operate, surrounded by pigs.
It was basically a wall, one that had a glass front and sides with a water stream at the bottom. Behind it was a small sandy strip with sugar cane on it, and a wall of what were apparently
pistons waiting behind THAT.
If that was all that was going on, it would still be pretty relaxing sitting here listening to the flowing currents and smelling the sweet fragrance of the growing plants and all that. Especially considering that dirt was too concentrated here, and couldn't stick to animals or whatever to make them 'dirty'... Thus they couldn't be smelly.
Also: As far as John could tell, the pigs were too condensed to need silly things like pooping. They barely needed to eat, and even requiring air was an absentminded after thought… They COULD drown, but it took TIME before the body realized it should be dead here.
So without excrement or getting dirty, the gently flowing river and sugarcane farm surrounded by pigs just smelled like slightly sweetened nature.
[[Kur-CHUNK!]]
John grinned as one of the sugar cane reeds suddenly grew up a block, setting off the strange '
observer blocks' above and forcing the entire wall of pistons to SMASH into the vegetation! Everything above the bottom layer was hurled into the glass, fell into the infinite water stream, and then got shoved off into a hopper to be stored away in a chest.
Focusing the newly adjusted and FAR less intense 'passive scanning mode' Pocket units on the area, John watched as the observer blocks set off a
redstone signal, which lit up some redstone dust and repeaters and powered rails with energy and…
Well a whole bunch of stuff was lighting up and empowering things with the Essence of energy. Redstone was fascinating, and just like Source Blocks, a
Block of Redstone was just infinite power being generated permanently. Stuff here used that, along with torches of the stuff which would be turned off when the torch base was empowered, and repeaters that would increase the distance that redstone empowerment would travel, and comparators which could do basic logic, and…
Anyway, it was fascinating to watch, trivial to try out, and probably a lifetime to master.
[[Kur-CHUNK!]]
Back on topic, the farm itself was mostly possible because of Essence in general. Not because Essence accelerated time or anything (Although it probably could), but because there was LESS stuff to begin with, all refined into something beyond pure.
The sand could support growth because that was basically all it could do, and the sugar cane above it was able to detect the water source stream flowing next to it and take what it needed from that.
Nothing else required. No light was necessary, unlike other plants… As long as there was at least a block of air above the growing stalks the plant would eventually reach towards the heavens… Or at least, up to three blocks tall.
The important thing here was the SPEED of growth, and again it was due to Essence.
[[Kur-CHUNK!]]
Not because Essence was the perfect fertilizer (Although it actually was, thanks bone meal!), No… The reason for the rapid growth was because of how condensed the sugar cane itself was.
There was so little plant in one block, despite how big it seemed in the world, that even a tiny fraction of growth could generate and entire BLOCK of harvestable material!
John watched the bottom untouched row of sugar cane in the farm suddenly thrust upwards, growing another block in height, working their way upwards towards another fascinating activation of this completely automated farm.
The observers just generated a spark of redstone power, with no fuel source or other resource required. The redstone torches and dust and stuff was too condensed and basic to even understand the concept of wear and tear or requiring maintenance. The water source was infinite and the stream it generated didn't technically exist, so it would forever catch the smashed harvest and send it floating away for collection eternally.
This small wall of a farm alone was a source of infinite materials.
[[Kur-CHUNK!]]
It was also fun to watch. Every 18 minutes or so, one of the plants in the wall of green would shoot up another block in height, ever closer to activating the entire mess once more.
John glanced upwards… At the duplicate farms above this one. And the ones to the sides. And the ones behind them.
Apparently the shape and
variety of these farms was up to the imagination of the user, but the effectiveness was astounding.
A massive cube of farms… All sharing a single water source block way up at the top, all gathering their sugar cane harvests into that SAME water stream, and all leading down to here for collection.
[[Kur-CHUNK!]]
From what John could tell? This place was new. Built in the last few DAYS, not months or years. Or at least that was what his scan was telling him. Which was pretty impressive, really.
Still, it hurt his head. Specifically the water source block itself! Because it was BEYOND crazy if you thought about it too much. First of all, a source block would generate an unending half-real stream of water in every possible direction for eight blocks. And no further, not a drop beyond that.
Which was crazy, but fine.
No, the issue was if it found a gap! Then it would fall down one block, and act as if it was a NEW 'ghost' source block! One that would then generate NEW half-real water streams for eight MORE blocks away!
This could be repeated forever. If there was room to fall, water would then just… Keep flowing further. Period.
Again: Crazy.
But all those ghost source blocks were just imaginary, moving or destroying the one at the top would cause all of the water streams and ghost source blocks to fade away without a drop left behind…
Unless the fake water stream was too close to ANOTHER source water block.
Because if two source water blocks were separated by a gap of one space? The interacting streams of half-real liquid currents would just throw up their hands, give up on logic entirely, and spawn a new, permanent source block instead.
Oh, it could only happen if there was a block below that gap, so that the two half streams could be forced to compress enough to spark off this entire genesis process. For some reason.
And yes, a water source block counts as a 'solid' block floor when two parent source blocks want a new source block baby, because why not.
[[Kur-CHUNK!]]
"Oink."
John hummed. "Yeah, I guess I'm done here. Let's follow the path though, I want to see what that big cobblestone tower thing is over there."
The pigs didn't have much of an opinion as they followed the boy away from the massive sugar cane farming facility towards a huge towering monster of a construct in the distance that dwarfed most things in the area.
He failed to notice that the litter of pigs behind him had nearly doubled in quantity on his journey so far, but to be fair John was pretty distracted right now as his System continued to Scan everything as he wandered around the sprawling mess of constructed buildings.
~~~Pocket System~~~
Steve stood back and checked the setup once more… Starting up a spawner farm was always nerve wracking to him, though he could handle most anything that went wrong with this.
No, it was more the potential for feeling like an idiot when he realizes he missed something basic or simple in the mad rush to get it all quickly established so he could get back to more relaxing activities like mining for diamonds and emeralds.
Water streams to gather the spawned skeletons, a
sticky piston to shove a
stone brick in their faces to end their everything, a basic storage system to gather the loot… It seemed good, right?
It was drastically simpler than the more complicated designs, which decreased the risk of mishaps. No sorting the drops, no automated timer to perfectly damage the monsters, no
dispensers smashing poison potions into the creatures or anything complicated like that, that was always a hassle to set up and Steve didn't want to put that much effort right now.
Especially considering that instances like this world were a dime a dozen, not his home Server. While all instances had the potential to become Servers if a miner desired it, and all of them were infinite in scale and materials… Well, everyone had a home or two they focused on and this wasn't his.
No, this was just a standard resource instance being set up. Some farms, checking to see if this reality had some unusual modifications to it compared to his home Server… After all, some of those 'Modded' instances could be REALLY crazy, so you had to be careful when exploring the possibilities.
Thankfully this new instance he was mapping seemed pretty standard so far. It must have splintered from the branch of his home reality a long time in the past though, since he hadn't seen any flying undead
phantoms or seen any evidence of bees and so forth, but older time periods like this one had its own value and charm too.
He grit his teeth and pulled the lever, shutting down the
redstone lamps that lit up the spawning chamber hurling the space into darkness. Instantly six clackering skeletons spawned in the air and splashed down in the streams, on some level confused that they couldn't see the threat they were spawned to deal with.
Steve followed their progress through the glass walls as they were collected into a compressed group, their body parts sort of merging together like ghosts due to the water pressure, and then shoved into a small pit nearby with only their bottom bone limbs visible.
There was only a tiny gap, as he had a half stone slab keeping most of the space filled and only enough room for a weapon or fist to smack the monsters trapped within… But that was more than enough for his purposes.
Another half minute and the next six were generated and splashed down to join the rest. Good, no problems yet.
There weren't enough entities crammed into one spot at this point to cause them to begin taking damage, and it was likely early enough in this world's time period that '
entity cramming' might not even be a thing yet, but that wasn't the point…
No, the important bit was the lack of skeletons somehow escaping despite his cautiousness.
Well, that and the evidence that the collection of skeletons was far enough away from the spawner that new ones would be generated without causing crowding problems in the stream systems themselves… He'd seen a crowd of zombies once block the way to their own death pit before due to bad spawner farm layout design, and that was always just embarrassing.
He glanced to the side and switched the other lever, retracting a side block from the final drop chute and allowing the very edge of a lava stream to flow in and block the pathway inside the pit.
The warning sign below would prevent spillage and he had carefully measured the water streams above so the two different liquids would
generate cobblestone and gum up the entire process.
The next batch of skeletons were shoved down the canals, pushed off the edge… And dropped through the thin slice of lava, igniting on fire and landing with the other confused monsters standing on the hopper below.
Of course, those skeletons were ALSO burning now, since the
lava blade just happened to be at head height now, and the loud 'CLANK' of them twitching as their health depleted showed that everything was operating at peak efficiency.
Oh, a few items might bounce up and hit the lava when the monster dies, burned and lost forever… But that didn't matter much considering the number of skeletons was pretty much infinite. He'd have so many arrows and bones and stuff within a day or so that he'd be sick of them, no doubt.
It was why you made sure to set up a lighting system to disable spawner farms like this one. Because however much storage you set up in preparation? It would not be enough.
He grinned, seeing the flicker of items as they were absorbed by the hopper below and sent off to the series of chests and hoppers behind the big device for storage. Alright they were in business!
With a bit of pep in his step, he moved on to updating the terrain around the new mob spawner to let it continue operating while he at least tidied up the place. Shovel up the sand and dirt and gravel, mine out the stone and ores, replace all the walls with stone bricks and cover every flat surface with half slabs to prevent a random creeper from spawning in here and decide to destroy everything…
Still going to keep the ladder to the surface plan though. This place needed a less dangerous access point than being randomly connected to the massive cave system he had been exploring earlier, and it was faster and easier to dig up to the surface and replace the walls with a nice sturdy material than it was to do something more annoying like carve out a spiral staircase or construct massive underground tunnel highways between places.
Although the thought of brightly lit and safe tunnels between here, the portal to the nether, and the local main base WAS pretty tempting… He could even set up a rail system for a relaxing trip on the way, eat some bread or nap or something while letting powered redstone rails do all the work…
Hmm.
Maybe later.
Clean up this mess of a farm first, tunnel a ladder up to the surface second, and light a path of torches home first. It was a bit hard to judge distance when exploring cave systems in the first place anyway, if he was close enough then maybe the tunnel idea wouldn't take that long.
The Game), Naruto, D&D, Overwatch, Control, Destiny, etc...