Do you enjoy any of the following:

• Setting hordes of zombies on fire?
  
• Blowing things up without worrying too much about the consequences.
  
• Using ghasts and skeletons as target practice?
  
• Engaging waves of mobs whilst clad in full armour, with the best weapons Minecraft has to offer?
  

Than this is the mob arena for you. Get prepared for the ultimate test of your minecraft warrior prowess.

I've spent over 4 days building, rebuilding and testing this arena (with the aid of MCEdit and InvEdit).

Above: A birds eye view of the arena

FEATURING:
1. Spawners placed at regular intervals, to make sure you're always on your feet. If you're out of range of some spawners, you'll always be in danger of another few:
Arena Centre: Zombies and spiders spawn.
Arena North/South side: creepers spawn.
Arena East/West side: More Zombies
Arena Corners: Skeletons drop from the ceiling.
Ghast Spawners are carefully spread out so that very rarely will more than 1 ghast spawn at a time.[/list]

2. Zombie pigmen will pop in from time to time.

3.A Checkered obsidian/adminium floor that can't be destroyed.

4.A glass cage that provides cover from arrows and ghast fireballs (but will gradually wear away, as ghasts and creepers destroy it).

5.chests full of everything you need are available before entering the arena: from arrows to TNT and from flint and steel to diamond armour.

6.The surrounding caverns have been filled in with bloodstone, so zombie pigmen rarely spawn out of reach, and take up the population count.

THE CHALLENGE:
See how long you can survive in the Netherworld mob arena (with extra points for killing ghasts).

CHALLENGE RULES (Open to debate):
1. INVENTORY
You may bring anything with a few limitations:
a. NO placeable blocks, apart from upto 16 blocks TNT.
b. No health replenishing items, except for four bowls of mushroom soup (Collectively heals 20 hearts).
c. NO Permenant sources of light (i.e. lightstone/netherack/torches etc.)
d. NO Diamond pickaxes.

2. TNT usage:

-Avoid stacking TNT blocks (TNT towers aren't allowed).
-No deliberately placing TNT to block spawn points (i.e. the small holes in the surface near signs/the raised part of the platform in the centre).

3. Scoring:

Play on easy, normal or hard. The number of points you receive depends on the difficulty:
Easy: No. of seconds survived x 1 + 20 * number of ghasts slain.
Normal: No. of seconds survived x 1.2 + 24 * number of ghasts slain.
Hard: x No. of seconds survived 1.5 + 30 * number of ghasts slain.

NOTE: The difficulty does NOT effect the spawn rate, intellegence or speed of the A.I. only the damage they deal.

4.No accumulating TNT/health items on the floor of the arena, by deliberately letting yourself die, to make it easier for you the next time round

5. No map editing/mid-match inventory editing to make the arena easier.

STRATEGIES:
1.Remember to reset the arena when nescessary. There's no substitute for that protective glass cage.
details on how to do it can be found in Installation.txt.
2. There is a ring of glass in the centre of the arena, that can be destroyed to expose mobs to the void below.
3. Problems with camping:
-The closer you are to the centre, the more you'll have to deal with spiders.
-Sticking to the corners, causes less ghasts to spawn, but increases the risk of you getting swarmed by skeletons/getting knocked out of the arena.

4. Use the flint and steel to set hordes of slow moving enemies like zombies and creepers on fire.

5. Observe your surroundings when using TNT. It's possible for a spider or zombie to come up from behind and push you into your own explosion.

Also, take care not to destroy the glass pillars, that provide cover from mob arrows/fireballs.

6. Zombie pigmen provide you with a renewable source of food. Just remember that to offend one zp is to offend them all!
TNT, is one of the best way to take out large groups, while they're neutral (with added risk of destroying what they drop).

Additional Notes

Try and beat my score:

• Time survived: 7 minutes 42 seconds
  
• Ghasts Killed: 2 (20 points each)
  
• Difficulty Multiplier (x1 Easy)
  
• Score: 502 points (see rules above)