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How to make an efficient grinder

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Techie's Avatar Techie
Level 2 : Apprentice Crafter
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So, one day, you're out mining. You notice that, for some unforeseen and as yet unknown reason, there sure are a lot of zombies coming around that corner. You venture forth, holding your breath, and *Gasp!* you have yourself a dungeon. Congratulations! Now, first you gotta light the whole thing up so that no more of those nasty mobs spawn. Then, you'll probably check out those chests and see if you can grab some loot from them. Once you've grabbed up all that wonderful mossy cobble, you turn to the spawner itself. You think "Well, I wish I could make it easier to get stuff from this. Standing here fighting isn't my idea of a safe way to get experience." Well, don't go breaking it for the meager amounts of experience just yet!

Building a grinder is something everyone who plays Minecraft ought to have some idea about, yet is one of the things few people seem to know how to build. To begin, light up the area around your spawner. This way, nothing will attack you during the rest of the steps. It's always so annoying to say "Yes! I think it's... *gaak*". The respawn button is never a good thing to see, especially after finding valuable items.

Once you've eliminated the nuisance of nasties, count out 4 blocks from each side of the spawner. You should make yourself a 9x9 room with the spawner in the center.

Then, you should dig up a bit. Watch out for lava and falling gravel! Make your room 9x9x5 now. The spawner should still be in the middle of the whole room. Here's what it should look like.
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Notice that on either side of the spawner, there are 4 blocks of space between the walls. Above and below the spawner, there is a 2 block space. This is so that there is enough room for the mobs to spawn.

This is the decision point where you decide whether you want an experience grinder, or an item grinder. An experience grinder will simply push the evil mobs to a space where you can hit them, but they can't hit you. At this point, you exercise your clicking finger and smack the living heck out of them. If you want an item grinder, it's slightly more complex, but it can be more helpful in the future, especially on servers where mobs drop money in the form of items. So from here on out, you have to choose one of them to use. There are ways using redstone to use both of them, but that's much more complex. It can be done, but it's much more difficult.

Building an Experience Grinder

So, you want a lot of high-level enchants. Well, this is the simple version of the grinder. All you do is place the water such that it pushes the baddies towards a hole in the ground you made. They will fall in the hole, and you can be standing on the other end to greet them with your sword. Here's how to place the water in the 9x9 room.
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The water source should go where the blue wool is. Then, you need to break the opposite row, as such.
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So, once you've broken the space where the red wool is, you need to put some more water, with signs as shown.
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Place the water where the blue wool is, then simply dig a 2 block deep hole, so they can't get out.

There! Your experience grinder is done. Simply stand underneath the grinder in a small room, where you can hit them. You can now hack away to your heart's content.

Building an Item Grinder
So you're a little more adventurous and want to try an item grinder. Well, this has it's advantages, one being that people in your house don't get mad from the spam-clicking. But using hoppers and chests, you can make a grinder that you simply stand there, and when you're ready, take the items out of the old chest and sell 'em at the adminshop.

So, the placement of water is more difficult then in the xp grinder. Place the water source inside the wall, one block back. Then, dig 2 rows instead of 1, and place the water in line with the second row. Then, in line with the spawner, dig one more block and place a water source there.

The lava is placed 3 blocks into the wall. This is so that it will only flow 1 block into the grinder itself. Place a block above the lava so the mob doesn't try to swim up, thus losing the items on death. When it dies, the items will drop, and if they don't land in the hopper to begin with, the water will push it in. So, you simply stand next to the chest, and wait for the drops to come pouring in!

There are many other ways to make a item grinder, but for me this has been the most helpful. You can use fall damage, suffocation by piston, fire instead of lava, and many, many other things. To me, this is just the simplest method, with the least hassle building.

Tips
-If you're on a server, ask an admin to come and protect your spawner as soon as you find it. There are few things more annoying then finding a spawner and building a grinder, then someone who didn't read this glorious tutorial comes along and breaks it.

-Keep it dark. You want to be able to see, but when you're done building don't make the mistake of leaving the torches up. Just don't. Few things are more embarrassing then showing it to your friend, only to find out you're just an idiot.

-If you want to sell access to your spawner, you should set some clear rules, like "When the owner says 'My Turn', it's my turn." "No teleporting in people who haven't paid."

-This tutorial only covers spawning in 2 block tall mobs. Blazes can't use water, because they're in the nether. Spiders can climb walls, and can simply avoid the lava. Silverfish can also avoid the lava, and attack you. They drop nothing anyway. Other mob spawners(using an editing program) may or may not work, it's up to trial and error.

Well, congratulations on building your grinder! Now, I hope you paused while reading this, or you may have died. Oops. So much for that. But come back next time you find one, and remember to hit the pause button. ;) If you liked the blog, leave a diamond, comment, favorite it, or tell your friends about it next time you hear across the chat "How do I make a grinder?!?!" Thanks for reading!

*Note* I will add more screenshots later, I just wanted to post this ASAP. ;)
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01/14/2014 1:33 pm
Level 31 : Artisan Pony
StealingDaPenta
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