Mark St. Louis

What I mostly took away from your video is that the Y cord of the player is the most influential factor in respects to mob spawning. What I'm mostly curious about is in respects to the mob cap of 14. Does a second player directly impact this cap, like it does in the PC version. Also most of your tests where run on large z and x based platforms, it would be interesting to see if this can be applied to the Y value. For example if we are at an optimum Y position, can we get an ideal number of mobs above us, that we can teleport below us at a certain location away from the player that would continually keep spawning more mobs above us. If this is the case, then we certainly can design some type of mob farm from this that would be efficient.

I also deduced that it is most certainly chunk based as one can clearly see the odd shape of mob spawn locations along the outer edges. Most of us already knew that mobs can't spawn within 24 chunks of the player, but the data that would be nice is the range that the did spawn from the player, and what range it increases as the players Y cord was raised. I was completely suppressed to see the tick range increase as the players Y cord climbed. Its my guess that this occurs in blocks of 16, beginning at 32. Thus after 32, the tick range is increased by 1 for every 16 blocks that the player ascends, most likely getting a certain cap. I'm wondering if this effects other things that require ticking like farmland, ect.

All in all very nicely done, but left a lot of questions.

Well his testing does show that mobs outside of the ticking area are counted towards the mob cap, which is very very bad for us. I'm still convinced that skylight does effect mob spawns. I've recently removed the glass roof that was covering my slime farm. Previously I would get about 1 slime every 5 to 7 minecraft days, if I was lucky. After removing the roof, I was getting 1 slime about every minute, to 2 minutes, so it defiantly helps.

Nothing I can do seems to effect witch spawning from witch huts however, and truth is, I'm getting very frustrated waiting for key bugs to be fixed in bedrock, I think I'll return to 4J's version for awhile till bedrock is at least somewhat playable. I've slabbed up a good part of my neither, so that the fortress would be the area where most spawns take place. I spent 6 hours today traveling through it, and managed to kill a total of around 12 wither skeletons, give or take, with not one skull. The rates are just pathetic, the game is boring, and broken, not better.

@Starr Ship, no worries in limiting light from redstone components, as it is a max of level 7, and this will not effect mob spawn rates. The only reason really to enclose the redstone would be to limit the amount of block updates due to light levels changing.

When you mentioned that they are only spawning at the top level this kind a of confirms that the skylight access is in play. Hopefully a dev soon pops in on this thread and addresses the issue.

@Starr Ship, did you check to make sure all light sources were gone. Oddly sometimes water itself seems to omit light. Are you at least 24 blocks away from the spawn floors? And since it now has sky access, it will only work at night, so you need to make sure that at least 5 chunks in all directions around the farm are lit up so mobs can only spawn in your farm.

I've been testing it for awhile now, and the rates are crazy when it has sky access, and nearly dead when it is enclosed.

What I do know is that my mob farm, without skylight access generates about 3 to 4 mobs per day/night cycle, which is pathetic, considering that I have dug out nearly all 5 chunks in all directions around the mob farm, so it should be running at near perfect conditions. When I open the farm to have skylight access I get 7 to 10 mobs in about 10 seconds. The rates go through the roof. We really need to get a devs attention here somehow.

After doing a bit of review, and following a link that someone posed above, I think the issue is something entirely different.

Most of us are having problems with mob spawn rates. What I found out is that mobs can't spawn unless they have sky access. (odd). While reading this bug report https://bugs.mojang.com/browse/MCPE-27556 I seen that the poster was having issues with his mob farm spawning mobs, unless the mob farm had exposed skylight access. After doing a lot of testes, I've found that this effects caves, and even slime farms if they don't have skylight access.

What I expect is happening is when the chunk is first created, its populated with mobs, but as those mobs despawn, the system due to mobs requiring skylight access, can't spawn new ones.

Oddly, whenever I first load up the world, and or arrive to the area via a portal, mobs do seem to spawn during that cycle as per normal but then require skylight access.

I believe that simply fixing it so that mobs no longer require sky access to spawn would solve most of our issues.

I've tested this as well, and can confirm that mobs seem to need skylight to spawn. I've tested it with a normal lit roof, as well as a solid block and half slabed roof. Only when the spawn pads are exposed to skylight do they spawn.

This defiantly seems like a bug, and a pretty serious one. In fact I would go so far to say a that this is the issue which is causing headaches to most people, and why people are experiencing low mob rates.

Last time I checked on pc, repeaters, comparators, and redstone torches all omitted light when active, to a signal strength of 7. Granted its been awhile since I last checked.

Most redstone users at least in survival, usually burry any wiring and components underground, and when they make use of such components will take the time to make sure there is a strong light source nearby, thus preventing these components from causing any lighting updates.

The point I was trying to make is that the rules that the game is following from the PC version don't work with the way bedrock is handling the despawning.

This is a lot like saying that minecraft can have grass, but no dirt, its moot to have grass without the dirt block. Only instead of grass, we have mobs, that are not working well due to a broken despawn system. The system needs to either be modified to work the way the PC version does, via a 128 block mob tick system and despawn system, or it needs entirely new despawn code. If the later, then knowledge of how it works should be shared with the community.

I believe all issues with spawning is due to spawn distance, tick range, and mobs being cached.

Heres a few things that I know, and some that I am assuming.

Mobs, tick range, is 5 chunks, in all directions, centered on the player. Any mobs outside of this are not ticked, and as a result do NOT despawn, however they seem to be 'cached' and stored inside the chunks. (more on this later).

Mobs inside this range, can move, and despawn as per normal rules, however its my understanding that the game is using the 128 block despawn formula, and which more or less makes it so that mobs despawn based on the distance they are from the player, the further away they are the sooner they will despawn. However because its 5 chunks tick its very unlikely that mobs within this active area will ever despawn but rather end up cached as soon as the player moves 1 chunk in any direction.

As I mentioned above mobs seem to be cached, how do I know this, well you can test this in creative, by setting up a simple dark room, on a world set to always daylight, simply move a few blocks away from the dark room, wait for a mob or two to spawn. Make note of what mobs are within the room. Then quickly fly 128 blocks away in any direction, wait a minute. Now the mobs should have despawned. Quickly fly back, and you will find the exact same mobs in the room.

Now heres how we prove that mobs are cached. Again fly quickly 128 blocks away. Set the game to peaceful. Wait a minute, set the game back to easy, normal or hard. Fly back, again same mobs still in the room.

When we set the game to peaceful it should have cleared the mobs in that room, but when we return we find the exact same mobs.

What I don't know but am assuming is that the mob cap does in fact count mobs that are in loaded chunks (128 blocks or 8 chunks) in all directions around the player.

With this info we can deduce the issues. Mobs since ticked only within 5 chunks of us have roughly less then 20% chance of despawning. Anything that is outside of 5 chunks is cached, (but likely counted towards the mob cap). So mobs are likely spawning in areas and stacking up over time. Because bedrock handles despawning totally different then normal minecraft and is caching mobs, they really never get a chance to despawn and are eating up mob caps, the result is seriously low mob counts.

I can confirm that while digging out my large quarry, I have come across some dark small areas that had some 10 to 20 mobs within. Killing these instantly started my mob farm working again, for a period of time.

The only way I have found to do a complete purge of mobs was to set the game to peaceful, walk around so that I was within 5 chunks of all chunks I was going to be around, and in, to completely clear these mobs out of the cache. In other words, when you set the game to peaceful it does NOT clear mobs from the cache of chunks you have to actively enter those chunks for them to be cleared, which seriously sucks. I hope they get rid of this cache system, and come up with something better.

When a creeper explodes it always destroys all blocks in a 3x3 area around the creeper, none of these blocks ever get turned into entities. No additional damage to blocks outside of the 3x3 area seem to suffer any further damage from the explosion.
Since we can't use duping of TNT, i'm using creepers as renewable TNT. My farm has a mob farm above it, which extracts both creepers and skeletons and disposes of all other mobs. I drop the creeper into a 1wide, 2 deep hole surrounded by the block I would like to farm, either cobble/stone or trees. The skeleton tries to shoot a snow golem, but ends up shooting the creeper, the creeper detonates, and is supposed to turn 'some' of the blocks around the creeper into entity format, which are picked up by hoppers and stored into chests. However the creeper ALWAYS destroys all blocks around it, except obsidian, regardless to the blocks blast resistance. Furthermore the explosion does not seem to effect anything outside of the 3x3 area. I encased the area outside of the 3x3 with glass (very low blast resistance) and it does no damage to the glass at all.
Furthermore the creepers explosion damage does not seem effected by the difficulty. I expected to see a more powerful explosion which would have effected more blocks around the creeper, but this does not seem to be the case.

this effects single player as well, both converted worlds, and new worlds.

Actually, mushrooms depending on how you got them do not stack, for example, if you harvest say small red mushrooms from in caves and neither, these stack with one another, but if you harvest them from a large red mushroom they don't stack. The same goes for brown mushrooms, in that if you harvest them from the large tree like state they will not stack with its smaller counterpart.

Furthermore you can't 'quick move' them into an inventory containing like mushrooms, it shows an animation like its doing the move but it fails to the move (in some cases).

I have the same issue. PLEASE FIX THIS!

Can you fix it to follow java version? This also effects microfarms which I also just tested and don't work without altering light levels.

When dispensing it has a solid block next to it and it still only works half the time.

For any whom are looking for a more expensive fix....you can use trap doors, items will flow under it just fine.

Basically I'm making a farm similar to Nathan Ryan's crop farm as can be seen here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BIrqPH4Jfk

The farm relies on a single plot of ground that will be at a light level 7, so that when a villager plants anything here it will pop out of the ground due to the light level being at 7 or lower, and it uses a pressure plate next to this farmland to force a block update to the farmland. The result is that the farmer walks over the pressure plate, plants the crop in farmland and while there may share food with a hungry villager, to which the farm intercepts and collects the food. As he leaves he steps off the pressure plate, and causes a block update, poping out the crop he just planted. He generally goes about his business harvesting more crops and will eventually notice the empty farmland and the process repeats.

Now I agree that glass is not supposed to reduce light levels, but light should also continue to degrade as normal. What I expect is happening is that light levels are actually continuing at exact same levels as before and after the glass, but without seeing actual levels its impossible to tell.

What I can say is that if I replace what he referee's to as the core in the video, with solid blocks the light level seems correct, and it functions correctly. However on 4J's console version and PC java version, they both work correctly with the glass core, only the bedrock engine seems to incorrectly handle light when dealing with transparent blocks.

Glad to hear that they do intend to fix it. Could really use it now but will have to make do.

Would like to see this fixed as well.