Mob Killing
- Pedestals
- Dark Utilities
- Industrial Foregoing
- PneumaticCraft
- RFTools
- Ars Nouveau
- Blood Magic
- Botania
- Astral Sorcery
- Mekanism
- A Note on Player vs Non-Player Kills
Stick 'em with the pointy end, or so they say. But why does it have to be me doing the sticking?
Well, it doesn't!
Below we'll discuss some of the options in the pack for automatically killing mobs.
For a quick and easy way to kill mobs, the Pedestals mod offers the Auto Attacker Pedestal Upgrade. Simply place it on a pedestal and stand back. It will periodically damage everything in the area. It also very considerately picks up the drops to send them elsewhere. This one is covered in more detail our Rosa Arcana Automation section, so feel free to check it out there.
Dark Utilities is a mod practically dedicated to simplifying mob farms. It's vector plates can quickly displace mobs and it has a variety of Traps to damage them. For a simple farm, just move mobs onto a Player Trap with Vector Plates. The Filters can also be a great way of separating mobs first to simplify handling them.
Farming plants isn't the only aim of Industrial Foregoing. Animals and mobs alike are on the table here.
In the case of Industrial Foregoing, there's the Mob Slaughter Factory and the Mob Crusher. Now, it should be noted that while the Slaughter Factory doesn't produce any drops, it is still vital for progression in the mod as it is the only source for Liquid Meat and Pink Slime.
The Mob Crusher, on the other hand, will provide mob drops as if the mob were killed by a player. It produces Essence, which has it's own uses, but this can be toggled off to enable a Looting mode for the Crusher. The level of Looting is random, but hey, free extra drops, right?
It's also worth noting that the Mob Crusher will not harm baby animals. Handy to know for a passive animal farm.
For those who are more conscious of the performance issues surrounding mob farms, the Mob Crusher is one of the better choices for a few reasons. First, the mobs aren't damaged, they're simply removed. Second, the items and XP never drop in the world. They're generated within the machine's inventory for each mob it kills.
For a mod dealing with flying drones and mini guns, it's no surprise that PneumaticCraft offers a few options for killing things.
Available quite early on, Guard Drones can be used to patrol a 31x31x31 area, killing any hostile mobs it encounters. It doesn't do a lot of damage on it's own, but it can wield any melee weapon to increase it's damage. It will equip itself with whatever items it finds in the inventory it is deployed on.
Mobs will fight back, however, and the drone can end up taking damage or even dying. Armor Upgrades and Life Upgrades help reduce incoming damage and regenerate lost health.
Of course, keeping away from mobs in the first place is even better. Craft a Minigun Upgrade and install it in the drone instead to give it some ranged oomf. Just be sure to keep the chest it was deployed on supplied with ammo and place a Charging Station with a Dispenser Upgrade installed nearby so the drone can come recharge.
Similarly, Miniguns can be placed as fixed turrets and can be set with different filters for what to target. These don't use air, but they're also slower to shoot than an upgraded Guard Drone.
To go along with both of these, there are Collection Drones which will scan a large area for item drops, pick them up, and deliver them to the inventory it was deployed on.
Smart Drones are the next evolution of automated killing in PneumaticCraft. These must be programmed in a Programmer but are far more flexible than their basic cousins. For instance one could be programmed to pick up a highly enchanted sword and kill mobs in an area until the sword is in need of repair. At this point it could drop of the sword for repair at a Pedestals XP Anvil, pick it up once more and continue the slaughter. Another one could be programmed to collect items and XP orbs, dropping those off into your storage system.
This powerful block can project a force field into an area that can be configured to act differently for different mobs. For instance, it can be set to allow players to pass, block passive animals, and kill hostile mobs. The field itself can also be configure to different colors and textures, as well as mimic most blocks.
While complex shapes will require placing Shield Templates to fill in the area of the shield, a Shape Card may also be used to quickly set up any of it's default shapes without the need of Shield Templates. If Shield Templates are used they must connect back to the Projector, whereas the shield projected by a shape card can be offset by quite a ways.
Once it has been configured and powered, whack it with a Smart Wrench to set it's configuration.
The damage from this does count as player damage, so all drops will be available. It can even burn excess Dimensional Shards to enable Looting.
With it's system of spells and flexible automation tools, Ars Nouveau can get a surprising number of tasks done with a bit of ingenuity.
Spell Turrets offer a great deal of flexibility when it comes to making a mob farm. Just place the turret, or multiple turrets, facing into the killing chamber and set them up with the spell of your choosing. Every time they get a Redstone pulse, they'll fire, potentially making short work of the mobs.
With a Mana Condenser nearby the dying mobs will even help generate some of the mana needed to cast. Though, realistically you'll likely want some Volcanic Accumulators to help supplement the cost, especially for more expensive spells.
Projectile > Harm > Amplify > Amplify > Amplify > Fortune > Fortune > Fortune > Item Pickup
While costly, the above spell can deal with a Wither Skeleton in 2-3 hits. It gives us a nice Looting effect from the Fortune Spells, and the Item Pickup ensures that the items from the kill end up in any inventory directly adjacent to the Spell Turret.
For a mod dealing with blood as a source of energy, one might expect to see more killing going on. While there is some, it's not quite as useful as other methods.
The Well of Suffering is primarily a method of generating blood or LP for use in other rituals. It works by slowly damaging mobs in it's area of effect and those mobs will eventually die. However, this doesn't count as a player kill, and as a result the mobs don't drop their full loot table or XP. It's effectively as if they've been dropped to their death. So while it can help in getting a rotten flesh or bones, don't expect to build a full mob farm with this.
Despite it's automation centric nature, Botania doesn't offer much for automated mob killing. Not that would be very useful in a mob farm, at least. It's got a couple options to help keep them at bay, however.
Mana Spreaders can be converted to many different uses, including turning them into glowy lasers of death. Sadly, this won't result in player kills and therefore it's of limited use in automation. They're still quite fun on a hand held Mana Blaster, though, and equally amusing to launch towards a Tiny Planet to turn the death beam into a spiraling death beam.
These handy little guys can activate a variety of Botania's Rods to perform tasks at the cost of Mana. This includes Rod's of the Unstable Reservoir to rain down magic lasers from the sky. Sadly, this also doesn't count as a player kill, so they're more useful as a fixed defense than for a mob farm.
Astral Sorcery is probably best known for turning you into an unstoppable powerhouse, but it does offer some nifty little tricks with it's starlight beams.
Just pop a Damage Lens on a Crystal Lens and point it in the general direction of mobs for a little mayhem. It does not count as a player kill, but it can still find it's uses in certain farms where that's not important.
Of course, things don't stop there. By building up a Discidia Ritual we can create a massive zone of death and mayhem. This one also doesn't provide player kill drops.
Mekanism? Killing things? Isn't it just factories and processing? Not quite.
You know that laser you've probably used before to start a Fusion Reactor? The one that you've probably also killed yourself in? Yep. Put it to good use killing mobs instead.
By themselves the Lasers deal pretty great damage, slaying most mobs in an instant. But for something a little tougher, like the Wither it can take a few seconds. Not bad, but it gets better. Feed the beams into a Laser Amplifier instead and you've got yourself a device capable of outputting a single lethal beam at the push of a button. Don't forget to set the Max output or it'll drain the entire buffer instantly. With some brief testing, a beam of about 350 kFE is capable of taking down the Wither instantly.
It may seem like a major disadvantage that many of these options don't deal Player damage and therefore don't drop a mobs full loot table. This means no XP, no arrows or armor from Skeletons, no armor from Zombies, and no Blaze Rods from Blaze... But in some farms you may not even want those things. A bone farm that only drops bones means less hassle filtering and voiding other drops. Non Player kills also still result in drops such as Nether Stars, so many of these options are still quite viable for a Wither farm.
