Best way to get mob essence?

[Gorian]

I am wondering if anyone has good tips, usage, etc. on getting mob essence? I am using it to run block smashers, but it seems it kinda hard to get enough to keep using. The grinder kills mobs too quickly to keep it on all the time (automated) with breeding (maybe using rednet to pulse it slowly? ), and I even had my game sit for 5 hours with a zombie spawner feeding my grinder, and my 3 block smasher were just about using it as fast as I was making mob essence (I have diamonds, certus quartz, and emerald ore from my two laser drills being exported by my ME network into enchant-3 block smashers).

Also, it seems that an auto-spawner - grinder loop (grinder producing essence to power an auto-spawner, to spawn mobs to grind... ) produces a net loss of essence (takes more to spawn a mob then you get to grind it.)

it WOULD be nice to find number on that by the way. I've scoured every wiki I could find, including the minefactory reloaded forum post, and only the Feed the Beast wiki mentioned how much essence per kill the grind gives you, and not a single one, anyone I could find, on the entire internet seemed to list how much essence was used by the auto-spawner.

[TokiWartooth]

You can gain on MFR spawner grinder loop with slimes, but even that is a minor net gain

[H4RV3Y]

Easy.

Requires: 1 Breeder, 1 Chronotyper, 1 Grinder

Set your breeder up as usual fed by a planter (wheat). Use the chronotyper to take BABIES, set the grinder up on the next pen (it only grinds adults). You can control how much you get by how many adults you can fit/want in the breeding pen. I had so much essence I had to turn the machine off.

You can even have the grinding pen fed by 3 different breeding pens. As soon as they become adults, poof and the animal is gone. Additionally, you don't need to be in the area for it to work like a spawner. Its 100% scalable. I had it set on 5x5 pens but you could do it en-masse if you wanted more sooner.

I would also put it far away from where you work (with a chuck loader/dimensional anchor) as the noise is a pain.

[weirleader]

the only other advice I'd give is that a 5x5 pen is optimal; the chronotypers only pull from a 5x5 area and I had ridiculous amounts of overpopulation when I tried this on larger pens (9x9) because the chronotyper didn't pull all babies before they became adults. I tried limiting their space with fencing and that just caused other issues... so do lots of 5x5 pens and you should be good.

[Gio²]

Install Soul Shards

Or do what the other guys say.

[00Ducky]

Or...

Make a sweet endermen farm!

I found Breeding works on the side. But a endermen farm gives you a lot of mob essences. Now the only down side is you have to be close to the farm it self for endermen to spawn. But the results are awesome.

A auto spawner uses 3 time more mob essences the a mob produces.

Here is a video of a endermen farm.

And how well it works.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHk_lEbi8MY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfLXWuaohG8

[Dewfire]

Or do what I did, kill a couple Withers and make a PortaSpawner and move a few spawners into a farm room. I have Blazes, Spiders and Skeleton spawners cranking out baddies for my Grinders.

As an added bonus, I have endless spider silk, eyes, blaze rods and bone!

[Gorian]

Thanks for all the help guys! I ended up learning to use the chronotyper correctly. Useful once I actually learned how to use it

Anyway, seems that using passive mobs, breeding and sorting, then grinding them, seems to be automated enough. Though, if you pen enough animals up in a small area, they seem to kill each other once in a while :/

[H4RV3Y]

I also found this out, what I found easier was after the babies are chronotyped, I put them on a underground conveyor belt system towards the "killing pen" this stops a lot of deaths as cows are programmed to try get to their parents as babies which causes the ones at the front to suffocate in walls etc. by conveyoring them away you stop that. I've also made my conveyor belt quite long so they are not in the killing pen long before they become adults and die. This also then enables one killing pen to be fed from a few breeder/chronotypers.

[Lostonexxx]

Use slime embiggening syringes on a slime until it is the absolutely massive kind. Use that in an autospawner/mob grinder. It produces well in excess the amount of mob essence that it uses.

[H4RV3Y]

Hey lostonexxx, I'm watching your LP series atm. Keep up the good work.

[Gio²]

Or do what I did, kill a couple Withers and make a PortaSpawner and move a few spawners into a farm room. I have Blazes, Spiders and Skeleton spawners cranking out baddies for my Grinders.

As an added bonus, I have endless spider silk, eyes, blaze rods and bone!

Isn't it annoying that you have to be within 16 blocks of the spawners for them to work? Cause I don't think a chunk loader works...

Btw, do Grinders drop Wither Skulls when the kill Wither skellies?

EDIT: Just found out, you do get Wither Skulls . Although you do have to place the Auto-spawner in the Nether to make it spawn Wither Skellies.

[Gorian]

yeah, that's my understanding of spawners :/ but, the auto-spawner is pretty neat. Did exactly that with a pink slime, used an embiggening syringe, and put it in an auto-spawner. Same with a blaze. with blaze rods and pink slime balls being pretty rare, I now have thousands of both. (I know getting enough pink slime for a bucket-full was a big pain)

[Dewfire]

I didn't have to place mine there? I captured a wither skeleton, and placed it in my spawner and just went AFK and had 25ish wither skulls. Was in my base in the Overworld the entire time.

I even had it spawning Ghasts because I was always needing a Ghast Tear for something random.

[Gorian]

Sorry, I meant vanilla mob spawner, vs. auto-spawner

[Gio²]

I didn't have to place mine there? I captured a wither skeleton, and placed it in my spawner and just went AFK and had 25ish wither skulls. Was in my base in the Overworld the entire time.

I even had it spawning Ghasts because I was always needing a Ghast Tear for something random.

Well, I think you had it on spawn exact copy. Having that off makes the spawner spawn regular skellies in the overworld. By placing it in the Nether and having spawn exact copy off, you save essence and power :)

[Gorian]

ah, yeah, that makes sense. I read that was the case, as the whither skeleton isn't a seperate mob from the skeleton (by default, seems that spawning a normal mob costs 15 mob essence, and spawning an exact copy uses 50. A grinder produces ~10 per mob I believe)mB I'd guess, but I'm not positive.

[badkruka]

This was in 1.0.6 but havent put up an auto-spawner system in 1.1.8 so I dont know if still works.

Best way of producting Essence are when you have two set of auto-spawner. In the first you produce exact copy of a large Slime. When you kill a large slime they will split up to max 3 medium and when you kill a medium they will split up to max 3 small ones. That gives you up to 13 kills for the grinder from one singel mob. If you know how to handle gates you can easily make it fully automated to fill a tank with essence that you will use to both auto-spawner.

The other auto-spawner you spawn what ever you wanna spawn in. :)

[kreepergrimms]

i took an mfr portaspawner found a couple in dungeons when i was exploring, then took the spawners i collected and build a 5x5x5 room and put a grinder in, set the spawners in there on the roof so it gives 25 blocks to spawn on and i simply waited with me being close, i filled tanks very fast and since it only works when you are near it saves on power consumption but remember to setup an ender chest or some way to route out your item gains, i prefer to use zombie or skellies, due to the rotten flesh can be used in the auto feeder in the mps and the bones can be used for bonemeal

[Norman1346]

The best way I have found to get mob essences is to use a XP extractor and a bucket.

I simply drain my exp into tanks whenever I have some. I also find that killing a few spiders from a auto spawn-er and then using an XP extractor yields far more mob essence than it consumes.

[TokiWartooth]

that would take waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too many buckets. Is there like an XP IV so i can just pump it from myself into my railcraft tanks?

[Dewfire]

that would take waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too many buckets. Is there like an XP IV so i can just pump it from myself into my railcraft tanks?

haha, right Toki, or a XP Drain chamber like in Superman 2? Walk in, flip a switch and it sucks all your experience out.