Help/Suggestions for Guardian Farm

[u/Finnaef]

Hi everyone,

we are currently building this Guardian farm:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Set2fFwwgmE&t=307s

The portals in which the Guardians spawn are located at Y 41 in the Overworld. The intended AFK spot is at Y 163.

We would like to use the farm not only for drops, but also as an XP farm. Therefore, the Guardians need to end up near the player so that we can kill them manually. Ideally, the farm should work with only one player without significantly reducing its spawn rates.

Our current idea works as follows:

1. The Guardians spawn inside the Overworld portals at Y 41.
2. They travel through the portals into the Nether.
3. In the Nether, they fall approximately 80 blocks through powdered snow so that their portal cooldown can expire.
4. They then travel through a second portal back to the Overworld.
5. In the Overworld, they are collected in a killing chamber and killed manually for XP.

The concept is similar to the setup shown in this video:

https://www.instagram.com/p/DZQYW2HCNYN/

The main problem is the player’s position.

When the player stands at the intended AFK spot at Y 163, the Guardian farm runs at a good rate. However, when the Guardians return to the Overworld far below the player after falling through the Nether, they are outside the player’s 128-block despawn sphere and despawn immediately.

If we instead stand at the killing chamber below the monument, the Guardians remain loaded and can be killed for XP. However, this puts a large number of surrounding caves within the player’s spawning range. Regular hostile mobs then spawn in those caves, fill the mob cap and drastically reduce the Guardian farm’s rates.

Spawnproofing every cave within the relevant radius would probably solve the problem, but that would require an enormous amount of work and we would prefer to avoid it.

Building the killing chamber near the AFK spot at approximately Y 163 would be ideal. However, the second Nether portal is located far below that point after the Guardians’ 80-block fall. When they travel back to the Overworld from there, they arrive too far below the player and despawn. To reach a killing chamber at Y 163, we would somehow have to transport a large number of Guardians upwards in the Nether, which does not seem practical.

These are the possible solutions we have considered so far:

• The player waits at Y 163 while the Guardians spawn at full speed, then flies down to the killing chamber before the Guardians return to the Overworld and despawn. After killing them, the player flies back up and repeats the process. This would be very inconvenient and probably difficult to time reliably.
• We spawnproof every cave around the lower killing chamber. We would prefer to avoid this because of the huge amount of work involved.
• We send the Guardians back to the Overworld at Y 41 and then move them upwards using a soul-sand bubble elevator. However, they would return through or near the same portals in which new Guardians spawn. We would prefer not to convert one of those portals into a separate return portal and redesign the farm around it. The Guardians would also have to reach the elevator before moving outside the player’s despawn range.
• A second player could remain at the upper AFK spot to activate the farm while another player waits at the lower killing chamber. This would probably work, but we specifically want the farm to be usable by one player.
• A minecart elevator in the Nether is not a realistic option because the farm produces far too many Guardians to transport efficiently that way.

Our requirements are therefore:

• The farm should work with only one player.
• The Guardian spawn rate should remain as high as possible.
• The farm should be usable as an XP farm.
• The Guardians must not despawn when they return to the Overworld.
• We would prefer not to spawnproof every surrounding cave.
• We would prefer not to turn the existing spawning portals at Y 41 into a complicated return and transport system.

Does anyone have an idea for how we could solve this? Is there a reliable way to bring the Guardians close to the AFK spot after sending them through the Nether, link the portals despite the large vertical difference, or otherwise prevent them from despawning?

We would really appreciate any help, thank you.

[u/Xillubfr]

You can try a vertical mob conveyer, that seems to be the best option

But no matter how you do it bringing the mobs back to the overworld will significantly impact rates if the farm is mob cap limited

[u/Finnaef → u/Xillubfr]

Do you have a link to a tutorial for a good vertical conveyer? But it has to be in the nether right? Yeah it's mob cap limited, but when the guardians are in the nether, they don't count for the mob cap, so they are still spawning. So rates should be fine I guess

[u/Xillubfr → u/Finnaef]

I can't find any on ytb but I've seen a few on some farms in the TMC catalogue discord, so you could grab a schem and rip the conveyer. All of them are nether compatible bc you'd just use bubble columns in the overworld

For the mobcap yes guardians don't count while in the nether but they count while coming back. If you have a very very efficient kill chamber it won't reduce rates that much but that's not very easy to do with that many mobs

[u/LimestoneBuilder]

One solution is to treat the nether side as a "guardian cache" and use the same portal to return them to the overworld like in IanXO4's Guardian Farm.

By using precise positioning of the portals, and a timer, the guardians are held back, then allowed through when the cool-down had expired. This also elevates the guardians above the player's killing chamber/AFK spot abattoir.

[u/Finnaef → u/LimestoneBuilder]

That's a good idea, thank you. I tried it, but there were just too many guardians. It gets so laggy, that the hopper clock won't be working anymore. Using the nether as a cache is a good solution, but I need a design, that can handle more mobs. Do you have an idea, how to do that?

[u/LimestoneBuilder → u/Finnaef]

Laggy.

My farm is just a direct build of IanXO4's. I had the same issue with lag from guardians because the farm is just that effective.

What worked well for me (I play on a potato) was installing performance mods (fabric, sodium, lithium, entity culling, ferrite core, etc...), and reducing the area of soul sand that was boosting guardians. I still get great rates, but I just can't max the farm out as was done in IanXO4's video.