Tutorial:Monster spawner traps

Monster spawner traps are a type of mob farm that use monster spawners found in monster rooms as a source of mobs. The purpose of these traps is to create an infinite source of items that can be gathered in an efficient way from the mobs spawned by the monster spawner. They have the advantage over simple mob farming of providing an extremely stable (albeit slow) and pure stream of mobs, which makes it possible to be built way smaller and less complicated than general mob farms. Two general goals of these traps are to keep the player safe and to allow the mobs to spawn.

Monster rooms (also referred to as dungeons) are found when tunneling or exploring caves and mineshafts. They appear to spawn in random places, but almost always underground, becoming more common once you get to the deepslate layer. Finding dungeons without mods, cheats, or external programs is mostly attributed to luck and some know-how. While exploring, some tricks can be used to help detect dungeons. Gravity blocks like sand and gravel in a neat square may cover a monster spawner and is easily visible in deserts if spawned near the surface. Hearing or seeing a group of a single type of mob while caving could mean a monster spawner is nearby. Lastly, mossy cobblestone or normal cobblestone naturally spawning away from lava is a dungeon, unless it is in a jungle biome, where it can also be a jungle temple, or a old growth taiga biome where mossy cobblestone rocks generate as part of the biome decorations.

Monster spawners can be neutralized by placing torches to light up any dark areas around the monster spawner. With the exception of blaze monster spawners, a single torch placed on the monster spawner is sufficient to disable it. Because blazes can spawn up to light level 11, multiple torches (light level 14) are required to neutralize a blaze monster spawner. There are seven different mobs that can spawn. They are separated into three categories: the two-block high tall mobs (zombies, skeletons, and blazes), the one block high short mobs (spiders, cave spiders, and silverfish), and the variably sized magma cubes. Similar variants such as the zombie villager are not included in this list.