I Boosted My Minecraft Base With Beacons!

The way spawn-proofing that area of the Nether actually makes it look like everything is covered in a layer of ash is actually super cool.

15:12 – I remember an old mod I really enjoyed called "Wireless Redstone." It allowed you to power a special addressable "transmitter" block and activate whatever is connected to its associated addressable "receiver" block. I'm sure it was handy for all sorts of purposes, but I only used it for interior lighting (with levers for light switches, and redstone lamps). I haven't kept up on mods so I don't know if it's been updated, or if there's a better alternative.
18:25 – I'm sure you felt quite a sense of accomplishment in this moment. And rightfully so!

You should add a music block sound system that plays when the beacons are turned on/off, it would make the event even more ominous.

Ah, I was so worried when you said spawn proofing was going to take a while that you didn't know about the special nature of soul sand valleys.

Edit: oh no, he slabbed it all anyway!

For the benefit of anyone who hasn't come across one of the more technical videos explaining this in detail, here's a brief summary:
Edit: or you can check out gnembon's explanation video called "Minecraft 1.16: Automatic Perimeters and Spawning Potential"

1: Soul Sand Valleys only spawn skeletons, ghasts and striders. At normal hostile mob spawn rules, this makes them a nightmarish shrieking shooting gallery deathtrap (I'm pretty sure there's a snapshot out there where that is, indeed the case), so they made some weird alternate rules. (These rules also apply in the teal mushroom forest biome, which I forget the name of, just with endermen instead of skeletons and ghasts)

2: For every mob related to the biome (again, skeletons, ghasts, striders), there's a radius of spawn suppression around them. So a ghast can't spawn within a certain radius of another ghast, and has slowly increasing odds beyond that radius until they come back up to 0% suppression (ie normal spawning). Where these radii overlap, they're combined such that they increase in radius. (So a collection of 5 ghasts will suppress spawns in a very large radius.

3: Fortress-exclusive mobs, so blazes, wither sleketons, I think zombie pigmen? are completely uneffected by these rules. So a nether fortress in a large enough soul sand valley tends to be kinda intense because it has a far bigger share of the mob cap than it normally would. This can make them anomalously difficult to deal with under normal circumstances, but is perfection for farm design. From here, the farm in the video is just forcing wither skeleton spawns only using the wither roses, which is pretty standard for modern wither farm design.

4: If you really want to dial things to the nines, you can collect or breed a collection of about 70 striders somewhere near the farm, which will pretty much completely suppress spawning within the spawn radius of the farm, excluding the fortress structure itself. Then it's just a matter of spawn proofing the rest of the fortress (which, as noted, can get quite harrowing because of the heightened spawning in the fortress) and you end up with a truly ridiculous wither farm with relatively little effort.

There's a 3 layer farm using a single fortress crossroad (or possibly 2 side by side, I forget) that I used a few years ago that was claimed to spawn somewhere around 700 skulls per hour. Which, coupled with some of the madpeople on the server I was playing on, led to the creation of a 64×64 field of beacons in the nether nearby. As well speed 2 beacons covering the entire nether hub, a stack of community beacons that could be borrowed and returned free of charge, more than one person using beacons as decorative light sources, nether stars being used in armour stand dioramas, etc. (Also, that was the middle-of-the-road farm that guy had developed, there was another design that involved ripping a giant hole in the nether roof (and a bunch of other nonsense) that produced something like 2500 skulls per hour.)

Edit: I dug up the farm design video in question, it is Stromne's "My 3 Levels of Wither Skeleton Farm in Minecraft 1.16-1.19" It might be broken in 1.20+, or it might be that Stromne stopped updating the title at that point – I don't know of any changes that would break it for sure, but minor changes can have a major impact on farms that are this finely tuned, so…maybe try his world download out in whatever version you want to use it on first.

This looks so epic, thank god you can turn it off

If I had a nickel for every time this man committed atrocities, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's SUSPICIOUS that it's happened twice 🧐

you should add happy ghast flying base !!!

Does anyone need a homemade glowing Minecraft block? If someone wants it, message me — there is only one.

simply the best minecraft youtuber

I am so jealous!!! I hope that's how easy it is to farm wither skeleton skulls in Bedrock too!! T^T This is also my dream. Thank you for showing those amazing beacons.

BACONS

Hmm, I’m not a redstoner, but I was wondering, if it really really peeves you to not have everything turn off at the same time, I wonder if [calibrated] sculk sensors would work! I heard they have a pretty big range, but IDK the least bit about them

16:35 PISS LASER!

I'm still before my first wither, too scared I guess 😅 So I don't have beacons yet. This video was very very interesting. I was struggling with "what to do next" in my world, quite ready to give it up, but, maybe, I have my new goal ahead of me! Thanks!