Tutorials/Snow farming

Snow golems allow for quickly obtaining a large amount of snowballs, and therefore snow blocks and snow layers.

Why?
Why would someone want ridiculous quantities of snow?
 * Combine with a pumpkin farm to construct a huge army of snow golems for some reason.
 * Snow blocks are a decent building material as long as they don't have to resist explosions; contrary to all logic, they don't melt. Thus an easy-to-build snow farm (and material to make lots of shovels) can avoid the need to haul many stacks of cobblestone or other material to a build site for constructing large farms.
 * Hostile mobs cannot spawn on snow layers stacked 2 or more deep, if light sources aren't desired for a build.
 * Endermen cannot teleport onto snow layers stacked 10 or more deep.
 * To get a cheap source for projectiles to take down blazes for their blaze rods.

Material
Building the farm requires:
 * Two snow blocks
 * One pumpkin
 * One block that is not broken quickly with a shovel and which can have snow layers placed on it, such as stone or cobblestone.
 * Additional blocks to confine the golem and protect it from rain, depending on the farm location.

To operate the farm, the player will need one or more shovels and inventory space sufficient to collect a lot of snowballs. Note that snowballs only stack to 16, although they can be crafted into snow blocks that stack to 64 without needing a crafting table.

Location
The farm must be built in a location where a snow golem can survive and generate snow. Thus, the farm cannot be built in the Nether, deserts (all variants), mesas (all variants), or savannas (except variants listed below), and must be built above certain altitudes in some other biomes due to temperature decrease with altitude:
 * Above Y≈64 in plains, sunflower plains, swamps (including M), and beaches
 * Above Y≈124 in mushroom islands and shore
 * Above Y≈154 in jungles and variants
 * Above Y≈184 in savanna plateau and savanna plateau M
 * Above Y≈244 in savanna M

Note that farms may be built at any level in extreme hills and in river biomes, which are reasonably easy to find even in areas full of deserts, savannas, and mesas.

Build


The general idea is to construct a snow golem trapped in a 1×1 space, standing on a block that can support snow layers and isn't quickly destroyed by shovels, where the player can easily target said block.


 * 1) Place the floor block, where the golem will stand. Typically this is one level above where the player will stand, i.e. the player can and must jump to be able to stand on the block.
 * 2) Place the two snow blocks, one on top of the other, on top of the floor block.
 * 3) Place blocks around the upper snow block to keep the golem from leaving the farm. Full blocks will likely work better than fences, as they constrain the golem's movement to a smaller area.
 * 4) Place the pumpkin on top of the upper snow block, which will spawn the golem in place of the snow blocks.
 * 5) If the golem is in a position where it might be exposed to rain, place a block above it to prevent this.

Enhancements might include hoppers to collect snowballs and feed them into chests when the player's inventory is full, a hopper minecart under the floor block for the same purpose, and a mechanism to dispense more shovels into the player's hand as existing shovels break.

Operation
Simply stand next to the golem's floor block, equip a shovel, aim at the snow layer on top of that block without hitting the golem itself, and hold the control.

Note that durability on the shovel will go down very quickly: a new stone shovel (without Unbreaking) will break in about 13 seconds after producing 16.5 stacks of snowballs (enough to make 66 snow blocks), and an iron shovel will break in about 25 seconds after producing 31.375 stacks of snowballs (enough to make 125 snow blocks with 2 snowballs left over).

Note that the mobGriefing gamerule must be enabled, otherwise the golem will be unable to create snow.

Tutoriels/Ferme à neige Ферма снега 教程/刷雪