Talk:Tutorials/Mushroom farming

I created the page but I'm not too experienced with wikis so I'm relying on everyone else to flesh it out for me... I Make Things 08:23, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Technique Discussion
I haven't tried anything fancy yet, usually its just a dim cave thing that I put my mushrooms in. I was thinking though, having, say, 1 block with a mushroom on it that is surrounded by a light level of 12 on all sides could allow you to make an automatic farm, where a mushroom spreads to a nearby block and is quickly popped up by the light into water currents or something. I Make Things 08:26, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

...that would work, but since mushroom farming is so slow, it would be hard for it to work effectively... I think using that on a much larger scale, where you use either 4 or 9 mushrooms, surrounded by fire covered in glass to create a 12 nd 13-light area around it, while preventing the mushrooms from getting burned... ...the only problem would be collection, and that's why I posted below ---Dark Pulse 01:11, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Harvesting Possibilities
there are a few possible harvesting methods I'd like to explore, and I'm not sure if they work or not, if known, please comment:

1. Sand - Do mushrooms hold the same property of holding up sand that torches do? if so, perhaps slowly layering mushrooms could be a harvesting method (but it appears mushrooms can't climb 2 layers (IE, grow on the block directly above them) - and if they do, will they "pop out" on a large collapse? 2. Water - what's a mushrooms interaction with water? will the mushrooms pop out if hit by water? this would mean a method simmilar to sugar cane farming would be very easy. 3. any other harvesting possibilities??? --Dark Pulse 01:04, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Red and Brown comparison
I started my own farm with something like 3 red mushrooms. I found about 4 brown mushrooms a good few days later. Only one red mushroom has grown in all of their time, but the brown mushrooms have been spreading like mad, with 3 or 4 new ones popping up. I Make Things 08:29, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure and haven't tried it but i'm going to make a room with one glass wall to look through and a door on one side have a hatch in the roof, which is three blocks from the ground, and have a torch behind it and have one of those every four or so blocks because that will, most likely, give the room enough light to grow the shrooms and not allow mobs to spawn.--Ormidda 08:49, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

sorry put it in wrong one it is supposed to be in tequnique. --Ormidda 08:51, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

(This is SMP) It seems to me that Red Mushrooms grow much slower than brown ones, though I may just be being unlucky. Nbord 22:58, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

My Own Analysis
I've left Minecraft running on both SSP and SMP, observed both planted and natural/generated mushroom fields growth. I made a slight effort to do controls, but mushrooms are tolerant to everything but bright light. I set up a mushroom farm and left it running for 6 hours, and went from this, to this, to this, and the mushrooms passed through the wall to outside the farm. (Note, my texture pack is "Visibility", blue/purple mushrooms are red mushrooms, green mushrooms are brown mushrooms)

My initial conclusions (which may be proven incorrect) about mushroom growth are:
 * Mushrooms can spread, in order of preference/likelihood, 1 square either diagonally or orthogonally, 2 squares orthogonally, up a layer via an adjacent step/block, and rarely down a layer via an adjacent step/block (if at all).
 * The 2 square orthogonal growth ignores 1 block wide walls, meaning mushrooms can expand beyond the walls of the mushroom farm (as indicated by the 3rd screenshot above). Does this mean mushrooms exhibit the ability of quantum tunneling?
 * Brown mushrooms seem to grow faster than red mushrooms.
 * Growth rate may be affected by light, and this may contribute to brown mushrooms' faster growth rate, at least in complete darkness, since they emit level 1 light. Both mushrooms seems to grow slightly less in darkness, but I am not positive.
 * Proximity to water and the material the mushroom is planted on has no discernible effect on growth rate.
 * Mushrooms will not spread to a tile with a light level greater then 12, understandable considering they cannot naturally spawn in light greater than 12.

I found that the best pattern is one that simply allows for the most lateral growth. Assembling the mushrooms in a grid pattern, 3 squares apart (2 empty squares in between, with each mushroom getting 8 empty squares to themselves). If space is limited, the mushrooms can be placed 2 squares apart, though more frequent harvesting is required (roughly 4 hours compared to 6, with my farm sizes of 8 each of both mushroom types). Alternatively, simply exploring the nether and then idling in the nether will eventually cause literal fields of mushrooms (this is near the entry to the nether on the SMP server I frequent, after about a day of the nether being activated on the server: http://oi51.tinypic.com/24kxj4z.jpg apologies for the darkness, the texture pack should make things easier to see. A day later, the size of the brown mushroom field about doubled) AndroidAR 15:12, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Comments by CrispyLiquids: I have a mushroom farm on an SMP server, it's 18x18 blocks and contains an equal amount of brown and red mushrooms. Though I am not a registered user on this wiki (I logged in with BugMeNot), I thought I should share my findings on this topic, as my farm is doing great. The layout I'm using divides the brown and red mushrooms diagonally, with the diagonal line having no mushrooms planted on them. I started out by leaving an empty block in between two mushrooms every time, and leaving an empty line between two rows of mushrooms. Note that this farm is in complete darkness, there are no torches whatsoever and the room height is 2 blocks, underground. Being on SMP, I didn't not measure the time it took, but it quickly grew and completely filled the farm with mushrooms (against expectations). I noticed, time after time, that the Red Mushrooms (not the Brown ones, as mentioned in AndroirAR's experiment) outnumbered the Brown ones; meaning they grew quicker in these conditions (Would total darkness benefit Red Mushroom growth, whereas non-total darkness benefit Brown Mushroom growth?).

As for the most efficient mushroom farm, the method I just described is not the most efficient one when it comes to 'time to harvest' vs. harvest. I think the least time consuming and efficient way is to harvest compelete rows of mushrooms by simply holding your left mousebutton while walking in that row, like one would do with Sugar Canes (but not with Wheat, as you would crush the crops). Personally I harvest one row and leave the next one, and continue like that. The truely optimal setup will depend on how frequently you wish to harvest your mushrooms; after all the more time you leave in between harvests, the more space your mushrooms will need to spread further. As I was writing this text, which did not take too long, 11 Brown and 18 Red Mushrooms grew on my farm. Minecraft wiki 12:42, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Should this be merged with mushrooms?
I don't think so because cacti and reeds got their own pages, and there is already a lot of discussion here that would clog up the mushroom discussion, not to mention the mushroom article being quite long enough already. I Make Things 09:52, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

However, this article is currently a stub, and needs drastic expansion to be considered a full article. A tutorial for a simple automatic mushroom farm would probably help many people.Thehiddenones 17:33, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I think this page should remain. There's a lot of information to cover on this topic. Nbord 22:59, 31 May 2011 (UTC)


 * I vote keep this pageTheesexiestman 21:53, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
 * well enough time had passed and most you all want it to stay...what ever, I'll take down my request.--Yurisho 21:59, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Which blocks do mushrooms spread to?
Title. This can be added to the main article. I know right now they spread on: Nbord 23:01, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
 * 1) Dirt
 * 2) Grass
 * 3) Sand
 * 4) Stone
 * 5) Cobblestone
 * 6) Chests
 * 7) Furnaces

They just spread to any opaque, solid block. C ali nou - talk × contribs » 23:08, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Ah, okay. I'd still like to see this tested, though. Thanks! Nbord 23:10, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Time to update?
It seems like a few things can be agreed upon: -Stuff Mushrooms grow on -Brown grows faster than red (About 2x as fast, in my experience) -The only major factor on growth is light - common sense

I think it's time that we added some of that stuff to the stub. Snails 06:00, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Spread Mechanics
I've updated the main page with a description of how mushrooms spread. Here is the more concise, technical version:


 * firstChosen.x = mushroom.x + rand[-1, 0, +1]
 * firstChosen.y = mushroom.y + rand[-1, 0, 0, +1]
 * firstChosen.z = mushroom.z + rand[-1, 0, +1]


 * secondChosen.x = firstChosen.x + rand[-1, 0, +1]
 * secondChosen.y = firstChosen.y
 * secondChosen.z = firstChosen.z + rand[-1, 0, +1]

It's not easy to visualize the "spread map" in one's head. (Well, my head, anyway.) It's symmetrical and obviously prefers the immediate neighboring blocks, but that's about all I can deduce without writing a simulator or reverting to using pen, paper and probability (*shudder*).

I'm not sure it's worth the trouble; I'd just build a "flat" farm, but it may be interesting to figure out the optimal seed pattern.