Talk:Tutorials/Safe home

Unconvinced about spider strategies
For spiders it recommends building a cactus wall. While spiders will still take some damage from cactus (which is good), they can still climb and jump over it without dying (which is bad). To be effective it'd have to be really really tall. -- Miral 19:28, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I've found a nice way to abuse failed pathfinding to stop spiders: Build the cactus wall on top of an open castle (f.e. a quickly constructed sandcastle, as cactus is usually found on top of sand either way). The spiders climbed up, but once they were on top of the cactus, the pathfinding told them to move towards me... as i was standing straigth below them, they just kept sitting on top of the cactus. Even the loot was collectable later on :D Alblaka Alblaka

Unconvinced about creeper strategies
"Since it explodes when being 1 block away from you and can look through walls, build your base above or below ground level or use 2 blocks thick walls." I have a base with one block thick walls (glass, rock, and cobble). With me on one side and the creeper on the other (separated only by the one block wall, looking through the glass at each other), the creeper does not try to explode. -- Miral 19:28, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * It also will not explode in my face (whoops) if I stare at it through a 1 block thick glass wall. However, it will start it's fuse when I step too close to a fence with it on the other side. --Flippeh 22:36, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * It's all line-of-sight based, I believe. Although glass blocks are transparent (and we can see through them) they're still considered solid so mobs don't see through them (except Spiders, those seem to behave differently since they could start climbing). You can build a glass catwalk out into darkness and mobs directly below you (with glass in between) will act as though you're not there (except spiders again). But any off to the side that don't have glass in the way will see and follow. With creepers, they have to have line of sight for their "fuse" to burn. It's easy to test -- build a 2-high wall and stand on one side with a creeper on the other. They'll jump and see you and start to light but as soon as they drop below the wall and lose LOS the fuse resets. They'll keep making the hiss of their fuse as they jump, gain LOS, then fall and lose LOS again. And getting back to the original point, since glass is opaque to their LOS they don't detonate even when they can see you through it. The bit about 'looking through blocks' on the article page is definitely wrong. --Lordebon 23:02, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I was unconvinced as well, so I reworded the creeper paragraph. --DannyF1966 10:24, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
 * you did right. i started this article right after the 1.2-update, so i didn’t know that the see-through-walls-ability was transferred from creepers to spiders (in order to make the wall-climbing useful i guess).
 * fortunately i did neither know of the spider-proof sand walls, since they got removed 2 days later and this would have had to be fixed, too – Flying sheep 18:27, 23 January 2011 (UTC)