Tutorials/Mushroom farming

As of the Beta 1.6 update, mushrooms will slowly multiply to nearby opaque blocks, allowing for the creation of farms. However, the rate at which mushrooms spread is considerably slow; therefore, starting a farm is an ordeal without multiple mushrooms. If more are required to start farming the fastest way to grow an individual mushroom is to place it on a flat, wide, completely dark surface with nothing occupying the squares next to it.

Because mushrooms will not grow into squares where the light level is greater than 12, and that growth is slowed by any light above level 1, the farmer must consider carefully the placement of light sources. Mushrooms make this up by being placeable everywhere but well lit areas or non solid / transparent blocks, and not requiring water, sand or extra space like crops, cacti or saplings.

The main danger in basic mushroom farming is that they must be low-lit indoor rooms, often allowing monsters to spawn in the same area. This can be countered in several ways: the easiest being placing torches two away from where you want your mushrooms to grow (Such as in tiny holes cut into the ceiling overhead) but without special precautions this will slow mushroom growth. You can also make the farming area only 1 block high and coat any pathways with Slabs, since mobs cannot spawn on half-blocks, or use a water system to channel mushrooms out of the room and into a collection point. You can also make a mushroom farm in the Nether where hostile creeps won't spawn in small areas.

Spread Mechanics
Every tick, every mushroom is given a 1/100 chance to do the following:


 * Choose a random block in the 3x3x3 cube centered on the mushroom (the mushroom itself, not the block it's on). This favors the mushroom's own level, the middle 3x3 square: upper and lower levels are given a 1/4 chance each whereas the mushroom's level is given 1/2. If a mushroom could be planted in the chosen block (empty, light <=12, lower block is opaque), do:


 * Choose another random block in the 3x3 square centered on the previously chosen block. If this block could support a mushroom as well, create one there.

Note that the first randomly chosen block can be the mushroom itself, the block it's sitting on, or the block above. The "can be planted" check will fail in all three cases, further reducing the overall spread chance.

The following can be deduced from the algorithm:


 * Mushrooms may spread to two blocks away, though only if a block on the way is free.
 * Mushrooms may spread diagonally in all three axis.

The Simple Method
This method relies on thorough lighting to ensure a monster-free, no-mining-required farm for the beginner mushroom farmer. Create a room two blocks high and as large horizontally as desired. At regular intervals dig one block up into the ceiling of your room, and place a torch to create recessed lighting. This will cast light of level 10 at floor height, allowing mushrooms to grow and spread. You can have as few as one torch every six squares with no danger of mobs spawning: this will also allow for fastest mushroom growth. Spread mushrooms on the floor with as much room around them to grow as possible and wait for them to grow.

Semi-Automatic Farming
It is possible to make a semi-automatic mushroom farm using a raised area to grow mushrooms in, and harvesting them all at once with water. This tutorial assumes you are in an underground room, but you can build it on the surface as long as you put an adequate roof on top.

Hollow out a large room, 2 blocks high and 13 blocks wide. It can be as long as you want, but you will need to either raise the floor and the ceiling by one every 7 blocks from where you wish to collect the mushrooms, meaning you will have to knock out at least one additional ceiling block to jump to the new level - It is fine if the ceiling is three high in places, however.
 * Step 1.

Dig a one deep channel along each of the side walls. Then another four squares over, and another four squares over from that. There should be a raised area 3 squares wide between the troughs when you are done. Place mushrooms in the troughs, then cover the troughs with a non-transparent block and place mushrooms on top of them as well. Having two rows of mushrooms growing into an area will increase grow speed: and both will be protected from water when you use it to harvest
 * Step 2.

You can now harvest any mushrooms that grow in the area between your seed mushrooms by placing a bucket of water on the back row of each - this will wash the new mushrooms to the other side of the room where they can be picked up easily while leaving the seed mushrooms in place. This can be combined with properly placed lighting to prevent monsters, and a water delivery system that can quickly place water at the back of all three rows to bring the mushrooms forward. A good example can be found here.
 * Step 3.

Fully-Automatic Mushroom Farming
Using lighting, redstone and a minecart system

A fully automatic mushroom farming using variable lighting, redstone, and a small minecart system is possible. This type of farm is very complicated however, and difficult to comprehend without an example, so a video has been included to help with understanding at the bottom of this section.

Variable light can be created by placing lava inside a 3x3 square "ring" of cobblestone, capping the lava off with any block, and attaching signs to all four sides of the block that is located above the lava. Fire will attempt to spread to the sign, and as signs are currently non-flammable it will temporarily set the cobblestone of one of the corner blocks on fire.

By placing a block two away from where the fire will start (Meaning you will need to place 8 blocks total, two for each corner of the starting ring) you will have a square that is sometimes dark enough to have mushrooms grow into it, and sometimes too light for them to do so. You will need to place another two rings outside of this, one that will allow mushrooms to grow up diagonally into your grow squares, and one that will allow them to grow down diagonally - however - by placing a ring of cobblestone one above your ring of signs and continuing the grow squares and the seed squares it is possible to continue building the system up as far as the top of the map - if desired - and subsequent levels are far easier to lay out and build than the first.

The second part of this system - redstone - is used to update the grow blocks when they are lit and cause the mushrooms inside to "pop" out of their square and fall. Mushrooms will remain planted when the light level is too high for them to grow, unless the state of their square is checked. This sounds complicated, but all it means is that something about the square next to it needs to change - by placing a ring of redstone torches that will send a signal to the block next to our grow square it becomes possible to have the mushrooms pop out without having to do anything ourselves, and to stop or start this action by using a redstone system.

Generally this will be accomplished by placing a solid block three away from each of our grow spots on the bottom level with redstone running current to it, and placing a torch on the side nearest to our grow spot. We can then alternate solid blocks and torches all the way up the remainder of our system, meaning that while the bottom row needs a large amount of redstone as part of our redstone mechanism each additional row will need only 8 redstone torches.

The problem with this system is that because the lighting is random, dispensing all the mushrooms would require pressing a button many many times. The way we can get past this is by having a cart system, activated remotely, that does nothing but travel back and forth. By placing a cart activated button on this track and hooking it to the bottom layer of our redstone system we can turn the system on and off with only a single lever and have it remain on for as long as we want. Afterwards you can build a water channel under your mushroom system to carry them wherever you want, or simply run underneath the automatic farm to collect the mushrooms that drop.

For a video with step by step instructions and visual examples see Fully Automatic Mushroom Farm Tutorial.

Using pistons

A simple fully automated mushroom farm can be built by the use of pistons. First a room of the height 2 is needed. In this room a water stream in the floor of the width 2 is needed. The purpose of this stream is simply to transport the harvested mushrooms out of the room. Mushrooms shall be planted along the bank of this water stream leaving every other block empty. Lastly, pistons are required to be placed facing towards the waterstream. They need to be placed besides the blocks, in which no mushrooms were planted. The pistons need to be wired to an outside switch, the water stream shall be redirected to your favorite collection point. Then the room needs to be sealed to be completely dark. The only opening should be 1x1 wide, for the water stream. This being the only opening, spawned monsters cannot leave the room. Eventually the mushrooms will spread to the blocks in front of the pistons. Activating the pistons will then harvest the mushrooms and push them into the water stream. The system is reset by deactivating the pistons without any need for replanting. Higher efficiency can be achieved by multiple arrangements. The system can even be arranged in a room of the heigth 1, this makes setup more difficult though.

Ne'X Ekho's water flushable pentapipe
By using a central pipe with mushrooms in it and four surrounding empty pipes, you can have the mushrooms grow in the dark pipes and then when you want to get them out, flush water into the pipes and have them come out the other end. It's similar to The Simple Method, but is sealed not needing anything bigger than a 1x1 dark pipe so monsters cannot spawn without resorting to hacks like using half steps. Also, using a special arrangement of blocks at the end from which you flush the entire thing can be flushed by removing a single block or placing a single source, making this trivial to flush using pistons. Being nothing more than a pipe, it is also easily repeatable meaning farms hundreds of blocks long can be made dispensing more than twenty five mushrooms a day. The longer the pipes, however, the longer it takes for mushrooms to be pushed out by water. An alternative exists in the vertical silo, a module of which is pictured left. Water pours from above onto the central block, dispersed down into the three indents. Mushrooms are placed on the four raised corners, and grow into the three indents to be washed away by the flush. A "blocking" block is needed instead of four gaps as otherwise items dropped on top from another module won't move and will instead collect there.

Simplified Cross-section for clarity.