Mob Spawning
Mob Spawning in Vanilla is relegated to a few basic techniques, mostly dealing with dark rooms and fancy tricks to limit where things can spawn.
Modded, however, often takes a much more... direct approach. So let's cover some of our options in this pack.
In Vanilla it is considered the worst sacrilege to break a Spawner. Doubly so when Apotheosis is involved. With Apotheosis, it becomes possible to move Vanilla Spawners, augment them, and even change their spawn type.
To move a Spawner, simply break it with most any Silk Touch enchanted tool. Even an Ars Nouveau Extract spell will suffice. Do not, however, expect a Mining Gadget, RF Tools Builder, or a Digital Miner to pick them up.
It should be noted here that Mekanism's Cardboard Boxes also permit moving Spawners by default. So this can be a very cheap way to collect a few during early exploration.
Augmenting Spawners is as simple as right clicking the block with a given item. To see what items can be used as augments, check Uses on a Spawner in JEI. Of particular note are Redstone Compoarators, which make the Spawner only run when a Redstone signal is applied.
As for changing the spawn type, Apotheosis adds the Capturing enchant, which gives a chance to receive a Spawn Egg when a mob is killed. This allows us to use the Vanilla Mechanic of setting the Spawn type by right-clicking the Spawner with the egg.
Industrial Foregoing actually introduces two methods of spawning mobs that ultimately go hand in hand. The first, and most basic is Mechanical Dirt.
Mechanical Dirt takes in FE and Liquid Meat and will randomly spawn any mobs that would normally spawn in the area. This can be handy for forcing rare mobs to appear, such as Blitz or Basalz in their respective biomes. Spawn conditions must still be met, however, so keep it in the dark.
Obtaining the Liquid Meat then becomes the goal to fulfill. Thankfully, Industrial Foregoing makes that rather simple with a Mob Slaughter Factory. This is a net positive operation, meaning that a Mechanical Dirt and Mob Slaughter Factory combo produce more Meat than is consumed. Meaning this can be used to run another Mechanical Dirt where the mobs are killed with a Mob Crusher.
The Mob Crusher then produces mob drops as if the mob were killed by a player, as well as Essence. This in return can be used to run Industrial Foregoing's second mob Spawner: The Mob Duplicator.
The Mob Duplicator is an old standby that makes a return in modern modded Minecraft. It will forcibly spawn any mob that can be captured in a Mob Imprisonment Tool. Simply right click a mob with one to capture it and then insert the item into the machine to begin.
For a simple method of automated Spawning, PneumaticCraft has the Spawner Agitator which may be placed on any Vanilla Style Spawner (even those modified by Apotheosis) to cause it to continue spawning with no player present.
In addition to this, however, PneumaticCraft recently added a new toy to it's arsenal of automation centric tools: The Pressurized Spawner.
This is a programmable Spawner that runs on Compressed Air and little else. Given enough air, it can run remarkably fast.
Programming it involves creating filled Spawner Cores. Pure cores can be extracted directly from Vanilla Spawners by way of the Spawner Extractor where the type of core will be determined by the type of the Spawner itself. Alternatively they can be filled in a Vacuum Trap. An empty Core is inserted into the Trap and any nearby mobs are sucked in. It takes a fair number of mobs to fill the trap, but it also allows for the creation of mixed Spawner Cores. Perhaps a nice combo Blaze/Witch/Wither Skeleton/Iron Golem Spawner would suit your needs?
RF Tools Utility provides it's own unique twist on Mob Spawning which uses some form of matter to reconstruct each mob.
This consists of a few parts. First, the Spawner block itself, above which the mobs will ultimately appear. This needs power and a filled Syringe.
Filled Syringes are obtained quite simply, just punch a mob with a Syringe until it shows that it's full. Do be careful with small animals, as they are likely to die from this procedure if they don't receive prompt medical attention.
Once the Syringe is in place, some extra information is displayed in the Spawner which indicates the matter required to spawn this entity. It generally consists of something related to the mob, some substrate material like dirt or gravel, and some living material. Most raw meat and plants count for this.
Getting this matter into the Spawner requires another block, the Matter Beamer. Place these down around the Spawner. Position doesn't matter much as they can link up from up to eight blocks away. Right-Click the Matter Beamer with a Smart Wrench and then Right-Click the Spawner to link it. Supply power, a Redstone signal, and the items indicated in the Spawner to begin sending the material. Item's can be piped in.
More Beamers can be used, but they can also be sped up by Infusing them with Dimensional Shards in a Machine Infuser.
Warning: The Spawner can hold a lot of matter and that matter is lost if ever the Syringe is removed. So be careful how you supply it. It may be advisable to only send items in exact batches, for instance. Consider an Immersive Engineering Item Batcher for that.
Nature's Aura similarly has it's own take on Mob Spawning, and this one doesn't always require the player to have found the mob in the first place. Trouble finding a Parrot friend? Summon one from thin air!
The Altar of Birthing uses a bit of Aura, some items related to the mob in question, and a Spirit of Birthing to summon each mob. Spirits of Birthing themselves are acquired simply by breeding passive animals such as cows and sheep in an area rich in Aura. All that's required to summon the mob is to throw everything down somewhere on the Altar's multiblock structure and wait for the pretty flashing to end.
For some mobs such as Blaze, the process requires items that are only obtained from the mob itself. In these cases the Altar will require a little bit of clever farming to ensure enough items are received to continue the process. A good looting based mob grinder should suffice.
Botania doesn't offer much in terms of mob spawning as it largely relies on vanilla mechanics to fuel that need. It does have a few tools to help, however.
First and foremost, the Life Imbuer, which allows a Vanilla Mob Spawner to run with no player nearby. This does require Mana from a Mana Spreader, however.
Secondly, there's the Cocoon of Caprice. Place one of these down and wait a bit and you'll end up with a random baby animal. This can be a great way to find uncommon critters like Rabbits and Foxes.
Dropping Emeralds or Chorus Fruit on them before they hatch will also influence them to spawn Villagers or Shulkers, respectively. Great way to fuel a Shulk Me Not.
Additionally, hatching them in water will result in certain aquatic creatures such as Puffer Fish or even Dolphins.
While Ars Nouveau doesn't really offer a Mob Spawner, per se, it is worth mentioning one aspect anyway.
Recall that in Vanilla Lightning can convert certain creatures. Pigs to Pigmen and Villagers to Witches, for instance. Well, Ars Nouveau does allow summoning Lightning bolts and this process can even be automated with a Spell Turret. So it would be possible to build yourself a nice Witch farm, for instance, that uses a standard Vanilla Villager Breeder to supply the villagers for transformation.
