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Double question: What's the mechanic behind drifter spawning? And, is there a way to see my light levels?


Shaidyn

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Hey, folks. I have a modest home with a foundary in the basement, roughly 20 units below the surface.

Drifters spawn nowhere in my house, and in almost nowhere around my house, but in this basement room they will spawn endlessly. After I first dug it out, every time I opened the doors I would have to battle no fewer than 8 of them, and sometimes as many as 12. Every time.

I have layered the area with lanters and oil lamps. It's easily the brightest room in my house.

Now when I go down, there are usually only 2 to 3 to deal with, which is fine.

But while I'm down there, they will continue to spawn, one every few minutes. Literally pop into the air beside me and start swinging.

So what's the mechanic behind drifter spawning? How can I interact with it so I can make use of a basement for crafting?

I've looked it up and all I can see is a reference to light levels. Is there any way for me to see the light level of a given square, to know if I've lit things enough?

A note that just occurred to me: Does the AIR have a light level I need to account for?

  • Wolf Bait 1
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5 hours ago, Maelstrom said:

You dug down 20 blocks for your foundry?  Pretty sure the game considers that a cave and will spawn drifters regardless or rifts or temporal storms.

In a previous save, I have a similarly deep basement and experienced pretty much what OP is describing, and I concluded that depth not only increases difficulty of the drifters, but also allows them to ignore light levels to spawn, but I never saw this anywhere in writing.
Is there any mechanic that makes deep basements non-spawnable, or do you have no choice but to stay above a certain Y level depending on total world height?

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On 7/15/2022 at 2:59 PM, Maelstrom said:

I've been seeing a lot of streamers/youtubers place rocks to prevent non-storm spawns.

Yeah but that shouldn't work anymore since idk exactly when (wasn't working for me since 1.13), as those stones do not have a collision box. in early versions top slabs did prevent spawns the same way bottom slabs would too.

On 7/15/2022 at 12:32 AM, Stevensonbak said:

Is there any mechanic that makes deep basements non-spawnable, or do you have no choice but to stay above a certain Y level depending on total world height?

Easiest way is, take a chisel and chisel away a single pixel from each floor block's top surface, or place moulds. Or use many light sources (oil lamps are rather cheap, placing them on the ground in a grid with 2 blocks between them should be sufficiently light the whole room with at least light level 9 everywhere). Surface drifters can spawn up to world height, but they do collide with each other on ladders, hence a long ladder leads to most of them falling to their death.

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4 hours ago, Maelstrom said:

Do you know if  drifters climb down ladders?

They definitely can and will (have seen them do it occasionally), but they shouldn't if there is no Seraph lower down. If there are Seraphs only higher up they all will pathfind up and bump each other off the ladder until only 2-3 are left alive on it (of course that only works if they fall deep enough to get fall damage and if there is enough space to bump each other off the ladder in the first place).

Edited by Hal13
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