Poison Spike Trap

Poison Spike Trap is a trap used in monster-farming setups built around spawn tiles. When the correct spawn tiles are placed, the matching monsters appear there, which makes them useful for combat skill experience and for collecting drops. In practice, the efficiency of these farms depends less on placing large numbers of spawn tiles and more on how quickly the spawned monsters are cleared.

Monster-spawn behavior follows a few important rules. Spawns are checked in fixed 16×16 floor sections measured from the Core Figurine at coordinate 0,0, and if a mob of the same kind is already present in that floor, the spawn rate for that floor drops sharply. This means that overcrowding a farm with too many spawn tiles provides diminishing returns. A practical design keeps the processing layer close enough that the player remains within about 105 tiles, because traps, many machines, monster attacks, and special behaviors stop functioning when they are too far away. If the player is between roughly 105 and 208 tiles away from the processing area, monsters can still spawn but the trap layer may not operate, causing enemies to back up and overflow the farm.

Poison is especially useful in monster trap systems because it prevents monsters from performing their periodic self-heal, which otherwise occurs when they are not actively fighting the player or another faction. This can help keep enemies softened up for quicker disposal. Monster factions also matter: Slimes, Cavelings, insects, and mold-related enemies are hostile to one another, so farms can be designed to exploit inter-faction fighting when appropriate.

A few construction details are also important:

• Spawn tiles can be stacked, but only the top tile is active.
• Any wall or blocking structure placed above a spawn tile disables it.
• Lighting does not affect spawn counts.
• Weak fences or similar barriers can be broken by enemy attacks, letting monsters escape.
• If a very large number of mobs remain packed into a 4×4 area after long-term unloading, some can despawn when the world is loaded again.