Banananaki
Junior Member
(Posting this here because it got deleted on reddit for a reason I have no idea. Just wanted to help people out idk)
I recently figured out how to force rocks to spawn exactly where you want, and I figured I'd share my observations.
Here is a summary.
I have been time traveling a lot anyway, just letting flowers grow rampantly whenever it rains, spreading them out, etc. I noticed just recently, that even after it rained, NO more flowers were spawning, so I assumed I hit the limit on flowers. This led me to pull the trigger on my forced rock spawn project, to make this little mine. I personally like this setup in a hexagonal fashion, because you have a wall to prevent knockback from missing hits, and you can do 3 at a time, pick em up, then do the other 3 pretty quickly.
So once I had flowers everywhere, I started experimenting. I had noticed some of the places rocks never spawn already, so I used that to start moving flowers away from cliff edges, water edges, houses, landmarks, etc. I shifted a few items to half blocks, to extend the squares it was occupying (example, a 1x1 item can block 4 squares if you place them in the center of the 4 squares). Essentially the entire perimeter of any cliff, river, beach, house, pond, was empty. Every 1 or 2 block wide area was made empty, and a 3 block wide path would have 1 row of flowers in the middle of it.
As I time traveled, I learned more about how they spawn, and every time a rock spawned, I looked at the environment around it, and blocked it off with more flowers. Obviously managing like 800 flowers, 50-60 trees, and everything else on the island, I missed a few spots.
If you have any questions, I'll do my best to answer them. Hopefully this helps someone! I might add or edit some stuff later, including a video showing some of my layout.
TL;DR if you want rocks to spawn in certain spots, follow steps 1-4, and hope you didn't miss a spot. Good luck!
Here's a video of a portion of my town that will NOT spawn any rocks. Anywhere in this video is an example of no-rock areas.
I recently figured out how to force rocks to spawn exactly where you want, and I figured I'd share my observations.
Here is a summary.
- Rocks do not spawn 1 square from water, cliff edges or bases, beach ramps (where grass meets the beach), or near major buildings (houses, shops, museum, plaza).
- Rocks do not spawn in the surrounding squares of trees, bushes, stumps, bamboo, or other items (not 100% on items).
- Rocks do not spawn if the square is occupied by anything already. Flowers, dropped items, placed items, randomly dropped sticks/stones, anything. The square needs to be grass, or dirt (or sand, confirmed in comments) (side note, palm trees CAN grow on placed sand, inland, which I thought was pretty cool to share)
- An extension of the trees, it seems they do not spawn in a 4x3 area of the tree. That is, the front 3 squares in front of the tree, the two squares on either side of the tree, and a 2x3 area behind the tree. Not 100% confirmed, but it seems like that is the case. Generally if you have an obstructed view of the square with either camera configuration, it is likely that it cannot spawn there.
I have been time traveling a lot anyway, just letting flowers grow rampantly whenever it rains, spreading them out, etc. I noticed just recently, that even after it rained, NO more flowers were spawning, so I assumed I hit the limit on flowers. This led me to pull the trigger on my forced rock spawn project, to make this little mine. I personally like this setup in a hexagonal fashion, because you have a wall to prevent knockback from missing hits, and you can do 3 at a time, pick em up, then do the other 3 pretty quickly.
So once I had flowers everywhere, I started experimenting. I had noticed some of the places rocks never spawn already, so I used that to start moving flowers away from cliff edges, water edges, houses, landmarks, etc. I shifted a few items to half blocks, to extend the squares it was occupying (example, a 1x1 item can block 4 squares if you place them in the center of the 4 squares). Essentially the entire perimeter of any cliff, river, beach, house, pond, was empty. Every 1 or 2 block wide area was made empty, and a 3 block wide path would have 1 row of flowers in the middle of it.
As I time traveled, I learned more about how they spawn, and every time a rock spawned, I looked at the environment around it, and blocked it off with more flowers. Obviously managing like 800 flowers, 50-60 trees, and everything else on the island, I missed a few spots.
If you have any questions, I'll do my best to answer them. Hopefully this helps someone! I might add or edit some stuff later, including a video showing some of my layout.
TL;DR if you want rocks to spawn in certain spots, follow steps 1-4, and hope you didn't miss a spot. Good luck!
Here's a video of a portion of my town that will NOT spawn any rocks. Anywhere in this video is an example of no-rock areas.
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