08 Large Spruce Tree Farms
Welcome to the definitive guide on mid-to-late game wood production. Here we'll walk you through designing the most log-efficient tree farm in Minecraft.
1 Introduction to Large Spruce Tree Farms
1.1 Large Spruce Growth Mechanics and Architecture Design
The growth detection range for large spruce is: 3x3 at the sapling layer (centered on the northwest corner sapling), expanding to 5x5 above
The maximum height of a large spruce is 28 blocks (the northwest corner sapling gets one extra, for 29 total) generally speaking, no one builds a large spruce tree farm without handling full height
Put simply, we need double recursion to handle the trunk logs, then push the leaves away with honey-slime walls.
1.2 Vertical Signal Transmission
Use stick BUD to pull it up. For trunk and side wall activation, consider redirecting dust or wall power.
1.3 Processing
After pushing out from the core, split left and right, then reassemble as usual.
At this point, you can already design a functional large spruce tree farm on your own. But if everything works as expected, the efficiency will only be around 100k, which is underwhelming. Next, we'll cover how to make a faster large spruce tree farm. For processing timing, I trust you've built up enough understanding from previous lessons, so here we'll only discuss how to squeeze out as much pre-bonemealing as possible.
Of course, I also hope you'll get to experience the exploration journey of the past, so I'll include a lot of history about large spruce tree farms, along with some old version content. Hope you enjoy it.
2 High-Speed Large Spruce Part 1: Corner Down-Suction
2.1 The Origin of Corner Down-Suction
In 2016, Laoxian released his 12gt large spruce tree farm, using an upward-pushing architecture, breaking the 300k barrier for the first time. However, as time went on, Laoxian's timing no longer worked in 1.12, and players gradually discovered better architectures and timing designs.
On February 12, 2020, gpw released sprucemacy v1, using observer-powered tree root detection and corner down-suction, ushering in the modern high-speed large spruce era. It became the design standard for large spruce for quite some time, until April 15, 2021, when gpw released sprucemacy v2, bringing corner side-suction, which we'll cover a bit later. Now, let's go back to 2020.
2.2 The Concept of Corner Down-Suction
If you tried building a large spruce tree farm in 8.1, you probably noticed that adding dispensers is quite difficult. Without modifying the base architecture, even with push limit detection, we can only fit two dispensers.
Since we're still in 2020, we don't have push limit detection or tree power detection yet, so let's ignore them for now. We need to choose one of the four positions where dispensers can be placed for the powered tree root detection. Obviously, if we want to increase to three dispensers, we inevitably face a problem: no matter what, we cannot process the corner log through side-suction.
The solution is straightforward: down-suction it. But because dirt returns slowly with down-suction, we need a separate planting timing.
gpw's solution was to have the player plant the corner sapling at 8/10gt (in 1.12, player right-click placement runs on a simple 4gt interval), with the rest planted normally.
For player movement, gpw used minecarts.
2.3 Limitations of Corner Down-Suction
In 1.14, Mojang modified the player right-click placement behavior. If the player accidentally places the sapling on the closer side first, the sapling farther away cannot be placed. Currently, without modifying the planting timing, the only solution is llama boats (but in 1.21, because Mojang changed mob behavior on boats again, llama boats also broke)
Corner down-suction in 1.12, even with 3gt dirt return, cannot guarantee planting the corner sapling before 4gt (due to the right-click placement logic mentioned above), so it cannot reach peak efficiency.
However, I can spoil this in advance: in large spruce using auto-clickers, corner down-suction has made a comeback thanks to simpler timing and wiring design (lol
3 High-Speed Large Spruce Part 2: Corner Side-Suction (Corner Retraction)
3.1 The Origin of Corner Side-Suction
On April 15, 2021, gpw released sprucemacy v2, bringing us corner side-suction for the first time. On February 8, 2022, floppy's 12gt Spruce v2 introduced corner side-suction timing that completes bonemealed sapling planting in 3gt. In August 2024, Qontrol developed a practically viable corner side-suction base with 6gt reset.
Actually, not long after 12gt corner side-suction came out, Xinghe casually made an all-dust 6gt version,
but it didn't look usable at all
Because Mojang changed llama boats in 1.21, corner side-suction lost much of its significance
3.2 The Concept of Corner Side-Suction
If you want to plant the corner sapling first, you must side-suction it. The side of the corner trunk has two dispensers and two logs. If we can somehow remove one log from the side, we can fit in a side-suction piston. This is corner side-suction.
The current implementation is to down-suction one of the logs, while the other side is handled with conventional parallel side-suction.
For corner side-suction, we obviously need double recursion. For 16gt non-auto-clicker large spruce, just use normal double recursion; for 12gt, we use double recursion with secondary pistons pushing in from the side; for 6gt, we use a design similar to the "standard flow" of retract-rotate-push.
Generally, player movement uses llama boats with corner-priority planting timing; or pig boats, where you plant one on the parallel side-suction side first, then the corner, then the second on the parallel side-suction side, and finally the down-suction position.
We'll describe the specific origin of pig boats in the next section.
3.3 Too Difficult to Build
If you still remember the 8gt large spruce, you'll know that corner side-suction didn't appear in that tree farm. The reason is actually very simple: neither lintex nor I could think of a good enough wiring method to handle 8gt corner side-suction. So we turned to corner down-suction and changed the planting timing (after all, no one would use a real person without auto-clicker for 8gt large spruce)
Originally when we started the project, hampter said he would make a corner side-suction for 8gt large spruce, but his computer broke midway,
and his unit still hasn't been released to this day
This is the biggest drawback of corner side-suction: complexity.
Of course there's an even bigger drawback: llama boats broke so you can only use pig boats and pig boat planting timing, which simply can't compete with corner down-suction
4 High-Speed Large Spruce Part 3: The Return of Corner Down-Suction / Pig Boat Planting Timing
4.1 "No Matter What You Do, It Sticks to the Main Suction Piston"
In hindsight it wouldn't have stuck, but ending up with a simpler base was still a win
At the end of 2022, lintex started the 8gt large spruce and quickly got most of the trunk done, then we got stuck on the base
From our perspective at the time, we couldn't make a sufficiently good corner side-suction base, so I proposed using down-suction for the corner and reversing the planting timing, allowing us to drop corner side-suction and its corresponding planting timing entirely.
This is the auto-clicker planting timing for corner down-suction.
From this, you should be able to design an auto-clicker base for corner down-suction on your own. If you're still stuck, you can refer to the 8gt large spruce or gushen's large spruce.
4.2 Why Pig Boats?
Actually, I don't really like minecarts. The reason is simple: give them a little push and they roll away, then you have to replace them.
Llama boats broke (sigh)
For single boats, they're calculated separately on the client and server, which easily causes desync and breaks everything.
At this point, you should be able to design a sufficiently fast large spruce tree farm on your own. However, we'd like to mention one more piece of god-tier tech from 1.12: ITT/IF 6gt large spruce.