Minecart with Spawner

This feature is exclusive to Java Edition.

Type	Vehicles
Rarity	Common
Renewable	No
Stackable	No
Internal ID	47
Entity ID	spawner_minecart
Drops	Minecart
Health points	6

Minecarts with spawners are a combination of minecarts and monster spawners.

Obtaining[edit]

Minecarts with spawners cannot be obtained as an item in the inventory, and must only be placed using the /summon command and not the /setblock command.

Usage[edit]

Main article: Spawner

The spawner inside the minecart acts the same way as normal spawners; it has the same associated NBT tags.^[1]

More exactly, a spawner minecart acts as a spawner block at the minecart's block position. In other words, if the spawner minecart moved within a block position, the range of spawn would not change.

Data values[edit]

See also: Chunk format

Minecarts with spawners have entity data associated with them that contain various properties of the entity.

Entity data
- Tags common to all entities see Template:Nbt inherit/entity/template
- Tags common to all minecarts see Template:Nbt inherit/vehicle/template
- SpawnPotentials: Optional. List of possible entities to spawn. If this tag does not exist, but SpawnData exists, Minecraft generates it the next time the spawner tries to spawn an entity. The generated list contains a single entry derived from the EntityId and SpawnData tags.
  - : A potential future spawn. After the spawner makes an attempt at spawning, it chooses one of these entries at random and uses it to prepare for the next spawn.
    - Entity: An entity. Overwrites SpawnData when preparing the next spawn, including the entity id.
      - Tags common to all entities see Template:Nbt inherit/entity/template
    - Weight: The chance that this spawn gets picked in comparison to other spawn weights. Must be non-negative and at least 1.
- SpawnData: Contains tags to copy to the next spawned entity(s) after spawning. Any of the entity or mob tags may be used. Note that if a spawner specifies any of these tags, almost all variable data such as mob equipment, villager profession, sheep wool color, etc., are not automatically generated, and must also be manually specified (note that this does not apply to position data, which are randomized as normal unless Pos is specified. Similarly, unless Size and Health are specified for a Slime or Magma Cube, these are still randomized). This, together with EntityId, also determines the appearance of the miniature entity spinning in the spawner cage. Note: this tag is optional: if it does not exist, the next spawned entity uses the default vanilla spawning properties for this mob, including potentially randomized armor (this is true even if SpawnPotentials does exist). Warning: If SpawnPotentials exists, this tag gets overwritten after the next spawning attempt: see above for more details.
- SpawnCount: How many mobs to attempt to spawn each time. Note: Requires the MinSpawnDelay property to also be set.
- SpawnRange: The radius around which the spawner attempts to place mobs randomly. The spawn area is square, includes the block the spawner is in, and is centered around the spawner's x,z coordinates - not the spawner itself. It is 2 blocks high, centered around the spawner's y coordinate (its bottom), allowing mobs to spawn as high as its top surface and as low as 1 block below its bottom surface. Vertical spawn coordinates are integers, while horizontal coordinates are floating point and weighted towards values near the spawner itself. Default value is 4.
- Delay: Ticks until next spawn. If 0, it spawns immediately when a player enters its range. If set to -1 (this state never occurs in a natural spawner; it seems to be a feature accessed only via NBT editing), the spawner resets its Delay, and (if SpawnPotentials exist) EntityID and SpawnData as though it had just completed a successful spawn cycle, immediately when a player enters its range. Note that setting Delay to -1 can be useful if the player wants the game to properly randomize the spawner's Delay, EntityID, and SpawnData, rather than starting with pre-defined values.
- MinSpawnDelay: The minimum random delay for the next spawn delay. May be equal to MaxSpawnDelay.
- MaxSpawnDelay: The maximum random delay for the next spawn delay. Warning: Setting this value to 0 crashes Minecraft. Set to at least 1. Note: Requires the MinSpawnDelay property to also be set.
- MaxNearbyEntities: Overrides the maximum number of nearby (within a box of spawnrange*2+1 × spawnrange*2+1 × 8 centered around the spawner block) entities whose IDs match this spawner's entity ID. Note that this is relative to a mob's hitbox, not their physical position. Also note that all entities within all chunk sections (16×16×16 cubes) overlapped by this box are tested for their ID and hitbox overlap, rather than just entities within the box, meaning that a large amount of entities outside the box (or within it, of course) can cause substantial lag.
- RequiredPlayerRange: Overrides the block radius of the sphere of activation by players for this spawner. Note that for every gametick, a spawner checks all players in the current world to test whether a player is within this sphere. Note: Requires the MaxNearbyEntities property to also be set.

History[edit]

Java Edition
January 07, 2013		Nathan Adams tweets an image of a mob spawner inside a minecart, spawning pigs throughout a village.
January 07, 2013		Later that day, Adams tweets an image of minecarts with spawners riding along a complex railway.^[2]
February 06, 2013		Adams tweets another image of minecart pig spawners.
1.5	13w06a	Added minecarts with spawners.
1.11	16w32a	The entity ID for minecarts with spawners has now been changed from `MinecartSpawner` to `spawner_minecart`.
1.14	18w43a	The texture of minecarts with spawners has now been changed.