Cacti Farms

[Heeeeeeeeeeeeeee]

You know what time it is folks! Another dumb math / myth-busting thread! Today's topic; CACTI.
So, the main question here is how much do cacti farms make, and are they worth building. Let's start with the former.

How much money will I make?

• Theoretically, cacti growth is random, but will grow on average once every 18 minutes. HOWEVER this is 100% not true on Olympus, from my testing and what I've got from others it's about every 7 minutes. This is the same as 8.5 times an hour.
• Cacti currently sell for $125 in the shop.
• Using these numbers, we can ascertain that the formula for how much money ($) your cacti farm will make every hour.
• This formula is: (number of cacti * 8.5 * $125). So if we had a cacti farm with 1000 cacti, we would do (1000 * 8.5 * $125) = $1,062,500 an hour!
• So, we have a formula now, great. However, this is purely theoretical, it all depends on the tick rate of the server amongst other things so lets TEST IT.

Testing the formula

• I have build a cacti farm that has 684 cacti.
• Using the formula this should make (684 * 8.5 * $125) = $726,750 an hour.
• I tested my farm for an hour. It made $730,000.
• So yeah this formula is pretty damn good with the data I gathered. It was off by only 0.4%.

Now onto the next question, is it worth it?

Is it worth it?

• So this is pure conjecture but in my opinion, if you have an alt account that you can leave on the server overnight, then yes, they are worth it. Otherwise, I would say absolutely no they are not worth it. You will get a lot more money buy just mining. Not to mention that you don't get any mana from cacti farms unlike mining.
• If you can leave your alt on for 24 hours, it *should* make you around $25,000,000 ($25 million), if you can build a 1000 cacti farm.

How much money will a FULL plot make me?

• A plot build limit is 256 blocks, + 64 blocks deep. That's 320 blocks. Plots are 39x39 blocks.
• We'll be generous and say you manage to build 310 layers of cacti in a 37x37 block grid.
• only 1/4 of the layers have cacti in, tick represents cacti, cross represents no cacti:

• On these 1/4 layers with cacti, only 1/4 of the blocks actually are cacti. Tick represents cacti, cross represents no cacti:

• So, lets CALCULATE. Total blocks for the farm = 37*37*310 = 424,390 blocks. Only 1/4 (one quarter) of the layers are cacti layers so we divide (/) by 4.
• 424,390 / 4 = 106,097. Only 1/4 (one quarter) of the blocks in cacti layers are cacti so we divide by 4 again.
• 106,097 / 4 = 26,524. So, under the best circumstances we can build a farm that has around 26000 cacti in it on one normal plot!
• So, finally how much would that make? Let's use our formula!
• (26000 * 8.5 * $125) = $27,625,000 (~$28 million) an hour!

TL;DR

• You can fit around 26,000 cacti on a full bedrock to sky-limit cacti farm on a normal plot.
• The formula: (number of cacti * 8.5 * $125) can *probably* be used to calculate the amount of money your farm will make. (I will do further testing on this and if anyone wants to tell me around how much they make and around how many cacti they have this would help)
• To know how many cacti you have in your farm, do (width of farm * length of farm * height of farm) / 16.
• At optimal conditions, a full plot cacti farm would make about $27,000,000 an hour.

This formula may be wrong. I am not sure as I have not tested it enough yet. I'll get back with updates soon!

 

[LiLKayla]

Now, lets multiple this by 6 to figure out how much my farm will make haha <3

 

[Snowey]

Dam thats a lot of calcultiom and efforts + testing

 

[Heeeeeeeeeeeeeee]

Now, lets multiple this by 6 to figure out how much my farm will make haha <3

So theoretically that's ($27,000,000 * 6) = $162,000,000 an hour, but no way you're making one that big lol.

 

[Snowey]

So theoretically that's ($27,000,000 * 6) = $162,000,000 an hour, but no way you're making one that big lol.

I think she meant having 6 plot merged together?

 

[Heeeeeeeeeeeeeee]

I think she meant having 6 plot merged together?

Yeah I realised I just meant it would take forever to build a 320 level full 6 plot cacti farm.

 

[LiLKayla]

yes 6 plots, and its horrible :D

 

[Snowey]

yes 6 plots, and its horrible :D

You actually finished it? o.o

 

[LiLKayla]

You actually finished it? o.o

4 layers in, working on the 5-6

 

[Heeeeeeeeeeeeeee]

Further testing algorithm
New cacti farm:

It's 36 x 36 x 24 blocks.
Using (width of farm * length of farm * height of farm) / 16
(36 * 36 * 24) / 16 = 1944 cacti

Using (number of cacti * 8.5 * $125)
(1944 * 8.5 * $125) = $2,065,500

I tested this farm for an hour and it made: $1,900,000

So yeah, I think this works pretty well!

 

[Arenzo]

So theres a few flaws here right.
first of all the bottom, making a plot big cactifarm requires you to leave quite a bit of space at the bottom for chests if you dont want to sell all your cacti every hour.
Second of all, It must be a coincidence that your formula works so well because you calculated with the mindset that all cacti makes it to the bottom even though in reality a bunch of cacti will get stuck on the fences/glass plaines.

those were the 2 things I noticed reading your post other then that a fun read (but nothing I didnt know already xD)

 

[Snowey]

So theres a few flaws here right.
first of all the bottom, making a plot big cactifarm requires you to leave quite a bit of space at the bottom for chests if you dont want to sell all your cacti every hour.
Second of all, It must be a coincidence that your formula works so well because you calculated with the mindset that all cacti makes it to the bottom even though in reality a bunch of cacti will get stuck on the fences/glass plaines.

those were the 2 things I noticed reading your post other then that a fun read (but nothing I didnt know already xD)

What a legend!
Well, I think this post will be helpful for other players to consider that is building a cactus farm worth it or not, so even we all know the info, his calculation will still help out the community for sure.

 

[Heeeeeeeeeeeeeee]

So theres a few flaws here right.
first of all the bottom, making a plot big cactifarm requires you to leave quite a bit of space at the bottom for chests if you dont want to sell all your cacti every hour.
Second of all, It must be a coincidence that your formula works so well because you calculated with the mindset that all cacti makes it to the bottom even though in reality a bunch of cacti will get stuck on the fences/glass panes.

those were the 2 things I noticed reading your post other then that a fun read (but nothing I didn't know already xD)

So, if you read the post, I left 10 layers out for the water / chest system. This probably isn't enough though for a practical system you're right. As for the lost cacti, probably a bit of luck + the real numbers are a bit lower than the formula for what I've seen, so that's probably why :)

 

[Arenzo]

So, if you read the post, I left 10 layers out for the water / chest system. This probably isn't enough though for a practical system you're right. As for the lost cacti, probably a bit of luck + the real numbers are a bit lower than the formula for what I've seen, so that's probably why :)

I read(red? reded?) over it twice that you left 10 layers out, I read it twice because I wanted to prevent me misreading it. and I still did ooof.
But water chest system would be 22 layers in my caser, and I still have to sell every 12 hours. (some rows with chests will fill waaaay quiker)
A thing I noticed when reading the part about the size of the plot, you can't make a cactifarm 37x37. 35x35 is max ( you need to build a wall otherwise you'll lose a lot of cacti on the sides, and since you can't place a cacti up against a wall. . . 35x35).

But yes the post will be excellent for people deciding if a cactifarm is worth it. It's just a shame that the people that seek for an answer like that never come to these forums...

 

[Kasperjoh]

This is so cool Luca! Love these posts a lot! please keep going with this!!:mc_213-0:

 

[el_penguino3]

you need to build a wall otherwise you'll lose a lot of cacti on the sides

I never had serious problems with cacti falling off the sides of my plot in Season 1.

Regarding cacti getting stuck places:
Suppose that you have one cactus on the ground and you toss another cactus nearby.
What happens?
The tossed cacti instantly joins the other cactus on the ground to form a stack of 2. Further cacti throwing will only add to the pile.

Now suppose you have you have a cactus sitting on a glass pane. Now another cactus falls from above (or if near the bottom, comes sliding along).
What happens then? Which cactus will join the other cactus to form a stack of 2? Will it be the stationary one or the moving one? Is there a rule that works 100% of the time to determine which cactus joins the other? Or is does each cactus have a 50/50 chance of being the one to join the other?


Essentially, if it were true that stuck cactus remained stuck until ultimately despawning, then you would constantly find stacks of 1000 (If that is still the max stack size?) cacti on your glass panes (or stuck elsewhere), given a large enough farm.

I never had that problem with my cactus farm in Season 1, despite having a theoretical rate of 1486 cacti/min.

You can fit around 26,000 cacti on a full bedrock to sky-limit cacti farm on a normal plot.

Side Note:
I agree with this assessment. I had around 80% of a skylimit cacti farm in Season 1 with a chest wall only two high, but also spanning about 1.5 plots. This gave me a bit over 26k cacti.

A plot build limit is 256 blocks, + 64 blocks deep. That's 320 blocks.

Additional Side Note:
Plot build limit is 256, but that is when level 1 starts at bedrock. If you open up F3, when you dig down in your plot, you don't go into the negative numbers.
For build height, you get 64 down from plot world paths and an additional (256-64) blocks to build up.

 

[rangedhealer77]

Tea

 

[Mushey]

I don't build cacti farms (usually) but this is still super helpful for newcomers who want too!

 

[Danger_Actual]

Appreciate the time that went into this post! I have a tiny cactus farm, but it earns a stable minimum wage income for me XD