The Spelunker's Guide to (Mostly) Self-Clearing Ruins

[QuartzBeam]

Is this title clickbait? Possibly. But seeing as you've come all this way, I say you might as well grab a seat and keep reading.

I don't know about anyone else, but I personally kiiinda hate clearing the ruins. And that poses a significant issue to me, because I really really need all that awesome loot. So I decided to figure out how to alleviate my issue using anenemies and I figured I'd share my findings.

 

What is this guide all about?
It's about strategically placing Anenemies next to the respawn points of Damaged Clockworks to auto-farm them after the ruins reset and thus save you the trouble of having to kill them manually each time you go to the ruins. Meaning that you can more or less stroll into the ruins and collect your Thulecite and Gems in peace with only minimal fighting along the way.
Specifically, this guide will only concern itself with the 6 most recurring and most recognizable setpieces that are found in the Ruins. It won't cover the occasional isolated Damaged Clockworks that can be found in certain parts of the ruins, as those are typically easy to avoid or kill normally.

 

So how do I pull this off?
While it is possible to do this without any mods (by using the pitchfork and a wall to estimate the proper placement), for the purposes of preserving my IRL sanity, I will be using Geometric Placement here. And to avoid confusion,the word "point" from here on out will refer to those little cross thingies that make up the Geometric Placement grid.
Now, with a singular exception that will be mentioned in due time, the Damaged Clockworks we'll be auto-farming all happen to (re)spawn at the intersection of 4 wall grid units. And all you have to do is start from the center of the intersection, then move 2 points outwards and finally 1 point to either side. AKA the knight movement from chess. Here's a pretty picture to make sure there's no ambiguity:

But how do I know where the clockwork spawners are?
I am glad you asked! I've prepared some screenshots that show where each clockwork respawn point is located in the 6 most common setpieces. All you have to do is rotate your camera until what you are seeing matches one of these pictures, then you can kill the clockworks and plant the Anenemies as shown here afterwards.

Bishop & Rooks Setpiece:

Spoiler

Mirrored Bishop & Rooks Setpiece:

Spoiler

Double Bishops Room:

Spoiler

Mirrored Double Bishops Room:

Spoiler

Incomplete Ancient Pseudoscience Station:

Spoiler

Complete Ancient Pseudoscience Station: (!!! The top Bishop has a weird offset and does NOT follow the placement I described above; instead you need to place the Anenemy at the center of the top left thulecite wall.)

Spoiler

 

Well, I guess that's it for tonight. If there are any mistakes or omissions, do let me know.
Th-th-that's all, folks!

 

P.S. Oh, yeah, you can do this with the Ancient Guardian. I didn't bother including a screenshot for that though, as the Guardian's respawn point is right at the center of its arena, so even a goggle-deprived elderly mad scientist can find it.

[Beeremy the III]

Neat guide. If only I could actually kill fuel weaver in order for me to be able to actually use it...

[QuartzBeam]

Just now, Beeremy the III said:

Neat guide. If only I could actually kill fuel weaver in order for me to be able to actually use it...

eye turret goes pew pew

[Yuuko]

Anenemies still work even unloaded?  I really should put those to use lol  Thanks for the write up.

[Terra B Welch]

23 minutes ago, Shosuko said:

Anenemies still work even unloaded?  I really should put those to use lol  Thanks for the write up.

Have you not seen auto-volt goat farms? They're pretty darn great.

[Yuuko]

2 minutes ago, Terra B Welch said:

Have you not seen auto-volt goat farms? They're pretty darn great.

idk why I thought that got patched out lol

[Terra B Welch]

1 minute ago, Shosuko said:

idk why I thought that got patched out lol

I've been using one in my culinary archipelago world, I have more volt goat horns then I'll ever know what to do with.

[Roodmas]

OK so two questions. You don't actually need the walls, right? You just used them in your pictures as guides.

Second, if I understand correctly, it does not matter exactly where you place the anenemy, as long as it's a knight movement away from the center? Meaning it has 8 possible placements, and each of them will work? (with the exception of that one bishop next to the completed station)

[QuartzBeam]

2 minutes ago, Roodmas said:

OK so two questions. You don't actually need the walls, right? You just used them in your pictures as guides.

Yes, the walls are just used to illustrate the placement. Not only do you not need them, but it would be straight up impossible to plant the anenemy so close to them.

3 minutes ago, Roodmas said:

Second, if I understand correctly, it does not matter exactly where you place the anenemy, as long as it's a knight movement away from the center? Meaning it has 8 possible placements, and each of them will work? (with the exception of that one bishop next to the completed station)

Yep.

[Roodmas]

4 minutes ago, QuartzBeam said:

Yep.

But if you place it dead in the center, it does not work? Only when you place it on the circle around the center?

[QuartzBeam]

2 minutes ago, Roodmas said:

But if you place it dead in the center, it does not work? Only when you place it on the circle around the center?

If you place it too close (e.g. at the center or 2 points away from the center in a straight line), the anenemy will be dug up when the clockwork respawns. If you place it too far (e.g. at the outer corners of the "walls"), it won't be dug up, but it'll be too far away to actually detect and damage the clockwork.

[Roodmas]

1 minute ago, QuartzBeam said:

If you place it too close (e.g. at the center or 2 points away from the center in a straight line), the anenemy will be dug up when the clockwork respawns. If you place it too far (e.g. at the outer corners of the "walls"), it won't be dug up, but it'll be too far away to actually detect and damage the clockwork.

Ahaaaa I see! And the spawn points of the clockworks can't move away, I assume? Yes, I have all the questions in the world. In the name of science.

[QuartzBeam]

Just now, Roodmas said:

Ahaaaa I see! And the spawn points of the clockworks can't move away, I assume? Yes, I have all the questions in the world. In the name of science.

Nope. The spawn points are set in stone, which is what this whole strategy hinges on really.

[ALCRD]

1 hour ago, Shosuko said:

Anenemies still work even unloaded?  I really should put those to use lol  Thanks for the write up.

And here i didn't even know that i can "replant" those and use as traps wow.

[Pruinae]

Amazing guide!

Another strategy that's worth looking into is the one where you farm a bunch of papyrus and nightmare fuel to craft a bunch of STS as Wickerbottom, keep spamming the book (with a timing) to make the clockworks sleep, push then into a corner that will never be visited (more easily done with the push mod), and then wall them off. You wont get the loot but you probably don't need that many gears/purple gems anyway.

I like to use the anenemies strategy early on, but after I acquire the resources to do the Wicker strategy I do that instead and use the anenemies to farm birds from then on.

[Roodmas]

7 hours ago, QuartzBeam said:

Nope. The spawn points are set in stone, which is what this whole strategy hinges on really.

Thanks for all the replies :D:D

[prettynuggets]

awesome i did this my self around my ruins base in military biome but i dont know if i have enough anenemies for all places 

[BeeClops]

Nice, I tried to do it a long time ago but I was missing the right spots and gave up on the idea, seemed like a lot of work to find the correct spot for each clockwork. The number of anenemies can be a limiting factor tho, my latest megabase world has only 11 in total  .

In my current world I pushed all my clockworks and I like it more in the long run, it's less messy in the ruins  . But the setup is probably even more time consuming. 

6 hours ago, Pruinae said:

Amazing guide!

Another strategy that's worth looking into is the one where you farm a bunch of papyrus and nightmare fuel to craft a bunch of STS as Wickerbottom, keep spamming the book (with a timing) to make the clockworks sleep, push then into a corner that will never be visited (more easily done with the push mod), and then wall them off. You wont get the loot but you probably don't need that many gears/purple gems anyway.

I like to use the anenemies strategy early on, but after I acquire the resources to do the Wicker strategy I do that instead and use the anenemies to farm birds from then on.

I did this method using panflutes, no need for wickerbottom tbh. 3-4 panflutes and a few deco staffs are enough. And wall corridors to help with pushing are massive timesaver, at least on console idk how push mods work exactly. 

[Yuuko]

5 hours ago, BeeClops said:

I did this method using panflutes, no need for wickerbottom tbh. 3-4 panflutes and a few deco staffs are enough. And wall corridors to help with pushing are massive timesaver, at least on console idk how push mods work exactly. 

nb4 pushmodOP!! lol

pushmod is op for things like this.  1 key to set target, 1 key to push, line up the thing you're pushing between you and where you want it to go, 100% pushed the right direction automatically.

[-Kiyo-]

Absolutely fantastic info here, QuartzBeam.

All my previous attempts at setting up anenemies around troublesome areas of my ruins ended up with them getting plucked up.

Thanks for doing the fieldwork and figuring out a foolproof placement method. it's gonna be greeeeat.