Gemcorns



Gemcorns are a type of Seed whose saplings grow into Gem Trees. They can be crafted from an acorn and a gem. Gemcorns can be planted in the Underground layer or below on Stone, Moss, or any of their biome variants, and the 3 blocks on each side of the planted one must also be one of these. Chopping down a Gem Tree will yield 10-20 Stone Blocks, 0-5 Gemcorns of the tree’s type, and 0-5 Gems of the tree’s type (To be more precise, each tile of the tree has a 1/10 chance of dropping a gem (if it doesn't drop a gem, it'll always drop a stone block), and every leaf tile additionally has a 1/2 chance to drop another gemcorn.)

Farming
Farming gemtrees has proven to be tricky, since it requires an open space in the underground layer or below.

Background Walls
To reduce mob spawning in a Gemtree farm, it is possible to place background walls in almost all of the background, except the two spaces occupied by the placed Gemcorn (this trick is commonly used to make indoors tree farms). Some underground enemies (and critters) will still spawn, but far fewer than with an un-walled farm.

Gemcorns grows in front of fences like normal trees.

Spacing
The Gemcorns must be planted with three tiles of space from other saplings for both to be able to grow.

Gemcorn saplings need at least 11 blocks of "head room" above them, but 16 blocks is better, and 17 will avoid the topmost leaves clipping into the ceiling. The tree size is determined every time the sapling attempts to grow, and if there are fewer than 16 blocks the attempt will fail. Thus having less than 16 blocks available will effectively slow down growth, and will produce only shorter trees (which will yield fewer gems).

Tips
Light levels do not affect the growth of Gemcorns at all. Thus, light sources can be placed throughout the farm as needed; this will make it much easier to tell when Gemcorns have grown.

Gemcorns should be placed at least 3 blocks apart; using Smart Cursor will help with this.

Using different-colored gem torches or Gemspark Blocks beneath each sapling can be a good way to indicate which type of tree is planted where. Alternatively, paint can be used on the other blocks (as in the picture); a gemcorn planted on a painted block will sprout into a painted gem tree, which at least makes it difficult to see the type of gem.



Tips

 * Gem Trees can be found naturally in the Underground layer and Cavern layer, although they are rare.
 * Gemcorn saplings cannot be picked up, and are unable to grow in front of background walls except for fence and naturally generated dirt or other underground walls (such as mushroom, lava, dirt, stone, and the underworlds background).
 * Gemcorn trees will grow faster when placed further apart, but times will still vary.
 * Gemcorns can be sold for the value of their respective gem.
 * Gemcorns can be sold for the value of their respective gem.