Unofficial DonutSMP field manual

DonutSMP is underwater!!
We have to stop the flooding!!

Everyone knows how to flood. Almost nobody knows how to drain, and that is the only reason this keeps getting worse. Grab a machine and help

Get the schematics[dry]Read the guide[wet]

Multi-layer drainer

Clears several layers per traversal instead of one. The heavy machine — 257 blocks

16×9×25 · 257 blocks

layerall

181Slime block
38Observer
38Sticky piston

Built by ozum4ik · TikTok tutorial · all four machines →

The owner already settled this

I want to expand the server more than you guys want me to. I promise you that. I promise you.

But flooding the server is not going to make it go any faster. Like, it genuinely won't. I wish maybe it could somehow make the border expansion go faster, but it doesn't.

— Dr Donut

On whether flooding speeds up the border expansion

Flooding was never a lever on the border. It just leaves water behind, and someone has to move it. That someone can be you, and it takes one machine.

Why drain schematics are hard to find

Because almost nobody files them under “drain.” The flood is new. The machine that undoes it is not. Redstone players have been building it for years to clear oceans for perimeters and farms, and they file it as an ocean clearing flying machine or an ocean remover. Search either and results appear immediately.

That vocabulary gap is the only reason draining feels like a secret while flooding feels solved. It isn't a secret. It's a search term, and the four machines on this site are already decoded for you.

Two ways to move water

Sponges

A sponge clears the water around it, then saturates. Wet sponges need drying before reuse. The Nether does it instantly.

One-shot. Fine for a single room

Drain machine

Observers detect water, pistons drive a slime-bound wall across the surface, source blocks break as it passes. It drops a layer and comes back.

Build once, drain indefinitely

The tradeoff: a sponge rig is cheap and disposable; the drain machine is a long-term install. Draining anything bigger than one build, the machine wins on the second pass and never stops winning.

The war has two sides

People bring lava, obsidian, moss and duped TNT to it, but those are all ways of doing one of two things: leaving something behind on the map, or taking it back out. You are either putting the water there or you are the one moving it.

DrainObservers, pistons and slime. Put the water back where it came from
FloodWater over everything, until the whole map is ocean

The poll that put this site underwater

About six thousand people have answered this, and it went the flooders' way by a margin that was not close. It is still open, and it is still the only question here worth asking: are you the one putting the water down, or the one moving it out?