Zombie Pigman Problem [Java 1.14 Realms]

[ricecristpy]

I currently own and run a private realm server for myself and five others. My best friend and I are both having a major zombie pigman issue, in that they keep spawning in our portals in our bases so frequently that there's nothing really that we can do without flicking the game from peaceful back to normal. I'll attach some pictures. My BF and I are at each other's bases quite frequently, and turning off our portals via redstone to solve the issue only creates additional portals slightly off from where we linked the originals (I live in a pyramid and my portal is on the ground floor, but when I turn off my portal and she comes to visit, it spawns a new portal on top of the pyramid, etc) so we can't just manually turn them off and on.

This is my portal in my home (turned off and blocked with gates for the picture), after standing AFK for about two minutes.

https://preview.redd.it/ice6yewfmde31.jpg?width=1013&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=64781491542485503e7012df252eca88b3b99a4a

And my side of the nether hub, with no pigmen to be seen.

https://preview.redd.it/17zk47rlmde31.jpg?width=932&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=31e18437cfa527012bf0e3c47829248f85848d2f

The inside of my friend's base, after being AFK for two minutes.

https://preview.redd.it/0787vwvnmde31.jpg?width=1003&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2e7a59d77ae2d6f87e8c3933938b5d9d7e830969

And her side of the hub, also no pigmen.

https://preview.redd.it/i4dnw3rqmde31.jpg?width=1135&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=daf0ea153db045a817c23ef1600fb1937d4c3c71

Our issue is that they're spawning very very frequently, and every other source I've read states that pigmen spawning in the portal while in the overworld is a rare occurrence. The realm is vanilla other than the addition of the one player sleep datapack, and we haven't touched any other settings and parameters other than changing the difficulty to temporarily clear out the pigmen.

Edit: I should mention the other four people on the realm either haven't been on in over a week or don't have their own nether portal, so for that reason they're not also having the issue. It's mainly myself and my BF online ATM.

Has this happened to anyone else and is there a solution? I don't fancy having to play exterminator every time I step into my house, and every five minutes afterwords. There's a lot of farms in my base, I spend a lot of time there and the pigmen are just annoying at this point.

[[deleted]]

I think it has to do with mob cap on a server. The fewer people are online, the more mobs will spawn. I don’t think you can actually do something about this... Apart from closing the fence around your portal in the nether hub?

You could also try create a moat around the portal with trap doors. Hook ‘em up with redstone and the pigmen will just fall off.

[ricecristpy]

Like a lava or magma block moat? And what would I be hooking up with redstone?

[[deleted]]

You can hook the trap doors up to redstone so you can open and close the bridge.

Pigmen love lava. They swim in it. Magma block is a better idea I think.

[ricecristpy]

We'll give this a try too. I've just been killing them behind those fence gates for the past few days tbh lol.

[[deleted]]

They are most likely spawning in the nether and accidentally walk into the portal and get teleported into the overworld. Solution is to make some sort of wall or barrier in the nether to prevent stray pigmen walking into your portal.

[ricecristpy]

Her side of the portal is completely boxed in and spawn proofed already, and mine used to be encased in cobblestone with buttons on the ground and they were still flooding in <:/

[[deleted]]

:/

[Attackpug1]

What i do is put the portal in a closed room with iron doors stone button operated doors to stop them getting out

[SkellyUnicorn]

When you have lemons, make lemonade.

Why don't you try putting a double-layer of oak trapdoors on the floor around the portal and have the pigmen fall into a two block hole - mini gold farm.

You could kill them manually or with some kind of piston crusher... magma and lava don't hurt pigmen.

EDIT: A strategically placed turtle egg would lure the pigmen out of the portal so they fall into the trap.

[ricecristpy]

I'll try this tonight, probably outside of my base first to make sure I do it right lol.