Do Cave Spider Spawners work by a different set of rules than other Monster Spawners?

Question

During exploration of an Abandoned Mineshaft I found a Cave Spider Spawner. Nothing odd or special about it, but coincidentaly my seed has apparently spawned a Dungeon two blocks from it. A Skeleton Dungeon to be specific. Sweet right?

So, I figured I'd torch out the Cave Spider Spawner, and farm the Skeleton Spawner for Bones and Arrows. Except, it doesnt work. I max torched the Spider Spawner, and it still spawns Spiders.

This is what I did to the Spider Spawner:

$ =Spawner
@ =Torches

@@@
@ $ @
@@@

With a torch placed directly on top of the spawner to boot.
-.-
I still get spiders.

I dont want spiders.
Please make the spiders go away.

Do Cave Spider Spawners work differently than Normal Monster Spawners?

Edit: I should note that I do not want to destroy the Cave Spider Spawner, I'm aware that this can be done but its not my objective nor is 'finding a way to make the spider spawner stop' my purpose behind this question. What I'm asking is if the rules behind the Cave Spider are different than the rules behind the other spawners.

Answer

The same rules apply to Monster Spawners as to the natural spawning of the mob in question, with only one exception: ordinarily, hostile mobs will never spawn next to the player, but with spawners they can.

Cave spiders, though, do not spawn naturally, so we have no natural spawn conditions to compare to. Perhaps they can spawn in higher light levels (to compensate for the presence of torches in abandoned mine shafts)? The wiki doesn't say what their light level is, and Blaze spawners are infamously hard to shut off due to Blazes spawning up to light level 12.

It is also important to understand that regarding light level, what is important is not the light at the spawner but the light at the location where the mob spawns, so putting a torch on the spawner is just a way to center the light, not inherently good. The actual requirement for safety is that the full spawning area (8×8 × 3 high box centered on the spawner's low-coordinate corner) is sufficiently lit (or does not have valid locations to spawn, e.g. is filled solid).

Check more discussion of this question.

loading..