Minecraft – How to find unlit points or fence leak points where mobs come from

They are newly spawned monsters that can find a path from a location that supports them spawning.

There is some great research on this by bugi74:

Every time bed(s) become active, all players are gone through one by one, each player given 20 tries of spawning a monster. The normal "monsters do not spawn near player" seems to not apply.

On each try it will roll a random monster type from the subset of skeleton, spider or zombie, and a random start location upto +/-32 blocks in horizontal directions and upto +/-16 blocks vertical from the players sleeping location. Then it seeks downwards from that position for the first opaque block below the current block to be checked. Then it tries if the place is suitable for the monster to spawn (water for water mobs, etc.) but no light level check (yet), seeking upwards if the block is not suitable. (There is a limits of 16 blocks above player position for how high it will seek.) Should a suitable location be found, there is another check for if the mob can spawn there, this time with light level check.

Next the algorithm tries to calculate a path from the found spot to the player. If the last point along the path is less than 1.5blocks away from player's position in all three coordinates, the mob gets spawned on a spot very very near the player (like half a block away) (that's what allows the "warp through walls"), and all kinds of things are set in motion (like waking up and aggro), and no further tries are done for that player that time.

The two cases where the monster gets that close to player are when the path is only blocked by one block thick (thin?) wall and the bed (or suitable section of it) is against that wall, or when it really finds a route to the player. No idea how smart the pathing algorithm is - I don't think it is anything near A* or better, judging how stupid they are when trying to get to player in normal situations (luckily for us!).

I've got a Bukkit plugin that manages sleeping with AFK players that caused me to look in to all this myself.

Only things I can think of:

1) Spiders are the only creature that can climb so the could hop the fence.

2) For some reason you spend the majority if your time on the west side of your house and the area around you that creatures can not spawn in is not reaching the east side of the house as well.

3) All other mobs will vanish in daylight, maybe its the same spiders after they appear once? (If you are not killing them)

4) Trees or a low overhang? Spiders can spawn in 1 height as they just need a 2x2 even floor with 1 block of height, the rest need 2+ blocks but only a 1x1 even floor.

With out being able to see your house these are the best guesses I can come up with.