Whether you’re playing with your friends or by yourself, the game becomes easier the moment you have the most resources. The only problem is that collecting the items in bulk takes a lot of time and exploration. This is where some of the best farms come into play. The initial effort to make these automated farms might take you some time, but after completion, you will get all the resources right at home. With that said, let’s dive in and explore the best Minecraft farm designs for both Java and Bedrock Editions.
Best Minecraft Farms Comparison
Before we explain every Minecraft farm design in detail, here is a quick overview of them, stating what they produce, the difficulty in making them, and the compatible edition:
Farm Main Output Difficulty Minecraft Edition Compatibility (Java/Bedrock) Iron Farm Iron ingots Easy Both Gold Farm Gold and XP Medium Best made on Java Lava Farm Infinite lava fuel Easy Both Slime Farm Slimeballs Hard Both General Mob Farm Mob drops Medium Both Creeper Farm Gunpowder Hard Both Enderman Farm XP & Ender pearls Medium Both Guardian Farm Prismarine & XP Hard Best made on Java Sculk Farm XP Medium Both Blaze Farm Blaze Rods & XP Medium Both Chicken Farm Food Easy Both Wheat Farm Wheat Medium Both Pumpkin & Melon Farm Crops Easy Both Sugar Cane Farm Paper Easy Both Tree Farm Wood Hard Both Cactus Farm Dye & XP Easy Both Kelp Farm Fuel Medium Both Wool Farm Wool Easy Both
Best Minecraft Farms for Resources
Resource farms mainly focus on collecting resources that are used in crafting, trading, or the automation systems. So, consider building these first, as they would grant you every block required in all other farms that you will build later:
Iron Farm (Easy | Java & Bedrock)
Iron is one of the most important items, probably even more so than diamonds in Minecraft. You can obtain iron ingots by smelting the raw iron you get from ores, but it’s a manual process and sometimes quite boring. So, an iron farm is one of the most useful farms you can make.
This farm idea will require you to put villagers in certain positions and create a spawning platform and killing chamber for the iron golems. When the villagers detect danger, they attempt to spawn a golem.
Once it gets killed in the chamber, you can enjoy a steady income of iron for the entire lifespan of your world. You can later trade iron ingots with the toolsmith villager for emeralds.
Gold Farm (Medium | Best on Java)
A gold farm in Minecraft is usually built in the Nether dimension because it mainly relies on the zombified piglins. Since these mobs spawn on the magma blocks found in the Nether, making such a gold farm there becomes the perfect choice.
So, these gold farms require large spawning platforms made up of magma blocks. When they spawn, they fall into a cental are where these mobs are killed by fall damage or manually by the player. The hoppers below collect the generated loot that mainly consists of gold nuggets, rotten flesh, and sometimes gold ingots.
Later, you can use the gold for bartering with the piglins to earn quartz, obsidian, and fire resistance potions.
Lava Farm (Easy | Java & Bedrock)
The last one on this list is the Lava farm, which is by far the best source of fuel in the game. Making this farm is one of the easiest in the game if you have explored the world enough to find all ingredients.
In order to make a lava farm, you will need lava buckets, glass blocks, cauldrons, and dripstone blocks. Obviously, you can build this farm using a single piece of each ingredient; however, that won’t be an efficient source of lava, due to the slow rate of dripstone blocks. So, check out the dedicated guide given below to make yourself a simple yet efficient source of lava in Minecraft.
Slime Farm (Hard | Java & Bedrock)
As you will notice, many of Minecraft’s farms require you to use slime blocks. But thanks to the relatively rare slime mobs, they aren’t that easy to collect. Ironically, the solution to this issue is creating a slime farm, which is simple to build. Well, that is, as long as you know the Minecraft commands to find the slime chunks.
A slime farm is built by clearing a large underground area in a slime chunk and creating multiple spawning layers. The slimes will spawn on multiple platforms and are pushed into a killing chamber using water streams.
Best Minecraft Mob Farms
Mob farms generate useful drops like bones, string, gunpowder, and rotten flesh. Moreover, through these farms, you can also gain a ton of XP. So, check how to make them right here:
General Mob Farm (Medium | Java & Bedrock)
So, we’ve mentioned a creeper farm already, but getting all sorts of hostile mob drops is sometimes even better than just getting gunpowder. Thanks to this farm, you’ll be renewably obtaining rotten flesh, string, bones, and gunpowder.
So, with just this one farm, you can solve many issues you are having in the in-game progression. The only thing to note is that there should be no sunlight entering this area. The design involves building a tall structure with dark spawning platforms inside.
The water channels push the spawned mobs towards a central hole. Falling through this weakens the mobs so that players can kill them easily.
Creeper Farm (Hard | Java & Bedrock)
Creepers are scary, hostile mobs in Minecraft that explode after getting close to players. They are highly dangerous for you, your builds, and even your tamed mobs like a wolf. But if you know how to automate a Creeper farm, you can easily get plenty of gunpowder.
This gunpowder will put the explosives from Creepers in your hand that you can later use to make TNT to attack players, kill mobs, and even mine diamonds.
To ensure only creepers spawn inside, you can use trapdoors and carpets to prevent the spiders or other mobs from appearing. You can also use the cats to scare away the creepers to fall into the killing chamber, and later, hoppers can collect the drops.
Enderman Farm (Medium | Java & Bedrock)
Whether you want to beat the game or need to teleport in Minecraft, the Ender pearls are a must-have. But have you ever thought that you can have an endless supply of Ender pearls? That’s what happens with an efficient Enderman farm.
Even though it takes a lot of traveling, the Enderman farm is one of the easiest farms in the game that gives reliable results. The farm works by using an endermite as bait. The Endermen become aggressive, run towards it, and fall into the killing chamber.
Now players can defeat them easily to gain tons of XP in just a few seconds. Consider placing an enchanting table near this farm so that you can exchange the XP gained for valuable enchants.
Guardian Farm (Hard | Best on Java)
The guardian farm in Minecraft is one of the strongest and best ones to generate XP. However, you will surely face a lot of difficulty in making this one in your Minecraft world.
The guardians can spawn only inside the ocean monuments that are located deep inside the ocean biomes. So, in order to create this farm, you must raid the ocean monument, clear it, and drain the water all around it. After that, you can construct the chambers using glass blocks and guide the guardians inside.
This farm can produce tons of prismarine shards, crystals, fish, and a massive amount of XP. This makes it ideal for the endgame players.
Best Minecraft XP Farms
Experience points are required in Minecraft for enchanting your equipment, repairing items, and more. While a few mob farms can grant XP in a short while, the following XP farms are best and more efficient in terms of granting XP.
Sculk Farm (Medium | Java & Bedrock)
The new family of Sculk blocks is known for their unique mechanics. However, they also provide a little-known additional benefit by dropping experience orbs when mined. And since you can use a Sculk catalyst to spawn
Sculk blocks in any area, you can easily use them to collect plenty of experience in no time. You just need the right kind of farm to trigger the catalyst.
A sculk farm uses a mob spawning area combined with the sculk catalyst placed nearby. When the mobs are killed, the catalyst spreads sculk growth that you can later mine for gaining XP.
Blaze Farm (Medium | Java & Bedrock)
As per the name, Blaze Farms will require blaze mobs to work. And, these mobs can only spawn in the Nether dimension, specifically inside the Nether Fortresses. These farms can drop blaze rods required for brewing potions and a ton of XP.
Firstly, you would require a blaze spawner found in the Nether fortresses. So, to build the farm, clear out the area around the blaze spawner and make a platform beneath it. Place a slab on top of the spawner to prevent anything from spawning above it.
Pour lava in such a way that it drops the blazes through a hole at the center directly into the killing chamber. There, you can kill the blaze mobs to gain the required drops.
Best Minecraft Food & Crop Farms
The food farms ensure that you will never run out of food resources ever again. So, here are the best Minecraft food and crop farms that you can build easily.
Chicken Farm (Easy | Java & Bedrock)
Chickens are common mobs in Minecraft that are a great option to get food, eggs, and feathers in the game. Chickens are also a great mob to farm because of their small size and manual spawning mechanic. Leaving the basic Redstone components aside, you don’t need much to build this farm. But the efficiency of this farm is enough to keep you fed for days. Quite literally.
This farm uses chickens that lay eggs, which are collected into a dispenser, and the ones that hatch fall into the killing chamber. Later, lava can be used to cook the adult chickens, giving you cooked chicken as output.
Wheat Farm (Medium | Java & Bedrock)
Are you a fan of packed mud and mud bricks? Do you need a reliable source of food that doesn’t involve you trading with villagers or killing animals? Or perhaps you’re breeding villagers and need a bunch of the food items they require?
Well, one Minecraft farm that can help achieve all of these goals is the wheat farm. It will produce so much wheat you won’t know what to do with it all. Again, some fiddling with villagers is required, but it’s all going to be worth it when wheat starts stacking up.
Pumpkin and Melon Farm (Easy | Java & Bedrock)
If you have enough space in your village or house-building area, you can grow most crops in Minecraft without putting in much effort. But that’s not true for pumpkins and melons, because their growth mechanics, at times, can destroy the crops around them.
Keeping that in mind, we suggest farming pumpkins and melons using an automatic farm. It protects other crops and their complex mechanics while making it easier to harvest them.
Both these crops spawn on adjacent blocks instead of the one on which they are planted. So, when an observer detects the pumpkin or melon growing, it activates the pistons that break the block and collect it inside the hopper.
Best Minecraft Plant & Material Farms
The following farms produce the materials that are used in crafting, decorating your base, and creating some of the coolest builds in Minecraft.
Sugar Cane Farm (Easy | Java & Bedrock)
Whether you want to make enchanted books, maps, banners, or a variety of other customizable items, you need paper in Minecraft. But to collect paper, you must first create a sugar cane farm. Without an automatic sugarcane farm, you have to use a boat in Minecraft to roam around the world until you have enough sugar cane, which usually doesn’t work out and is tedious.
The typical design of a sugarcane farm uses observers and pistons. When the observer detects the growth of sugarcane to a certain height, the pistons break the top blocks, leaving the base intact to let them grow again. Broken sugarcane is collected through the water stream and dropped into the chests.
Tree Farm (Hard | Java & Bedrock)
The tree farm is easily the most complex among all the best farms on the list. It can take you hours to collect resources and build this farm. But once it’s ready, it’s also the most efficient farm on this list.
Other farms, at their best, can give out dozens of items within an hour. But a well-made tree farm gives out 10,000+ blocks within the same time. Such efficiency makes them one of the coolest things to make in Minecraft.
Wool Farm (Easy | Java & Bedrock)
Wool blocks have several different uses in Minecraft. They are colorful building blocks, crafting ingredients, and even vibration stoppers. So they will be pretty useful no matter whether you’re exploring the ancient city or building your own cute fantasy castle.
This is why building a wool farm will greatly improve your gaming experience. Besides that, it’s pretty easy to set up, especially if you already have an iron farm. Use an observer to activate the dispensers containing shears that automatically harvests the wool.
Cactus Farm (Easy | Java & Bedrock)
Cactus farm is one of the rare farms that barely requires any redstone components. It utilizes the cactus mechanics to the fullest and is extremely simple and easy to create. With it, you will have a limitless supply of cactus that you can smelt to get green dye or use to breed camels. Furthermore, farming cacti is a great way of gaining XP points in Minecraft.
Stack cactus plants with fence posts or trapdoors so that the growing cacti break and drop into the water. Using the stream of water, the drops can be collected to be stored inside a chest.
Kelp Farm (Medium | Java & Bedrock)
The Kelp farm will be highly helpful as a fuel source very early in the game. Since you can dive right into any ocean and you’ll find numerous kelp growing from the bottom, so there won’t be any lack of starting ingredients. With a few observers, pistons, and a bit of Redstone engineering, you can build the Kelp farm in Minecraft.
While the Kelp grows from the bottom of a water column, the moment observers detect it from the top, the Kelp blocks are broken and collected in chests. Below is linked a detailed guide on how you can build this farm from scratch.
Which Minecraft Farm Should You Build First?
With all that said, our list of some of the best Minecraft farms comes to an end. There are numerous other farms that can be useful in some cases. However, these will help you get most of the required resources easily without wandering around. So, if you still have some confusion about what to build first, here isa small breakdown of everything to help you understand the farm difficulty:
Early Game
These farms require minimal resources and provide food and a few basic crafting items:
- Chicken Farm: Chickens, Chest, Hopper, Observer, Redstone Torch, Redstone dust, Glass blocks, Lava Bucket
- Cactus Farm: Water buckets, Sand, Cactus, Fences, Chests, Hoppers, Building blocks, Glass blocks, Slabs
- Sugar Cane Farm: Water bucket, Dirt blocks, Solid building blocks, Pistons, Redstone dust, Observer, Hopper, Chest, Sugar canes
- Wheat Farm: Hoppers, Dirt blocks, Wheat Seeds, Fences, Wooden planks, Trapdoors, Redstone dust, Dropper, Repeater, Redstone Torch, Water Bucket, Chests, Composters
Mid Game
At a mid-game stage, you canbuild the following farms to automate certain processes that can help in crafting better farms or trading:
- Iron Farm: Lava bucket, Water bucket, Stone blocks, 3 Villagers, Beds, Sign board, Glass blocks
- Mob Farm: Stone blocks, Water buckets, Hoppers, Chests, Slabs, Trapdoors, Torches, and least Light Levels
- Gold Farm: Minecart with hopper, rail, gold block, redstone torch, glass blocks, piston, rail, hopper, iron bar, wall, sticky piston, dispenser, magma block, redstone, lava bucket, lever, button
Late Game
These are a few advanced farms that provide tons of XP and a few rare resources:
- Enderman Farm: Endermen, Endermite, Building Blocks, Water Bucket, Leaf blocks, Trapdoors, Iron Grills, Minecarts, Rails, Fences, Hoppers, Nametag
- Guardian Farm: Glass blocks, Smooth stone, Soul sand, Blacstone, chests, minecart with hopper, fences, redstone, comparator, water bucket, torche, iron bar, trapdoor
- Blaze Farm: Smooth Stone blocks, Glowstone block00, fence, lava, carpet, chest, slab, hopper
With that, you have all these amazing Minecraft farms at your disposal. You can head on to create them and get the most out of the game. Since you’ll need a lot of resources to make all of them, it’s best to get started with these Minecraft seeds for a sure-shot boost.
However, the fill command in Minecraft can make your life significantly easier, too. Having said that, which farm are you creating first? Tell us in the comments below!
The chicken, lava, cobblestone generator, and the cactus farm are some of the best a beginner in Minecraft can build with some simple and readily available blocks.
The best XP farms on Minecraft include the Enderman farms, guardian farms and the gold farms. These can get you to level 30 within minutes.
Depending on your needs, many farms have variations that can produce more items. However, they are larger and require a lot more resources. But the hardest farms you can make in-game are an amethyst farm, a raid farm, a wither skeleton farm, and the guardian farm.
To AFK efficiently on Minecraft, build a platform near it, where mobs can spawn, but the player remains safe. This way, you can kill them without harming yourself.
Most Minecraft farms, including iron, chicken, wheat, cactus, and general mob farms, work in exactly the same way in both Java and Bedrock editions.
Yes, a lot of crop farms in Minecraft, like trees, wheat, carrots, need sunlight to grow whereas the mob and mushroom farms won’t work at all if they are built under an open space where sunlight can seep in.
