How to Make a Minecraft Wither Skeleton Farm

Wither skeletons are important mobs in Minecraft due to their valuable drops. So, making a farm for them is something every advanced Minecraft player should do, as it’ll be super helpful in a long-term world. In this guide, we’ll be covering one of the best wither skeleton farms in Minecraft made by the Redstone genius ianxofour on YouTube. So, let’s not waste any more time and jump straight in.

Table of Contents

Where Should You Build the Wither Skeleton Farm

Possibly the most difficult part of making this amazing farm is finding a perfect location. It is crucial for you to locate a Nether Fortress inside a soul sand valley or a warped forest Minecraft biome. No other Nether biome will give you good results, because of the many hostile mobs that can spawn inside them which will quickly take up the mob cap.

The farm we’re going to build must be at least 100 blocks away from any other biome, apart from the two we mentioned above. So keep that in mind when choosing the perfect fortress. Feel free to use tools like Chunk Base (visit) to find the perfect location for your wither skeleton farm.

Resources You Need to Make the Farm

Unlike many other wither skeleton farm designs out there, ianxofour’s design is fairly simple and doesn’t require any wither roses or piglins. The resources you will need are as under:

• 130 Walls (we use cobble deepslate walls)
• 88 Glass Blocks
• 4 Stained Glass Blocks (optional)
• 58 Obsidian
• 4 Iron Blocks
• 1 Carved Pumpkin
• 4 Turtle Eggs
• 3 Iron Bars
• 3 Cobwebs
• 4 Chests
• 4 Stairs (we use cobblestone stairs)
• 12 Redstone Repeaters
• 10 Ladders
• 1 Door (we use oak)
• 2 Trapdoors (we use oak)
• 49 Non-flammable Slabs (we use deepslate brick slabs)
• 75 Non-flammable Solid Blocks (we use stone bricks)
• 320 Temporary Blocks (we use oak planks)
• 896 Nether Bricks
• 1 Lead (optional)
• 1 Flint and Steel (for lighting Nether portals)
• Pickaxe (for clearing blocks)
• Several Ladders
• Several Ender Pearls (for reaching the Nether roof)

Build a Wither Skeleton Farm: A Step-by-Step Guide

Step 1: Bounding Box of Nether Fortress

Before we begin building the farm, we need to determine the bounding box of a Nether Fortress. It’s a massive cuboid around every possible spawning space of the fortress. Our goal is to make a farm at the highest possible Y level of the bounding box (see explanation below). Thus, to figure out the bounding box of a fortress, follow the steps below:

• First, go to every outer dead end of the structure you can find. These are the external walkways that end abruptly.

• You should save the X and Z coordinates of the edges of those walkways by opening the F3 debug screen in Minecraft.
• You can also remove the terrain if it’s in the way but do not remove the nether bricks of the fortress at the edges.

• The highest and lowest X and Z coordinates determine the length and width of the bounding box of a fortress.
• Now, reach the highest spot of the fortress you can find. It’s usually at the intersection of walkways or the area right above the small lava well at the beginning of a fortress interior.

• Once you get there, stand on the highest block and save the Y coordinate.
• The Y coordinate determines the height of the fortress and is probably the most important part of making this wither skeleton farm.

• You can place the farm anywhere within the ranges of the X and Z coordinates, but the Y level has to be precise. You should subtract one from the highest Y coordinate that you noted earlier. This will be the coordinate of your feet when you stand on the spawning platform of the farm. So, in our example we saved the Y coordinate 78, so the new coordinate we should save is Y = 77.

Step 2: Make the Spawning Platform

Once you have all of the coordinates saved, let’s start building the wither skeleton farm in Minecraft.

• Now, choose one spot in the range of the X and Z coordinates and press F3 + G. This will show chunk borders.
• You should find an intersection of four chunks (a square pattern of four chunks) that are completely within the range of X and Z coordinates. This is fairly easy to do as you can choose any four chunks even in the center of the fortress. However, keep in mind that the farm needs to be at least 100 blocks away from any other Nether biome that’s not a soul sand valley or a warped forest.
• Now, make a pillar at this intersection with temporary blocks until you reach the Y of your new Y coordinate minus 1. In our example, it’s 76.
• Then, place four chests at the Y level above the temporary blocks, so Y = 77, in the corner of every chunk at this intersection. Whether the chests are connected or not doesn’t matter. As mentioned before, this will be the Y coordinate of our feet when we stand on the spawning platform, so the spawning platform itself should be one block lower.

• Now use nether bricks (these have to be full nether brick blocks and not slabs) and make a 30 x 30 platform centered on the chests. So, place 14 blocks from the chests in every cardinal direction and a square shape.
• You can remove any terrain in the way but make sure there are at least 3 air blocks above the platform, so wither skeletons have room to spawn.

• When you are done with the platform, it is time to place the walls. So, go to one corner of the platform and place a wall diagonally from it on the platform itself.
• Now, skip two blocks from the wall and place another wall on the platform. Basically, you will need to place a wall every three blocks.

• Then, you should do the same on all sides of the platform and also fill in the center following the same rule. When you are done, you can remove the temporary blocks if you’ve used them.
• Now, go ahead and place the turtle eggs on the walls in the corners of the farm. This is how your farm should look like:

• Next, stand on the chests and fill in the walls around them on the north, east, and west sides. Press F3 to determine them.
• After that, place 10 non-flammable solid blocks on the three sides on top of the walls, so at eye level.

• Place two iron bars attached to these solid blocks on the north side and also one more on the east side, connected to the first two.
• Next, summon an iron golem and nudge it into this small room. Then, close it off using more solid blocks and walls, repeating the pattern. Your iron golem may be attacked by blazes and wither skeletons, so put up a temporary wall if necessary to shield it from attackers.

• Add four obsidian blocks at eye level on the south side and then add more walls below the obsidian.
• Then, continue placing walls around the iron golem as a second layer.

• After that, place non-flammable slabs on top of the walls on the north, east and west sides, skipping the corners. So, four on each side.

• Place four stairs in front of obsidian and two slabs at the corners of that side.
• After that, place 12 repeaters on top of the solid blocks around the golem.

• Place bottom slabs on top of the repeaters, by crouching and right-clicking the repeaters. Then, fill in the roof with more slabs.
• Then, make a Nether portal out of the obsidian we already placed. You may fill the corners with obsidian or any other solid block.
• So, add three more obsidian blocks on either side of the corner block above the walls and place slabs on top of them. Then connect more obsidian blocks to those slabs, completing the Nether portal frame.

• Stand inside the Nether portal frame and record the X, Y, and Z coordinates. After you save them, light the portal, but do NOT go through it.

Step 3: Building the AFK Spot

Now that we’ve got the spawning platform in place, we should make the AFK spot, where we’ll be killing all the wither skeletons produced by the farm in Minecraft. This means we need to go to the Nether roof.

This is not a particularly challenging task, but it can lead to you getting stuck. So, you can bring all supplies necessary for breaking bedrock. Therefore, you can easily access the Nether roof and all the farms on top of it. You can also make a Nether portal up there that’ll take you to the Overworld, but make sure you do that away from the farm.

• Pillar all the way up in the Nether until you come across bedrock. Our goal is to find a bedrock block that’s at the Y level = 127. You can search for it using the targeted block section on the F3 debug screen.

• Once you reach it, take the ladders and place them leading to this block. Start climbing them and throw the ender pearl at the corner of the bedrock block. Hold the forward and jump buttons at the same time, to glitch through the bedrock. You are free to break that bedrock block if you want to.
• When you reach the roof, go to the X and Z coordinates of the Nether portal you made on the spawning platform.
• When you reach the spot, add 125 to the Y coordinate of that portal, so in our case, it’s 79 + 125 = 204. Then pillar up to that Y coordinate, so that your feet are at this level. The final block you place should be a glass block, so in our case, it’ll be at 203.
• Now, press F3 + G to show the chunk borders. You should be just a couple blocks away from the intersection of the four initial chunks.
• Place one glass block toward that intersection and then you can use more glass blocks or use stained glass blocks of any color that you want, so you can mark the exact spot you should be standing on. So, the glass blocks at the intersection can be colored, this is where iron golem is below.
• Expand the glass platform to be 6×6 blocks centered on the intersection.

• Stand on top of the pillar and place four more glass blocks. Add two more glass blocks from here toward the AFK spot.
• Now, add two obsidian blocks above the AFK spot and finish making the Nether portal out of them. The portal should be directly above the AFK spot, so not one block left or right. Make sure to center it. Also, place slabs on top of the portal blocks to spawnproof them.

• The next step is to make a tube where the wither skeletons will fall from the portal. So, on the side opposite to where you placed the glass blocks, add more glass blocks that are attached to the Nether portal.
• There should be only a one-block wide and two-block-long hole against the portal, so fill the walls around with glass blocks.

• Go right below the portal and place the bottom slabs at eye level in the tube we’ve made. Add two glass blocks below the obsidian blocks and add two trapdoors on the underside of those glass blocks.

• Now, add ladders on the pillar so you can get back up. When you are up there, add two more glass blocks in front of the portal attached to other glass blocks.
• Now, from the top glass block of the pillar, bridge out 18 blocks with glass. Construct another Nether portal there, basically mirrored from the first one. Also, add one more glass block in front of the second portal.

• Block off the back side of the second portal with glass blocks. The back side is the one away from the first portal. Finally, light the second portal.
• Go back to the first portal where we made the killing chamber and save the X, Y, and Z coordinates inside the frame.
• Place a door behind the portal on one glass block and a wall on the other.

• Now, light that portal and go through it to the Overworld.
• Once you’re in the Overworld, break the portal you just came through by breaking one of the essential obsidian blocks or by using a water bucket on it.
• Then, multiply the X and Z coordinates of the portal on the Nether roof by 8. When you reach these coordinates, pillar up until you reach the Y level one lower than the one from the portal on the Nether roof.
• Now, bridge out on 10 solid blocks to the south. Then add an obsidian block at the end.
• Construct a Nether portal where you placed obsidian, so that it’s three blocks wide and not two.

• Now, block off the back side of the portal frame with two solid blocks and one wall in the center at eye level.
• Widen the bridge with more solid blocks, so that it’s 10 blocks long and three blocks wide. Also, add a railing connected to the portal frame that’s at eye level.

• Place the obsidian block on top of the pillar and make another Nether portal frame that lines up with the first one. However, this one is just one block higher than the first.
• Add three slabs in front of the second portal and light it.

• Go back to the first lower portal and place three cobwebs one block in front of it and light it. Go back through the lower portal.

So, believe it or not, that’s it! All you need to do now is to go to the AFK spot and wait. The wither skeletons will start spawning and then they’ll go through the portal. You’ll need to wait for them to reach the other portal and get into the killing chamber. This can take a few minutes.

• Now, you need to use a sword enchanted with sweeping edge and smite since they will deal more damage to wither skeletons. Also, having looting III will greatly increase your chance of obtaining rarer drops like wither skeleton skulls, so it’s recommended you have it.
• You are free to kill the mobs manually, or go AFK and let the auto-clicker do all the work. Just make sure it attacks about once per second to deal the most damage. Make sure you eat every once in a while, so you don’t die from starvation.
• There is no collection nor sorting system for the farm because you can use your own inventory for the same. Fill every slot of the inventory with mob loot that you want, like coal, wither skeleton skulls, and bones. You may also find an occasional blaze in the farm, so maybe have a blaze rod for filter too.
• By doing this, you won’t pick up the stone swords that’ll quickly take up the precious inventory space. Also, put food of your choice in the off-hand slot so you can eat occasionally.

• This farm will work just fine in a single-player world and on a server where only one player is online. However, if there are multiple players on the server, make sure none of them is in the Overworld since this will dispawn wither skeletons on the other side and stop the farm from functioning. Alternatively, they can be in the Overworld, but somebody needs to be near the farm constantly to keep the skeletons around.

How Does the Wither Skeleton Farm Work

The wither skeleton farm design that ianxofour created is one of the easiest and most efficient farms in Minecraft. It utilizes simple mechanics and takes advantage of them without needing any extra work. So, here’s how this farm functions.

The main requirement for the wither skeleton farm is that it has to be in either a warped forest or a soul sand valley. This is because the warped forest spawns only Endermen mobs and the soul sand valley spawns ghasts and skeletons.

The game uses special mechanic to limit the number of spawns of these mobs since it would be kind of crazy if there were 20 ghasts floating in one area. So, the two biomes named above spawn fewer mobs than the other Nether biomes, which is a perfect location for a hostile mob farm.

After you find the fortress in the right biome, it is necessary to determine the bounding box of the fortress. This is because fortress mobs can spawn anywhere in this massive box, not only on nether bricks. So, we position the spawning platform of the farm at the highest possible Y level, so that when you set up the AFK spot, all other spawnable places will be out of range. This is important as it eliminates the need to spawn-proof a large area around the fortress.

After that, we make a large platform for mobs to spawn on. We also place walls in a specific grid on the platform, so that we stop magma cubes from spawning since they require a 3×3 empty area. The turtle eggs are placed on top of walls on the corners to lure zombified piglins toward them. Thanks to the accurate placement of the AFK spot, those zombified piglins despawn before they reach the eggs.

Iron golem stands in the center on top of chests, so that it’s just a bit lower than if it stood on the full blocks. We surrounded the golem so that no mobs get close to it and kill it. Also, we placed repeaters at the eye level of the golem, so that shorter mobs like skeletons cannot see it. This would stop them from harming the golem.

Only three-block tall wither skeletons can see the golem, which they get agroed towards. So, they can run toward the golem, but the only place they can pathfind to is the Nether portal.

Once the wither skeletons go through to the portal to the Overworld, they won’t move as the area is not loaded. They also require a 15-second cooldown before they can enter a portal again. So, that’s why we spread apart the two Nether portals.

The mobs will push each other until they reach the second portal after which the cooldown will have passed. The two Nether portals are slightly off in the Y coordinate, which allows us to accurately link one with the lower portal on the spawning platform in the Nether and the other one with the portal above the Nether roof.

We set up the AFK spot 125 blocks higher than the Y level of the Nether portal on the spawning platform. This is because all mobs are guaranteed to despawn when they’re more than 128 blocks away from the player. So, our AFK spot is at the maximum possible distance from the spawning platform, so we eliminate all the unnecessary spawning in the surroundings.

When the wither skeletons arrive above the Nether roof, they’ll go down the tube we made where you can swipe at them with your sword to kill them. Whenever you want to use the farm, stand on the AFK spot and wait for the wither skeletons to arrive.

So, that’s how you make a wither skeleton farm in Minecraft. This design is one of the best possible wither skeleton farm designs out there, as it’s not at all time-consuming, but still provides you super efficient results. So, what are you planning to do with all those wither skeleton skulls and beacons? Tell us in the comments below!