How to Make a Wither Skeleton Farm in Minecraft (Skulls for Beacons)

Every beacon in Minecraft starts with three wither skeleton skulls, and skulls have a miserable base drop rate. That is why long-term worlds farm them. This design, by redstone builder ianxofour, is the community favorite because it skips the usual pain — no wither roses, no piglin luring rigs — and still produces skulls at a rate that makes beacons feel cheap.

Step 1: Choose the Right Fortress

Location decides everything. You need a Nether fortress inside a soul sand valley or a warped forest, with at least 100 blocks of separation from any other Nether biome. In the wrong biome, ghasts, skeletons and magma cubes flood the mob cap and your rates collapse; in soul sand valleys and warped forests, almost nothing competes with the fortress spawns. Seed tools like ChunkBase make finding a qualifying fortress much faster than wandering the Nether.

Step 2: Measure the Bounding Box

Fortress mobs only spawn inside the fortress's invisible bounding box, so the farm must sit inside it — at its top. Walk to the fortress's outer dead-end walkways and note the extreme X and Z coordinates (the F3 debug screen is your friend); those define the box's length and width. Then find the highest point of the structure, usually above the small lava well room, and note its Y. Your feet on the finished spawning platform will stand at that Y minus one. Write these numbers down — everything else is built relative to them.

Step 3: The Spawning Platform

The farm's materials are modest: about 900 nether bricks, 130 walls, 88 glass, 58 obsidian, 49 slabs, iron blocks, four turtle eggs, repeaters and temporary blocks. Find a spot where four chunks meet inside the bounding box (F3+G shows chunk borders), pillar to your platform height, and lay a 30×30 platform of full nether brick blocks centered on that intersection. Then cover it in a grid of walls — one wall, two empty spaces, repeat — across the whole surface. The walls matter: they create the block pattern that favors wither skeleton spawns and breaks the platform into lanes. Place the four turtle eggs on the corner walls; they draw zombified piglins away from the action.

Step 4: The Golem Lure and Portal

At the platform's center, build a small walled chamber and install an iron golem inside it, visible through iron bars and gaps in the walls. Wither skeletons hate golems on sight and path straight toward it — and behind the golem sits a lit Nether portal built into the chamber wall. The skeletons walk in to reach the golem, step into the portal, and vanish. Slabs and repeaters around the chamber roof keep blazes from sniping your golem while it works.

Step 5: The Nether Roof Killing Chamber

The portal delivers the skeletons to a linked portal on the Nether roof, positioned 125 blocks above the platform portal. Getting up there is the classic route: find bedrock at Y=127, ladder up, and ender-pearl through the corner. On the roof, build a small glass AFK platform and a second portal pair with a one-block-wide drop tube, so skeletons arrive in a contained glass chamber at sword height. Stand there with a Looting III sword — Looting is what turns this from a coal farm into a skull farm, lifting the skull chance with every level.

The Drops

Beyond skulls, the farm pours out coal (a fuel windfall), bones and stone swords, with the occasional blaze wandering in from the fortress below. Fill your inventory with junk items except the slots you want kept, and the farm effectively filters itself. One afternoon of AFK time here usually funds every beacon your world will ever need.