How to Make a Mob Farm in Minecraft (XP and Loot)

Experience is the currency behind every enchantment, anvil job and repair in Minecraft, and killing mobs one at a time in caves is a slow way to earn it. A mob farm industrialises the process: mobs spawn in the dark, wash into a drop shaft, and land at your feet one hit from death. Ten minutes of AFK time becomes a crowd of zombies, skeletons, creepers and spiders waiting to hand you their XP and loot.

How the Design Works

Hostile mobs spawn in complete darkness on solid blocks, as long as you are reasonably close (within a few dozen blocks) but not too close. The farm builds them a perfect spawning room high in the air, where the only spawnable surfaces are yours. Water flowing across the floor nudges wandering mobs into a central hole — open trapdoors over the channels help here, because mobs pathfind across them as if they were solid ground, then step in and fall. The drop is tuned to 22 blocks: far enough that fall damage leaves most mobs with a sliver of health, short enough that they survive the landing. That detail is the whole point — a mob you kill yourself drops experience; a mob killed by the fall does not.

What You Need

• About 1,600 building blocks (25 stacks of cobblestone is typical)
• 64 trapdoors
• 4 chests and 4 hoppers
• 4 slabs
• 2 water buckets (an infinite water source helps)
• Torches for everywhere except the spawning room

Step 1: The Collection Point

Start at the bottom. Dig a small pit and place four chests in it, with a hopper feeding into each one from above. Ring the top of the pit with slabs, leaving a gap you can reach through: this is your killing window. Mobs land on the hoppers, you hit them through the gap, drops fall straight into the hoppers and chests, and XP orbs float out to you. If orbs get stuck, dig the floor around the hoppers one block lower and step in — they will find you.

Step 2: The Tower and Spawning Floor

From the slab ring, build a hollow 4×4 tower straight up 22 blocks — that height is the drop, so count carefully. At the top, expand the floor into a plus shape: four channels, each two blocks wide and about seven blocks long, running out from the central shaft. Wall the whole floor in two blocks high, join the channels up into one big dark room, and put a roof over it so the room stays dark at noon. Light the top of the roof so nothing spawns up there instead.

Step 3: Water and Trapdoors

Place water at the far end of each channel so it flows towards the centre and stops right at the shaft's edge. Lay closed trapdoors along the edges of the channels and over the shaft opening. Mobs spawn, wander, step onto what looks like solid floor, and the current does the rest. Give it a test run from below: within a few minutes you should hear the first thuds at the killing window.

Making It Faster

• Location is everything. Build over an ocean or high in the sky, and light up (or flood) the caves beneath you. Every dark cave nearby is spawn space competing with your farm.
• Stay in range. AFK roughly 24–40 blocks away from the spawning floor — close enough that mobs spawn, far enough that they do not spawn around you instead. Never stand right next to the chamber.
• Kill by hand. A sword with Looting III noticeably increases drops like gunpowder and bones. Automating the kill with magma blocks or fire gets you items, but no XP.
• Mind the spiders. Spiders climb and can clog narrow channels; keeping channels two blocks wide and the shaft edges clean prevents most jams.

Variations Worth Knowing

Found a dungeon spawner while caving? The same water-and-drop logic turns it into a single-mob farm with a much better spawn rate — just centre the collection system under the spawner. And if you place sculk catalysts beside your killing spot, the XP that mobs drop on death converts into sculk growth you can mine later for even more experience: the farm starts paying you twice. But the plain dark tower remains the classic for a reason — no rare blocks, no spawner required, and it works in any world from day three onwards.