How to Build a Skeleton Farm From a Dungeon Spawner

A skeleton farm is built around a skeleton spawner in a dungeon. Water pushes the skeletons into one corner, they drop down a 22-block shaft that leaves them with half a heart, and you finish them with a single hit. It’s usually the first mob farm players build, because the spawner already exists and the whole thing takes an hour or two. You get XP fast, plus stacks of bones and arrows.

Finding a spawner

Skeleton spawners turn up in dungeons: small cobblestone and mossy cobblestone rooms underground, usually with one or two chests. You’ll come across them while caving. Listen for the rattling of a group of skeletons and look for the spinning cage. Dungeons can have zombie or spider spawners instead; zombie ones work with this same design.

Building the skeleton farm step by step

1. Stop the spawning while you work. Place torches on and around the spawner. Spawners need low light to spawn monsters, so a few torches shut it down. Remove them at the end.
2. Hollow out the room. Skeletons spawn up to 4 blocks from the spawner horizontally, so dig the room out to 9×9 around it and give it a ceiling at least 2 blocks above the spawner’s top.
3. Lay down water. Put water sources along one wall so the flow reaches the opposite side and carries everything toward one spot. In a 9×9 room water flows 8 blocks, so two rows of sources on one side and a trench down the middle usually covers it. Leave a 1×1 hole at the end where the water stops.
4. Dig the drop. From that hole, dig a 1×1 shaft straight down. Make the fall 22 blocks deep.
5. Build the kill room. At the bottom of the shaft, open a gap one block high at the skeletons’ foot level and stand beside it. You can hit their legs through the gap, while the block above it keeps them from getting a clean shot at you.
6. Collect the drops. Put hoppers under the skeletons’ landing spot, leading into a chest.

Remove the torches, stand in the kill room, and they’ll start arriving.

The 16-block rule

A spawner only runs while you’re within 16 blocks of it. With a 22-block shaft, measure carefully: your kill room should be roughly straight below the spawner, not off to the side, or you’ll end up just outside the range and nothing will spawn. If you find yourself out of range, make the shaft a bit shorter and finish the skeletons with two hits instead of one.

What you get

• XP. Each skeleton gives 5 XP, and with a steady spawn rate you can reach level 30 in a session. That’s what this farm is mostly for, especially once you have Mending gear to repair.
• Bones. Bone meal for crops and saplings, and for taming wolves.
• Arrows. Enough that you’ll rarely need to craft any for your bow.
• Bows. Occasionally a skeleton drops its bow, sometimes enchanted.

Kill them with a Looting sword for more bones and arrows. Even unenchanted, a stone sword is enough once they’re on half a heart.

Next steps

A spawner farm is a good warm-up for bigger projects, and our XP farm comparison covers what to build next. In the Nether, the same idea works on a blaze spawner in a blaze farm, which gives double the XP per kill. Cave spider spawners in mineshafts can be farmed for string and spider eyes too, though they need a different design.