How to Build an XP Farm in Minecraft: 3 Designs Compared

The XP farm worth building depends on how far along you are. Before the End, build a spawner farm around the first zombie or skeleton spawner you find. After you’ve beaten the dragon, an enderman farm in the outer End is the fastest XP most players will ever get. A furnace XP bank is a slow, quiet extra that runs alongside either one.

All three share one rule: mobs only drop XP when you (or your tamed wolf) land the kill, or hit them shortly before they die. A farm that kills mobs with fall damage or lava alone gives you drops but no XP. That’s why most XP farms drop mobs to half a heart and leave the last swing to you.

The three main designs compared

Design	When you can build it	XP per kill	Cost	Honest verdict
Dungeon spawner farm	Early, once you find a spawner	5 (zombie, skeleton, spider)	Cobblestone, water, a few signs	Best early option; capped by the spawner’s slow rate
End enderman farm	After the Ender Dragon	5	Lots of blocks, a name tag, a minecart	Fastest common XP farm; a big build
Furnace XP bank	Any time	Up to 1 per smelt	Furnaces, hoppers, a source of items	Slow, passive, nearly free

Spawner farms

A dungeon spawner (zombie, skeleton or spider) is the classic first XP farm, because the spawner does the hard part. You light the room so nothing else spawns, use water to push the mobs to one corner, and drop them down a shaft deep enough to leave them on half a heart. Zombies and skeletons work with the same design; spiders need a slightly different shaft because they climb.

The limit is the spawner itself. It tries to spawn a few mobs every 10 to 40 seconds and stops while 6 or more of its mob are crowded nearby, so a spawner farm tops out at a steady trickle. It still gets you from 0 to level 30 in an evening of AFK-ish play, which is enough for an enchanting table setup.

Our skeleton farm guide walks through the whole build, and the same steps apply to a zombie spawner. You also need to stand within 16 blocks of the spawner for it to run, so put your kill spot close.

Two other spawner-based farms give better XP per kill:

• A blaze farm in a Nether fortress gives 10 XP per blaze plus blaze rods. Blazes fly and shoot fire, so it’s a harder build.
• A guardian farm at an ocean monument isn’t a spawner farm, but guardians give 10 XP each and spawn in huge numbers. Draining a monument is a big project.

Enderman farms in the End

Endermen spawn all over the End’s end stone, give 5 XP each, and have 40 health, which is exactly what makes a farm work: a drop of about 43 blocks leaves them on half a heart. The usual design, from the Minecraft Wiki’s enderman farming tutorial, looks like this:

1. Build at least 128 blocks away from the main island and any outer island, so endermen can only spawn on your platforms.
2. Make spawning pads (or a ring of them) out of solid blocks, with a long drop beside them.
3. Lure the endermen off the pads. The cheapest lure is an endermite: throw ender pearls until one spawns, name it with a name tag so it never despawns, and trap it in a minecart. Endermen within about 62 blocks that can see it walk straight toward it.
4. They fall into the kill spot on half a heart, and one hit from you collects the XP.

Built well, this reaches level 30 in minutes. The downsides are real, though: you need the End unlocked, a lot of blocks hauled across the void, and you must not look at the endermen’s faces while you work (wear a carved pumpkin or build so they arrive below eye level). Some variants are Java-only, such as designs that rely on sweeping attacks and entity cramming; the endermite lure works on both editions.

Furnace XP banks

Smelting gives XP too. Furnaces, smokers and blast furnaces store the XP from every item they smelt and pay it out when a player takes items from the output slot by hand. Hoppers can empty the output without losing the stored XP, so the trick is:

1. Feed a furnace (or a row of them) automatically, for example cactus from a cactus farm or kelp from a kelp farm.
2. Let hoppers pull out the output so the furnace never jams.
3. Every so often, leave one item in the output and take it by hand. All the XP stored since last time comes out at once.

The numbers are small per item. Cactus gives 1 XP per green dye on Java but only 0.2 on Bedrock, which makes a cactus farm far better on Java. Kelp and cobblestone give 0.1 each. Ores give more (gold and diamond ore 1, ancient debris 2), but you don’t farm ores.

As an XP farm on its own, a furnace bank is weak. Its strength is that it costs almost nothing, runs while you do other things, and gives you a handy burst of levels when you need to repair something.

Which one to build

If you’ve found a spawner, build there first. It’s cheap, safe once lit, and close to the surface. Head to the End and build an enderman farm once you have elytra or a solid bridge plan. Add a furnace bank whenever you set up a cactus or kelp farm, since the XP is free.

Don’t forget the simplest XP source: villager trades give 3 to 6 XP each, so trading with villagers for books and gear pays you in levels at the same time.

Using the XP

Most of your XP will go into enchanting and anvils. Put Mending on your main tools and armor, then hold them while you collect XP at the farm: orbs repair damaged Mending gear before they count toward your level. If you’re trying to level up, take damaged gear off first.