Highlights

• Gaining experience in Minecraft is essential for powerful enchantments that make fighting stronger mobs easier.
• Players have created ingenious Redstone and non-Redstone farms to efficiently boost their experience gain.
• Farms like the Wither Skeleton Farm, Sculk Block Farm, and Automatic Fish Farm provide quick ways to gain experience and useful drops.

Experience is one of the key gameplay features in Minecraft. Although there are no skills or additional abilities to unlock, experience points can be spent on powerful enchantments for your gear, which can make fighting stronger and stronger mobs much easier.

However, gaining experience is a slow process. Thankfully, like just about any other process in the game, players have figured out countless ways to turn it into a quick and efficient process. Here are just a few incredibly ingenious Redstone and non-Redstone farms to help anyone boost their experience gain.

Updated on August 2, 2023, by Rosa Baumgartl: Minecraft is an ever-changing game, with previous mechanics being renewed and fresh ones being introduced all the time. We've added some new ways to farm experience using some of the items and mobs recently introduced, as well as fixing any broken item interactions that older farms might now have.

17 Wither Skeleton Farm

The harder the mob, the more experience they tend to drop, and Wither Skeletons are pretty brutal. This farm not only keeps you safe from their Withering effect but should net you around 135 Wither Skeleton Skulls at the same time. It also doesn't require a lot of tedious spawn-proofing in the Nether.

Items Required For A Wither Skeleton Farm

How To Make A Wither Skeleton Farm

Despite the high number of resources necessary to build this, it's actually the quickest as it avoids placing Slabs around the Nether Fortress to limit where the Wither Skeletons can spawn. It also means you don't have to sit in the Nether for extended periods while farming, which can be dangerous. The design is by Ianxofour and the video is by Shulkercraft.

16 Sculk Block Farm

This farm is unlike any other in Minecraft so far, as it doesn't involve the player smelting or killing mobs. Rather, the mobs must die passively over some Sculk blocks, which then spread.

These blocks hold loads of experience, and all you have to do is break them.

Items Required For A Sculk Block Farm

How To Make A Sculk Block Farm

The principle of this farm is that it's built under a Zombie or Skeleton Spawner, which drops the mobs onto the Dripstone which kills them. The nearby Sculk Catalyst, which you'll need Silk Touch to pick up from deep underground, then turns nearby blocks into Sculk. Wattles explains the whole thing very well in his tutorial video.

15 Cave Spider Farm

Cave spiders are considered the worst mobs to farm in the entire game. For one, they will poison you, and secondly, spiders in general have a tendency to be able to escape various structures by climbing walls.

However, there is a way to make either a cave spider or a regular spider farm work and to get a bunch of experience points for it in Minecraft. This is particularly useful since cave spider spawners are very easy to find due to how common abandoned mineshafts are in the game.

Items Required For A Spider Farm

Items Required For A Cave Spider Farm

How To Make A Spider/Cave Spider Farm

Before you start, it's recommended that you have a few essentials with you. Ladders for climbing out of holes, torches to light up the area while you work, a sword to fight off any mobs that get too close, and of course, a pickaxe. A bucket of milk is also handy to mitigate the poison effect if you are dealing with cave spiders.

The materials above are for two different farm designs by Kmond. The Cave Spider XP Farm, for up to version 1.17.and the Regular Spider Farm, which also works up to version 1.17.

14 Automatic Fish Farm

There are tons of designs for AFK fish farms or other automatic fish farms, which are all excellent ways to farm enchantment books, bows, saddles, name tags, and even fishing rods. Automatic fishing farms are also great for food and xp in Minecraft.

Given how it doesn't require many resources, having a fish farm is pretty much a must-have for any player. The xp is pretty low, but the process is simple and easy and the rewards are excellent.

Items Required For An Automatic Fish Farm

How To Make An Automatic Fish Farm

There are many designs for fish farms but the one we've chosen is the Easiest Automatic AFK Fish Farm By Carbon Gaming. This farm uses easy-to-find resources, is simple to build, and will net you some useful drops as well as some xp.

13 Portal Farm

If resources are not a problem, you might as well go big with your xp farm designs. One favorite (especially at harder difficulties) is a nether portal farm that pulls in Zombie Pigmen from the nether and doesn't even require you to manually kill the mobs.

As well as an impressive amount of xp, you'll also gain a tonne of gold. The only downside is that it requires a huge amount of resources, which can be difficult to obtain on survival.

Items Required For A Farm With Portals

How To Make A Portal Farm

This particular portal farm is designed by Rays Works and has an AFK mode and an automated mode. Rays Works' video on the farm covers both modes, but the latter requires extra redstone materials to make a redstone clock.

We haven't added quantities to the list of materials due to having no clue of the scale of this farm. However, it's likely to be scalable in that the portals can probably be reduced.

12 Bedrock Charcoal Farm

Back to more simple designs, this is a very interesting take on a self-fueling farm that's similar to the concept of the cacti and bamboo farm. However, this one uses wood instead to create charcoal and fuel itself over and over again by storing the experience points within the furnace.

This charcoal xp farm design can be made as big or small as you want and has the advantage of using a resource that's usually readily available.

Items Required For A Charcoal XP Farm

How To Make A Charcoal XP Farm

For players who can't get their hands on bamboo or cactus easily, this is the way to go. Plus, it's certified to work on Bedrock, thanks to this design by ProfePlaysMinecraft.

The only thing to note is that the furnace is powered by wood so you'll also need a lot of wood to get xp this way.

11 Piglin Bartering Farm

Now to the real meat of the nether update. With the introduction of Piglins and bartering, players have been coming up with extremely interesting farm designs that not only incorporate xp farming in Minecraft but also infinite bartering with a trapped Piglin.

These farms provide a huge amount of xp as well as a wide selection of materials. This is because the farm generates gold and xp then uses them to produce trades with Piglins for different items.

Items Required For A Nether Bartering XP Farm

How To Build A Piglin Bartering Farm

This particular design by Rays Works is excellent because it automatically provides gold to the Piglin by killing off Zombie Pigmen and generates experience points as well as tons of items from the bartering process. It really does kill three birds with just one stone, and although it's not easy to build resource-wise, it's absolutely a must-have for players.

10 Raid Farm

It may not have crossed your mind, but Illager outposts are excellent locations for farming XP in Minecraft. Even if the outpost tower itself is demolished, Illagers will still continue to spawn.

These farms are simple to build, and the rewards include emeralds and totems of undying, both of which can be incredibly valuable. You'll also get more crossbows than you know what to do with.

Items Required For A Pillager Raid XP Farm

How To Build A Raid Farm

This design by Avomance in particular works wonders. By placing a bed and a few villagers in the middle to attract Illagers, they can be guided with water down into a tunnel to kill them easily. If a captain is killed, even better, because it will instantly start a raid due to the presence of the villagers.

9 Mob Spawner Farm

During any regular survival game, you are very likely to come across mob dungeons with a spawner at some point. Dungeons are easily recognized by their mossy cobblestone walls and loot chests. These are mob dungeons ideal for xp farms in Minecraft.

Most spawner farms work on the simple principle of trapping the mobs in one place where you can safely kill them in order to gain exp and any items they may drop. To really boost the experience you farm from this set up, tame some Wolves and build an AFK Fish Farm next to the drop zone. The Wolves will deliver the final blow on your behalf, netting you the experience while you're away from the keyboard and still fishing.

Items Required For A Dungeon Spawner XP Farm

How To Build A Mob Spawner Farm

The best dungeon to turn into an experience farm in Minecraft is a skeleton dungeon due to the useful loot they drop (bones, arrows, and bows), but any type will do.

Spiders will be more difficult to trap due to their ability to climb walls and are better contained in the spider-specific farm mentioned earlier. Here's a great design by Kmond.

8 Gold Farm

Murdering zombie Pigmen is a great way to get xp. If you aren't worried about trying to integrate bartering into your farm, this is a great alternative to the Piglin bartering farm.

This farm brings in huge amounts of xp and while it's resource-heavy, the actual build is fairly easy to construct.

Items Required For A Gold Farm

How To Build A Gold Farm

This farm does involve some cheesy game-breaking strategies, such as entering the Nether roof. You'll need to do this before you can begin the build.

The Nether roof is basically a wide flat area made of bedrock, a material on which no mob can spawn. Therefore, any other block that's placed down has a huge chance of spawning Nether mobs, making it easy to manipulate spawn rates for XP farms. RandomGgames constructs a great gold and experience farm with few materials worth copying.

7 Stone XP Farm

Most XP farms require a staggering amount of resources to build. This can make most players think twice before attempting to build one, especially in survival mode or even hardcore mode. However, a good XP farm in Minecraft doesn't have to be resource-heavy.

A simple stone XP farm using furnaces is just enough for a single-player survival world, at least in the beginning.

Items Required For A Stone XP Farm

How To Build A Stone XP Farm

By smelting stone, the furnaces store and generate XP in them, similarly to a few other designs. If you are using stone or smooth stone in your builds this is an especially productive way to generate xp.

If you need a design then WaffleNite showcases a simple idea that's easy to replicate.

6 Classic Mob Farm

Ultimately, a survival world of Minecraft isn't complete if you haven't made the king of all mob farms, the classic Minecraft mob XP farm.

Although it requires quite a bit of stone and usually a great height to be built on, it can yield a lot of experience points and useful drops.

Items Required For A Classic Mob Farm

How To Build A Classic Mob Farm

If closed-off platforms are built over a large body of water or far up in the air, you will see an increased rate of monsters spawning inside. The mobs can then be pushed down by the water and left at one or two hearts for you to kill them off at the bottom of the drop.

Voltrox shows the strength of this simple yet iconic Minecraft xp farm perfectly with his design.

5 Kelp XP Farm

For those that feel super intimidated by more complex experience farms and just need a tiny xp boost to their survival Minecraft world without any frills, there's a simple way to farm xp with only kelp needed.

Items Required For A Kelp Farm

How To Build A Kelp Farm

Kelp is an interesting material because it can be grown, dried in the furnace and then used as fuel to dry more kelp. As such, it makes for excellent fuel for a simple and easy Minecraft xp farm, as shown by Farzy.

4 Blaze Farm

If you're looking for the best mob to farm for XP, blazes are an excellent place to start. While building a farm in the Nether can get risky, blaze rods are a necessity for the end game, which is why this farm basically kills two birds with one stone.

If you want to experiment with potions and brewing then you'll need a good supply of blaze rods. This farm will help you get them safely, and gain some xp.

Items Required For A Blaze Farm

There are hundreds of different ways to design blaze xp farms in Minecraft, but it's always best to pick a spawner that has a lot of natural cover so that building around it isn't a chore and potentially doesn't kill the player. Voltrox has a very easy and material-light design to follow.

3 Guardian Farm

It's no secret that guardians are some of the best mobs to farm for XP in the game due to the decent amount of XP they drop.

That being said, building a guardian farm is a monumental task, since most designs require draining the entire ocean monument.

Items Required For A Guardian Farm

How To Build A Guardian Farm

Despite the huge time and resource cost, this farm is still worth it due to its sheer output of experience. LogicalGeekBoy in particular has a very easy-to-follow tutorial on how to nail down the design and mechanics of the guardian XP farm in Minecraft. The best thing about it is that it also avoids the epic task of draining the ocean monument.

You'll also gain a tonne of cod as well as materials to craft Prismarine and its variants as well as sea lanterns.

2 Enderman Farm

Once you have actually reached The End and defeated the Ender Dragon, you might want to consider building an Enderman xp farm. The End is basically full of free space where Endermen can spawn, and with water as their sole weakness, it's an easy enough farm to make.

Items Required For An Enderman Farm

How To Build An Enderman Farm

Not only does this farm yield a ton of experience since Endermen are among the toughest mobs, but it also provides more ender pearls than you'll ever use, which come in handy when exploring the End islands.

Pixlriffs has a great guide on how to create a straightforward Enderman farm.

1 Cactus And Bamboo Farm

For those who want maximum output and the least amount of materials used, this cactus and bamboo farm is the answer. Not only is it cheap to make, it's also fully self-sufficient. All you need to do is leave it to do its thing and come back hours later to reap the benefits.

Items Required For Cactus And Bamboo XP Farm

How To Build A Cactus And Bamboo Farm

This farm is compact, but its main problem is how immensely loud it can get due to the constantly moving minecart. For this reason, it's recommended that you build it at a distance from your base. Check Avomance's tutorial for the best XP farm design.