Top 10 Minecraft Bedrock Survival Farms of 2023

The Master List

Table of Contents

• #10: Silentwisperer’s Grinder
• #9: Silentwisperer’s Microfarm
• #8: JC Playz’s Kelp 0-tick
• #7: Prowl8413’s General Mob Farm
• #6: 1upMC’s Iron Farm
• #5: JCPlayz’s Gunpowder Farm
• #4: Silentwisperer’s Guardian Farm
• #3: Navynexus’ Gold Farm
• #2: ItsMeJames’ Trading Hall
• #1: JCPlayz’s Raid Farm

Silentwisperer’s Grinder

What is a grinder?

Mob grinder is a term used to refer to all sorts of Minecraft mob farm designs, but in this context we’ll be looking specifically at spawner block based designs. These include any farms which use one or more naturally occurring mob spawners generated from dungeons or abandoned mineshaft to function.

Why 10th place?

We’ve decided to put mob grinders in 10th because they can be outpaced by most more advanced farms, and are usually unitaskers, producing a small trickle of XP and usually just one or two useful item types. Despite this, they still made our list because they are extremely survival friendly, typically costing almost no resources to build, and just a bit of time. At the end of the day, there is no “last place” on this list, because we’re not listing any farms that aren’t 100% worth your time.

Why is Silentwisperer’s design our favorite?

Spawner-based mob grinders are nearly as old as Minecraft itself. Very little has changed about them over the years, aside from water mechanics, and one other key difference. The spawning radius around spawner-blocks in Bedrock is not the same as Java’s. Rather than spawning in a proper square pattern, they spawn in a diamond shape along diagonal borders. Most designs still have you dig out the entire square, but Silent’s design takes advantage of this Bedrock exclusive to save you the most valuable resource of all, time.

How To Build It

Before you watch: You should skip the whole snowball mechanic part of this tutorial, and simply place one glass block above your spawner block, with a single block air gap in between. Silent has addressed this in a YouTube short, but has yet to make a fully updated tutorial.

Silentwisperer’s Microfarm

What is a microfarm?

Again, this term can be a little ambiguous, since some people refer to any sufficiently small Minecraft farm as a “microfarm”. Typically though, and in our case, we’ll be specifically referring to any compact redstone build that can quickly produce common crops like wheat, potatoes, and carrots using bonemeal filled dispensers.

Why 9th place?

Microfarms, as we’ve defined them here, serve a very important but niche role. Once you’ve established a steady source of bonemeal, either through a grinder, general mob farm, or composter based setup; they can provide you with a slew of useful crops and natural materials. Once you’ve gotten some more specialized/advanced farms though, their limited speed and the required user input places them firmly at number 9 on our list.

Why is Silentwhisperer’s design our favorite?

This is a bit of an older design, dating back to 2020, but in our testing it still works perfectly at the rated efficiency in a single player world. On Realms and servers, you may need to adjust the timings to account for latency though. The farm is otherwise, 100% bonemeal efficient, and flexible in it’s ability to function as a double-high flower farm.

How to Build It

Honorable Mention: JCPlayz 2021 Design

JCPlayz’s design is much more lag stable, and therefore a better fit for those on multiplayer. The design accomplishes this by using simpler redstone, forgoing the option of flower farming, and not always being 100% bonemeal efficient.

JCPlayz’s Kelp 0-tick Farm

What is a 0-tick?

This will be our last ambiguous term, I promise! 0-tick farms are a collection of borderline game breaking farms that can produce specific crops at an insane rate, with no input — like bonemeal — required. The actual mechanics are very complicated, and often farms are labeled 0-tick just because they are fast, even when they have no 0-tick mechanics. (e.g. 0-tick Gold Farm) Most true 0-tick farms have been intentionally patched out of both the Java and Bedrock versions of Minecraft, but the few that remain functioning in Bedrock are typically for kelp.

Why 8th place?

These farms are amazingly overpowered, but they only made it to 8th on our list due to a few major issues. The first is that the future of 0-ticks are very uncertain. Community opinion has always been very divided on them. To survival purists, they are abominations that have no place in real survival gameplay. To others, they are the peak of convenience, and as a server operator I have to admit, I did have a fondness for them since they produced far less lag than a traditional farm trying to achieve the same output. However Mojang has seemed to have taken an active stance against them, as seen by their efforts to patch them out of the game.

Another potential drawback that kept 0-ticks from placing higher on our list is their inherent instability. 0-ticks must always be perfectly chunk-aligned, can never be unloaded in any way while operating, and even if you do those perfectly, they can still break from the slightest bit of lag.

Why is JCPlayz’s design our favorite?

Aside from kelp 0-ticks being the only true Bedrock 0-tick farms remaining, what set Jason’s design ahead of the rest for us was the included output processing. In his video, he shows an easy and relatively compact setup for smelting your output kelp into more fuel, but you could also swap the smokers for composters to rapidly farm bonemeal, or do half and half for a hybrid approach.

How to Build It

Prowl8413’s General Mob Farm

What is a general mob farm?

Finally, a clear cut definition by the community! A general mob farm is any farm that uses a dark spawning area sufficiently far away from naturally occurring terrain to spawn mobs with little/no prejudice, and funnel them into a kill location using water mechanics, redstone, or a combination of the two. Some general mob farm designs will disable spider spawns due to their awkward size, but any farms more specialized than that won’t be considered here.

Why 7th place?

General mob farms are the very definition of a multitasker. They’re a great source of all the common mob drops, giving you access to a steady supply of bones, arrows, gunpowder, rotten flesh, and more. Sure, they’ll usually be outpaced on any one of those output items by a more specialized farm, but this farm is a solid swiss army knife to have in your back pocket. This is one of the ultimate early game builds when it comes to cost vs reward. They can be built in any biome, with any junk solid blocks you have, and the mechanics are very easy to understand and troubleshoot any issues that arise.

With all that in mind, once you start needing mass amounts of one resource, general mob farms can trail behind. They’ll certainly provide enough gunpowder to keep your elytra in the air, but say you need enough TNT to dig a perimeter? You’ll probably want a more specialized farm. The convenience to build and wide array of different drops this farm provides, coupled with it’s limited output rates and lackluster XP drops places it right at number 7 on our list.

Why is Prowl8413’s design our favorite?

Prowl’s design makes good use of the available spawning spaces in a standard simulation distance, and also takes advantage of mobs being able to spawn inside scaffold to funnel mobs with maximum efficiency. His video is thorough and provides valuable bonus info throughout.

How to Build It

1upMC’s Iron Farm

What is an iron farm?

Iron farms do just what they say on the tin; they make iron, and loads of it. Their designs have changed a lot over time as villagers have been overhauled, and mechanics have been tweaked. The general mechanic though, is that village(r)s, under sufficient conditions will attempt to spawn iron golems up to a certain cap for protection. We exploit this mechanic by quickly dispatching the golem and collecting its iron so the village can never reach it’s cap.

Why 6th place?

Iron farms have gotten much better and much worse from certain updates over the years. Some updates made villagers themselves easier/harder to work with, others directly changed spawning rates thus buffing/nerfing the output. Today’s iron farms though, have some of the best rates in the history of Bedrock/PE, and are arguably easier to build than ever. This farm only does one thing, but it does it well enough to comfortably earn it number 6 on our list.

Why is 1upMC’s design our favorite?

Of all the working iron farm designs we tested, 1up’s design was by far the most resource friendly. The tutorial video is direct and to the point, and overall makes for an easy and quick survival build.

How To Build It

Gunpowder Farm

What is a gunpowder farm?

A gunpowder farm is a highly specialized form of a general mob farm. The key difference is gunpowder farms take advantage of the unique 1.8m block-height of creepers, and disable virtually all other spawns using 0.2m block-height trapdoors. By preventing the game from rolling any other mob types on spawn, these farms can produce substantially more gunpowder than any generalized farm.

Why 5th place?

Gunpowder is an essential resource for any late-game Minecraft world. Even if you don’t use any TNT for blast mining, automated farms, or perimeter digging; gunpowder is still paramount for fueling your elytra flights. This farm is a unitasker, and only offers comparable XP rates to a similarly sized general mob farm, but the fact that it supplies such an important resource en masse is why we put it at number 5.

Why is JCPlayz’s design our favorite?

This design has great rates, is fairly survival friendly, and with the addition of bamboo blocks, the buttons and trapdoors shouldn’t be a deal breaker. In his tutorial, Jason places the build at a height which shouldn’t load in any unintended mobs regardless of simulation distance, and properly sizes his veil to account for the 1.18 lighting changes. More efficient designs are possible using scaffold and water, but any tutorials we could find, had other issues that prevented them from taking this spot.

How To Build It

Before you watch: You should replace the buttons in the holes with trapdoors. Due to an update, creepers no longer see buttons as a full block, and so will only fall when pushed by another spawn. This can impact rates significantly. Fortunately, open trap doors will still do the trick.

Honorable Mention: 1upMC’s Witch Hut Farm

Based on our testing, this witch farm won’t outpace a traditional gunpowder farm in producing, well, gunpowder… However, this design is much more resource friendly, and also produces a steady supply of health potions and other various witch drops you might find useful.

Silentwisperer’s Elite Guardian Farm

What is a guardian farm?

Guardian farms utilize naturally occurring ocean monuments to harvest guardians for their generous XP and unique prismarine drops. Unlike Java Minecraft, Bedrock ocean monuments have several fixed spawning locations for guardians, so you don’t have to drain the entire thing to build a farm! You can just focus on harvesting the guardians in their fixed locations as soon as they spawn. While this is easier said than done — guardian farms are one of the largest technical undertakings on Bedrock after all — it is helped by another Bedrock exclusive feature: underwater redstone.

Why 4th place?

Guardian farms are not only much easier to build on Bedrock than on Java, but they crank out an insane quantity of XP, all the fish you can eat, and an endless supply of otherwise rare building materials. Guardian farms are only beat out by the next three on our list because of they offer some of the best drops in the entire game, but if you’re looking for fast legitimate XP, you’ll struggle to beat a guardian farm.

Why is Silentwisperer’s design our favorite?

This fairly recently updated design features tons of multiplayer friendly options that sets it apart from the average Bedrock guardian farm. Allowing the ability to easily re-throw tridents, fully disable the farm by removing water sources when not in use, an easy way to fix dispenser desync, and the ability to easily switch between nether and overworld mode are what makes this design reign supreme.

How To Build It

Navynexus’ Gold Farm

What is a gold farm?

Gold farms utilize the “random” chance for nether portals to spawn zombie pigman, and turn that “random” chance up to 11. Sometimes incorrectly referred to as “0-tick gold farms”, the most advanced gold farms make use of the fire tick mechanic and several lava sources to rapidly ignite and extinguish max-sized portals, then funnel and harvest the resulting flood of zombie pigmen.

Important Note: This ranking is based on the assumption you have fire tick on, as is default in Minecraft. If you have fire tick turned off on your world, like we do on Evercraft, you have to make an adapted version of the farm that burns through flint and steel at an alarming rate. These adapted versions are firmly D tier compared to the real thing, and won’t even make our list.

Why 3rd place?

Gold farms just edge out guardian farms on our list because they can be built anywhere, require less resources to build, and provide comparable XP rates. Coupled with a bartering setup (see below) you can also gain access to a wide variety of nether themed resources from your extra gold reserves. You can also use your gold for beacon bases, golden apples, and powered rails. The real star of the show of course, is the XP rates. These bad boys are arguably the most convenient way to mend tools in anywhere from mid to late game survival, earning them 3rd place on our list.

Why is Navynexus’ design our favorite?

Honestly this one wasn’t even a toss up between different creators. This one was a toss up between 2 designs by the same creator, navynexus. Once you start to get into the more complex redstone farms in Bedrock edition, you’ll start to see his name come up a lot. He has a very strong understanding of the technical side of the game, and uses that to make some incredibly efficient and elegant designs.

We decided to go with his smaller design since it not only uses less materials, but achieves slightly better rates per materials used. It also still produces an insane amount of XP and gold which should be sufficient for nearly any single player world. However, if you’re playing on multiplayer, you may consider trying his 4-portal design, which is about 3 times faster.

How To Build It

Honorable Mention: JCPlayz’s Bartering Farm

This honorable mention is less of an alternative, and more of a companion to your gold farm. Gold farms are great for getting tons of XP, but eventually you’ll struggle to find a use for all your gold. Bartering farms can take that excess, and turn it into loads of more useful products like gravel, string, fire resist potions, nether quartz, leather, and more.

ItsMeJames’ Trading Hall

What is a trading hall?

A villager trading hall is a pretty straight forward concept. You take a few villagers, and put them in a fixed location for trading. Easy peasy. In practice they can be a bit more complicated though. You’ll want a way to keep your villagers safe from mobs, make sure they cannot unlink from their workstations, and ideally a way to get cheaper trades over time.

Any trading setup is better that no trading setup, but it’s the extra features that sets high end trading halls apart. Being able to easily fill your trading hall, get 1 emerald trades, and swap out and dispose of villagers without making enemies of the whole village, are usually top priority.

Why 2nd place?

A properly built up trading hall featuring zombie re-curing is simply one of the most overpowered mechanics in survival Minecraft. So overpowered in fact, it kind of calls in question the debate from earlier about 0-ticks being too strong, in my honest opinion. You can input nearly any random farmable materials you can think of, and output enchanted diamond gear, golden carrots, tipped arrows, and sooo much more. It was a very tough decision whether trading halls should be at #1 or #2, and honestly they’re both so good, if you build one you should probably build the other too!

Why is ItsMeJames’ design our favorite?

James’ design takes advantage of what was originally considered a bug by most of the community. However this behavior has since been confirmed as likely intentional by community moderators, and has not been patched for over 2 years now. This powerful bug/feature allows you to get 1 emerald trades without going through the effort of curing villagers over and over. Keep in mind though, despite most of the community considering it a feature at this point, it still has an ADO on Jira, rather than being marked WAI. Meaning it could be patched out in any update, so best to stock up on any supplies you’ll need ahead of time!

How To Build It

JCPlayz’s Raid Farm

What is a raid farm?

Raid farms are built around pillager outposts to take advantage of the bad omen effect. While they are a little bit complicated, most consist of 3 mains parts… A lower trident killer(s) to kill pillager captains in their fixed spawn location(s), providing the bad omen effect. An upper spawning platform(s) with a protected “village” to trigger raids from bad omen and funnel the resulting mobs. Finally, an upper trident killer to collect, kill, and sort the loot from resulting mobs.

Raid farms provide a number of valuable drops like enchanted books and emeralds, but none more valuable than Totems of Undying. One of the most sought after items in the game, and before raid farms, incredibly rare. Previously only attainable from clearing out woodland mansions, which themselves are already very rare on most seeds. Compounding their rarity even further, woodland mansion mobs do not respawn.

Why 1st place?

I mean do we really have to explain this one? Sure raid farm designs seem to break at least slightly with every other update, but I mean c’mon… A farm that primarily produces immortality itself, with heaps of emeralds and enchanted books as a byproduct? I think that’s a farm well worth repairing every 6 months or so, and easily earns itself a top spot on our list.

Why is JCPlayz’s design our favorite?

A very recent updated to Minecraft, 1.19.40, changed ravager behavior to fix an existing bug. This fix broke a lot of exisitng raid farm designs, and this tutorial is one of the first to feature an up to date design with easy to follow instructions and a full materials list. Stacking raid farm designs exist that can produce much higher rates, but those designs will require you to watch separate “fix” videos since their authors have not yet made updated full length tutorials.

How To Build It