Let's be honest. Standing in a dark room for twenty minutes just to get three levels of experience is soul-crushing. You’ve probably seen those massive obsidian towers or floating cobblestone platforms and wondered if you actually need a PhD in redstone to get decent enchantments. You don't. But most people mess up the basics because they follow outdated 2014 tutorials that don't account for how Mojang changed mob spawning in the latest updates.
If you want to know how to make an xp farm in minecraft that actually pumps out levels while you're grabbing a snack, you have to understand the "mob cap." Basically, the game only allows a certain number of monsters to exist around you at once. If your caves aren't lit up, your farm is basically a paperweight.
The Classic Mob Drop: Why it Still Rules
The vertical drop farm is the "Old Reliable" of the Minecraft world. It’s cheap. It’s effective. It’s mostly just a giant box in the sky.
Here is the secret: build it over an ocean. Why? Because the game tries to spawn mobs in every dark nook and cranny within a 128-block radius of your character. If you build over land, the game is wasting "spawn attempts" on hidden caves deep underground that you haven't even found yet. By building over a deep ocean, the only valid place for a Creeper or Skeleton to spawn is inside your trap.
You’re going to need about 25 stacks of solid blocks—cobblestone is fine, but deepslate looks cooler if you have the patience. Build a platform at least 128 blocks above the sea level. This puts the "spawn floor" high enough that the caves below are totally out of range.
Inside the box, you’ll create four 2x8 channels. These lead to a central 2x2 hole. Put water at the ends of the channels so it flows exactly to the edge of the hole but doesn't spill down. Mobs wander in, get pushed by the water, and fall. If you drop them 22 blocks, they’ll survive with half a heart of health. One punch, and they’re gone. You get the XP.
The Trapdoor Trick Everyone Forgets
The AI in Minecraft isn't exactly brilliant, but it’s not suicidal. A mob won't just walk off a ledge into a hole. They see a hole as a solid drop and stay away.
But if you place trapdoors on the edges of your water channels and leave them open, the mob's pathfinding thinks that's a solid block. They walk right over the edge. It's a simple fix that increases your farm’s efficiency by about 400 percent. Seriously. If your farm is slow, check your trapdoors first.
Mob Spawners: Turning a Dungeon into a Goldmine
Sometimes you get lucky. You're digging for diamonds and stumble onto a mossy cobblestone room with a spinning miniature zombie inside. Most players just loot the chests and break the spawner.
Don't do that.
A natural spawner is a localized XP engine that never stops. To turn this into a farm, you need to clear out a 9x9 room with the spawner exactly in the center. You need four blocks of air above the spawner and at least three blocks below it.
Water is your best friend here. Cover the entire floor with flowing water that pushes everything toward one wall. Then, use a "water elevator" made of soul sand and kelp to lift the mobs up 23 blocks. Why lift them? So you can drop them back down right next to the spawner room. This lets you stand in one spot, stay within the 16-block activation range of the spawner, and kill the mobs at your leisure.
Why Spiders Are the Worst
If you find a Cave Spider spawner in a mineshaft, you might be tempted to use it. Honestly? It's usually not worth the headache. Cave spiders are tiny, they climb walls, and they can squeeze through half-block gaps. Unless you’re an expert with iron bars and precise water flows, you’re just going to end up poisoned and frustrated. Stick to Zombies or Skeletons for your first few builds.
Enderman Farms: The Late-Game Speed Demon
Once you've beaten the Ender Dragon, the rules change. You aren't just looking for how to make an xp farm in minecraft anymore; you’re looking for the fastest way to get to Level 30 in under a minute.
Endermen have a massive XP drop compared to your average zombie. Because the End is a void, you don't have to worry about lighting up caves. You just need to build a long bridge away from the main island—about 128 blocks out—so the game is forced to spawn Endermen only on your small platform.
The "Endermite" trick is what makes this work. Endermen hate Endermites. If you spawn one using an Ender Pearl and put it in a minecart over a pit, every Enderman on the platform will sprint toward it like a heat-seeking missile. They fall into a hole, you hit their feet, and the XP orbs will literally lag your game because there are so many of them.
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Technical Nuance: The 2026 Update Context
With the recent shifts in how mob persistence works, you have to be careful about your "AFK" (Away From Keyboard) spot. In the current version of the game, mobs that are more than 32 blocks away from you have a random chance to despawn over time. If they are more than 128 blocks away, they despawn instantly.
This means your killing chamber needs to be close enough to your spawning floors that the mobs don't disappear while they’re falling, but far enough away that they don't block new spawns. It’s a delicate balance.
Actionable Steps for Your First Build
- Scout an Ocean: Stop building farms near your base. The lag is annoying and the rates are terrible. Go at least 500 blocks away into a deep cold ocean or warm ocean biome.
- Gather Your Scaffolding: You'll need more ladders and dirt than you think. Building in the sky is dangerous.
- Use Half-Slabs: To prevent mobs from spawning on top of your farm (where you can't kill them), cover the roof with bottom-half slabs. Mobs cannot spawn on slabs.
- Check the Light Level: As of the 1.18 "Caves & Cliffs" update, hostile mobs only spawn in a light level of 0. Even a single misplaced torch inside your farm will shut the whole thing down.
- The Sweeping Edge Enchantment: If you're on Java Edition, get a sword with Sweeping Edge III. It allows you to hit dozens of mobs at once, which is the only way to handle the volume of an Enderman farm.
Building a functional XP farm is less about "glitching" the game and more about understanding the ecosystem. You're creating an environment where the game has no choice but to give you what you want. Start with the sky-box over the ocean. It’s the most forgiving build for a beginner and will provide all the gunpowder and bones you’ll ever need for a long-term survival world.