Minecraft Tricky Trials update just got even better for redstone fans

Minecraft's Tricky Trials update was already making significant moves for redstone-savvy players with the introduction of the crafter block. However, it appears the upcoming update has a few more upsides in store for these players. Specifically, Tricky Trials' recently released experimental Java snapshot 24w20a has made redstone farming much easier to accomplish.

Minecraft snapshot 24w20a makes more than a few fixes and adjustments. One, in particular, will make farming witch mobs an even more viable way to collect redstone. Players who can create productive enough farms may not need to worry about mining for redstone dust or looting it from various generated structures.

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Minecraft's Tricky Trials update will make witch farms great for redstone

Witch farms should be great for redstone dust gains in Minecraft 1.21 (Image via Mojang)

As a developmental release in the lead-up to Minecraft's Tricky Trials, the 24w20a snapshot made some changes that should be reflected in the update barring additional tweaks from Mojang. In this snapshot, the amount of redstone dust dropped by witches has been increased to four-eight dust per kill. Mojang directly said it wanted to improve witch farms for redstone dust farming.

"Witches now always drop 4-8 redstone dust on death. This is to improve the viability of farms that utilize Witch Huts to obtain Redstone Dust." - Java Team, Minecraft.net, May 15, 2024

There are certainly other ways to obtain redstone dust in Minecraft. However, this is fantastic news for players who need plenty of dust for their redstone contraptions. Although witch farms take some time and resources to set up, fans can make many of them since they can find witch huts multiple times in the Overworld's swamp biomes.

Moreover, killing witches with a weapon using the Looting enchantment should increase the redstone drops from the mobs even further. Witch farms could rack up a little redstone dust before in addition to resources like gunpowder, sticks, potion bottles, sugar, and glowstone dust. However, they can now be considered a much more productive and reliable source of redstone in the long term.

Paired with Tricky Trials' addition of the crafter block that allows for automated crafting without any mods involved, and redstone machinery should prove to be much more interesting after the 1.21 update's release date. With just a single productive witch farm in a swamp near them, players should also have all the necessary redstone dust they need for plenty of redstone machinery.

Massive-scale redstone projects in Survival Mode may require a few more farms. However, the fact that players should be able to reliably farm witches for redstone dust in the future means they won't have to rely as much on the more typical practices of mining redstone ore underground.