5 best ways to get XP in Minecraft 1.19 update, ranked

Minecraft is a survival game at heart. This means that players will need to constantly gather resources and fight off hostile threats found throughout Minecraft’s environment, such as creepers and skeletons. Enchantments improve players at both of these tasks, with Fortune making resource gathering easier and Protection making players more damage resistant.

However, enchanting requires the player to spend their experience levels. This means that access to some of Minecraft's most powerful magic is locked behind EXP, making consistent access to large amounts of EXP vital to effective long-term survival.

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Top 5 EXP grinding methods in Minecraft 1.19

5) Strip Mining

Strip mining is the easiest, lowest effort way to gain experience in Minecraft. Players simply need to find out which Y level they want to mine on to have the best chance of finding particular ores, such as Y = -56 for diamonds, and simply dig in straight lines, mining whatever they stumble across.

While this is not the most efficient method to gain experience, it does have the advantage of gaining players abundant resources that can be used in other areas while also getting the player levels.

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4) Farming the Ender Dragon

The Ender Dragon is one of Minecraft’s most famous mobs. It marks the end of the game for speed runs and marks the player’s entering of the late-game, being able to explore the far end islands and gain access to elytra.

The Ender Dragon is also the single mob that drops the most experience. This is especially true for the first time that the dragon is defeated. The first time the dragon is defeated, it drops 12 thousand experience points, which is more than enough to take players from level 0 to level 68.

The dragon drops less experience after being defeated again, with each subsequent dragon dropping 500 experience points on death. While this pales in comparison to the original number, this is still more than any other single mob in Minecraft, making this a great choice for players wanting to get experience in a more involved, less AFK method.

However, due to the significant time and resource investment involved in crafting the item to summon the dragon again and then defeating it repeatedly, this method is, in the long term, much less useful than some of the other methods available to players.

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3) Dungeon mob farms

While exploring the deepest caves of the world or while strip mining for resources, there is a chance that players will stumble across a dungeon. These are some of the oldest structures that still remain in Minecraft.

They are simple boxes of cobblestone and mossy cobblestone, with one or two chests and a mob spawner in the middle that will constantly spawn either spiders, zombies, or skeletons while the player is near.

The spawning mechanics of these structures can be combined with flowing water to create farms that drop the mobs from great heights, leaving them with half a heart and in a place where players can kill many of them with a single strike. This allows for quite quick EXP gathering and mass amounts of resources depending on the type of spawner the dungeon holds.

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2) Traditional tower mob farms

These traditional mob tower farms are also more versatile, with a slightly more involved build than dungeon drop farms. While dungeon farms only have specific mobs and, therefore, specific drops, general mob farms will spawn any of the hostile mobs found throughout the game’s nighttime environment.

This means players will consistently access gunpower, bones, arrows, and even the occasional iron ingot. While the rate of EXP gain should be roughly equivalent to dungeon drop farms, the extra potential for useful resources bumps this farm above its spawner equivalent.

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1) Enderman farm

Once the Ender Dragon has been defeated, the end islands become incredibly safe, so long as players avoid angering mass amounts of endermen. Due to the large amount of experience that endermen drop, and the insane number of them that can spawn in the end, it makes sense for players to make an experience farm in the end dimension.

By building the farm around 120 blocks into the void, players can force endermen to only spawn on the farm, and by taking advantage of endermen’s hatred for endermites to cause them to take a roughly 40 block fall, which will leave them with half a heart remaining.

Clever use of water and two-block-tall areas will keep them from teleporting away, meaning players will be able to wait for dozens of endermen to build up.

These farms are much faster than other kinds of experience farms, though they have the downside of no useful resources being dropped, as endermen only drop ender pearls.

Note: This article reflects the author's opinions.