3 Minecraft farms that are easy to build (and 3 that are not)

From growing crops to defeating mobs and collecting their items and experience, farming comes in many forms in Minecraft. However, some forms are more efficient and complex than others.

Designing and building a farm comes down to the player. The more complex creations will require more time and resources to construct. However, a simpler design is sometimes warranted, especially early on in a player's adventures in a given Minecraft world.

Once players are more established and have a steady stream of blocks and materials, they can begin to put together improved farming designs for crops, items, and mobs.

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3 simple farm designs in Minecraft

1) Planter Box Farm

A planter box farm generated in villages (Image via Mojang)

This is one of the easiest designs a Minecraft player can make. Planter box designs are so easy that they're even generated in villages and can be managed by farmer villagers.

Planter boxes consist of little more than a few rows of farmland and interspersed rows of water. They can grow most basic crops such as wheat, potatoes, sugar cane, beetroot, and carrots. They can even be configured to grow things like melons and pumpkins.

As a nice finishing touch, players can take a page from a farmer villager's book and add composter blocks to create bone meal for crop growth.

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2) Automatic Iron Farm

A tower-based iron farm (Image via Mojang)

Though it can seem inhumane to some players, it's possible to create an automatic iron farm by killing iron golems and collecting the iron ingots they drop.

These farms come in a wide range of designs. Some operate similarly to a hostile mob drop tower, while others use open-ended designs that utilize more running water and can hold and kill more golems at once.

It comes down to how much time and resources players want to commit to. Either way, an iron farm is an incredibly helpful construct due to the importance of iron in Minecraft.

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3) Hostile Mob Drop Tower

Mob drop towers have remained relatively consistent in design for years (Image via Mojang)

Drop towers are one of the oldest and most popular farms in Minecraft. They can be used to kill standard hostile mobs and deposit their items into nearby receptacles.

Since Minecraft 1.18 revamped the way that hostile mobs spawn, drop towers have had to follow suit. The new designs feature multi-layered tower floors that are occasionally flooded with water. This causes the mobs to fall into a pool before being funneled to the center of the drop tower. They then fall below and take damage.

Blocks such as campfires or magma blocks can then finish off the mobs before their items and experience are dispersed.

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3 complex farm designs in Minecraft

1) Automatic Terrace Farm

A massive automatic wheat farm with a terrace-based design (Image via Mojang)

Automating a farm of any type often requires Minecraft players to have some knowledge of redstone machinery.

The automatic terrace farm is one of the most impressive farm builds in the game. It allows players to plant standard crops on multiple "steps" of the terrace and add multiple layers of stories to the farm's design.

Automation is carried out by mechanics such as timed water dispersal, which will flood the farmland when crops have fully grown, funneling them into hoppers for collection. However, other machinery exists to automate the process. It really just comes down to player preference.

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2) Wither Skeleton Farms

Wither skeletons themselves are dangerous, as is the Nether dimension that they inhabit (Image via Mojang)

Farming hostile mobs is a time-honed practice in Minecraft. However, not all hostile mobs are easy to farm. Wither skeletons are one such example, appearing only within the inhospitable Nether and capable of dealing Wither damage over time. This can kill players quite quickly without a neutralizing item like milk available.

Regardless, players have managed to create compact and towering Wither skeleton farms. These farms can yield a good amount of experience as well as Wither skeleton skulls, which are rare decorative Minecraft blocks.

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3) Automatic Boring Machine

A decorated auto boring machine created by Youtuber Mumbo Jumbo (Image via Mojang)

Mining in Minecraft can become tedious quite quickly. Most players just want their ores collected so they can craft what they need. This is where automatic mining/boring machines come into the picture.

These machines can bore down into the underground layers of a world and detonate large amounts of TNT to immediately "mine" the blocks below, including ore blocks. Players can then collect the raw ore and other materials as needed.

The toughest part of building automatic boring machines, past the complex redstone machinery needed, is the fact that they use TNT. If one block is misplaced, it's entirely possible for the machine to blow itself to pieces by activating the TNT in the wrong location.