7 best Minecraft 1.21 XP farms

Experience is a deceptively important resource for survival in Minecraft. These innocuous green orbs are collected by players and stored in the form of levels displayed above the hotbar. These levels are crucial as they are needed to apply enchantments on gear, with many of these effects offering powerful buffs in the base game.

There are various types of XP farms available to players, with seven of the best designs detailed below, along with what makes them so useful.

Note: The entries are arranged in no particular order.

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7 of the best XP farms for Minecraft 1.21

1) Zombified piglin farms

Zombified piglins collecting in a farm (Image via Mojang)

Zombified piglin farms utilize the fact that all zombified piglins in an area will become angry at players that damage one of them. This funnels the Minecraft mobs into a kill chamber, where they provide players with a truly staggering amount of XP orbs. Rates are kept extremely high in these farms, at least on Java, by being built on the roof of the Nether, where mobs can only spawn in the farm.

Additionally, the golden items and gear dropped by these plentiful mobs are perfect for fueling a bartering farm, which greatly expands the types of materials that players can get in abundance.

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2) Reinforcement farm

Reinforcement farms are an interesting type of Minecraft farm. They take advantage of the fact that some zombies spawn as leaders, which can summon reinforcements. This keeps rates in these farms incredibly high, as the extra zombies are converted into drowned, causing them to no longer register as summoned reinforcements. This allows the leader to summon more.

Being able to farm drowned at such a high rate is great for XP, but it also gives players a nearly endless supply of copper ingots, which is perfect for using any of Minecraft 1.21's new copper blocks in builds.

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3) Smelter farms

Super smelters are surprisingly useful as XP farms (Image via Mojang)

Smelter farms rely on the fact that processing items in a furnace grants XP. This means super smelters can be fed easily farmable resources, like kelp, cactus, and potatoes, and will slowly accumulate XP that players can collect later on.

Of the potential resources to use, kelp is the best. This is because nine dried kelp can be turned into a block of dried kelp, which is then able to dry 20 new pieces of kelp, essentially creating infinite Minecraft fuel. In addition, dried kelp can be consumed as food, giving this XP farm a third use for survival players.

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4) Enderman farms

A player using an enderman farm (Image via Mojang)

Enderman XP farms are an ideal structure to build right after defeating Minecraft's ender dragon. They take advantage of the fact that the end will only ever spawn endermen naturally. This means a farm built far enough over the void will spawn a huge number of these mobs very quickly.

A cleverly placed endermite will force endermen into a tall hole, where they'll drop into a collection area with half a heart remaining. Players can then eliminate groups of them all at once for huge amounts of XP. The only downside to these farms is having to travel to the end to access them.

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5) Monster room farms

An enchanting setup built next to a spawner farm's output (Image via Mojang)

Monster rooms, the single oldest structure in Minecraft, are incredibly useful for early-game XP farms. These farms are relatively cheap, often only using a few hoppers and soul sand to form bubble columns, but they can carry players to late-game enchantments.

They also provide ample useful resources. For example, skeleton XP farms will provide unlimited arrows and bones for bonemeal. Zombie farms will give players infinite rotten flesh for Minecraft villager trading, and finally, spider spawners will yield a limitless supply of string and spider eyes.

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6) Generic mob farms

A general mob farm built over a mangrove swamp (Image via Mojang)

Minecraft's classic mob farm design is one of the best early-game farms available to survival players. They cost essentially nothing, as their most expensive components are four hoppers and a stack of trapdoors. But this low cost gives a huge return, providing both plentiful experience orbs and useful resources like string, gunpowder, bones, and arrows.

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7) Villager trading halls

The inside of a small villager trading hall (Image via Mojang)

Villager trading gives a surprisingly decent amount of XP, so setting up an automatic melon and pumpkin farm to fuel trading can provide plenty of levels for enchanting gear and repairing items with mending.

Additionally, this will provide ample emeralds for trading for other useful gear, such as enchanted books and diamond gear, explorer maps, item frames, redstone, ender pearls, arrows, and name tags. This is an incredible secondary use that makes villager trading halls an even more compelling type of XP farm.