10 best Minecraft AFK farms

Farms are some of the most important things to build in any Minecraft world, and the best kinds of resource and item farms are those that run entirely AFK or "away from keyboard". This is used to refer to farms that continue producing resources even without direct player involvement. This allows for resources to be gathered idly, most frequently overnight while the player sleeps.

Detailed below are 10 amazing AFK farms that would make any industrial district significantly better, along with what makes them so handy.

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10 of Minecraft's best AFK farms

1) Iron farms

A suspended iron farm (Image via Mojang)

Iron farms are amazingly useful farms to build since iron is a useful material needed in the construction of mid-game tools, armor, and hoppers, the backbone of many advanced farms and storage systems. There are many different designs for Minecraft iron farms, meaning players can build a farm suitable for almost any stage of the game.

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2) Fish farms

Fish farms are ingenious, small AFK farms that can act as amazing early-game XP and food farms. More advanced designs can also be constructed to still catch fishing treasure while being completely AFK. This can get amazing fishing loot, such as enchanted books and even enchanted fishing rods, including Minecraft god rods, for particularly lucky players.

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3) Generic mob farms

A suspended generic mob farm (Image via Mojang)

Minecraft's generic mob farms feature one of the oldest farm designs still widely used by the community. These farms are amazing since they're made of very simple materials and provide ample useful resources. The best of these resources include bones, arrows, string, and gunpowder.

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4) Gold farms

A gold farm that utilizes igniting Nether portals (Image via Mojang)

Gold farms are amazing nether farms that take advantage of the Minecraft anger mode that zombified piglins will be in when damaged by a player. This will cause all nearby zombified piglins, including newly spawned ones, to rush at the player before falling into a kill/collection chamber. This gold is useful for fueling a bartering farm, another very handy Nether farm to make.

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5) Chicken cookers

Chicken cookers are also quite compact (Image via Madzify/YouTube)

Chicken cookers are automatic chicken farms that convert eggs into baby chickens that are then automatically killed and cooked. These amazing AFK food farms are especially handy, as they can be set up very early on in a world. They can often be set up just after building a Minecraft starter base, essentially solving the food issue for the rest of the playthrough.

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6) Lava farms

Lava is a surprisingly useful resource. It can run Minecraft super smelters more efficiently than any other fuel, as it can smelt 100 items for a single bucket of lava. For comparison, a single piece of coal will only smelt a total of eight items. AFK lava farms can be set up to constantly refresh a large chain of cauldrons, allowing players access to as much lava as they need.

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7) Witch farms

Witch farms are amazing Minecraft loot farms that can operate while AFK. These farms give players access to a plethora of useful items, such as glowstone dust, sugar, redstone dust, spider eyes, glass bottles, and gunpowder.

Essentially, witch farms give plentiful access to the items and resources necessary to make and enhance many different Minecraft potions.

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8) Slime farms

A newer surface swamp slime farm (Image via Eyecraftmc/YouTube)

Slime is a very useful item for technical players. It's required to make sticky pistons, needed for any sort of Minecraft piston door as well as slime blocks, which can stick builds together. This makes getting an abundance of it via an AFK slime farm a great idea for those wanting to dabble in the mechanical.

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9) Kelp farms

A large-scale kelp farm (Image via Triloms/YouTube)

AFT kelp farms take advantage of kelp's ability to grow very quickly to automatically harvest huge amounts of it. Kelp is a surprisingly useful item, as when dried, it's both a food source and a potential furnace fuel. This means that AFK kelp farms can solve two major issues for long-term survival.

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10) Sugar cane farms

A basic observer-based sugar cane farm (Image via JWhisp/YouTube)

Sugar cane farms are an amazing farm to set up for AFKing for one main reason: Firework rockets. These craftable explosives need paper and gunpowder, making sugar cane a vital ingredient for flying around the game's prettiest biomes with an elytra.