How to farm flint in Minecraft

Flint is an often overlooked and underappreciated item in Minecraft survival. It's used in several incredibly important crafting recipes, such as arrows, flint and steel, and the fletching table, which is considered one of the best villager trading stations. Needless to say, knowing how to quickly and efficiently collect large amounts of flint can come in very handy during a survival playthrough.

That said, everything you need to know about maximizing the collection of flint in Minecraft can be found in detail below.

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How to farm for flint in Minecraft

1) Build a shovel

The crafting recipe for a shovel (Image via Mojang)

The first thing you'll need to do when farming for flint is build a shovel. These tools don't tend to last very long, as they're able to break blocks rapidly. This means that you should either make a few iron shovels or spend a diamond to make a high-durability diamond shovel.

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2) Enchant it with Fortune

Use an anvil to combine tools with enchanted books (Image via Mojang)

Now that you have a shovel, you'll want to enchant it. While there are several amazing enchantments that can be added here, you'll at least want to make sure that you get Fortune III on your shovel. At Fortune III, gravel is guaranteed to drop flint, making it perfect for collecting huge amounts of the Minecraft item.

This can technically be considered an optional step since gravel does have a 10% base chance to drop flint rather than a gravel block when broken. However, this is quite a low percentage and can result in you needing to place and re-break the same block over and over again just to get a single piece of flint. The Fortune enchantment drastically reduces this grind.

Other useful Minecraft enchantments that can stack with Fortune would be Efficiency and Unbreaking. Efficiency will cause your shovel to break the gravel faster, reducing farming times even more, while Unbreaking will allow this enchanted shovel to last much longer.

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3) Find gravel

Riversides can provide huge amounts of gravel (Image via Mojang)

Once you've obtained your fully enchanted shovel, it's time to find some gravel. If you're playing an older survival world, you might already have some inside your Minecraft storage system. However, if you still need to locate gravel, there are a few places to look.

This material is most common at Y level 47, with roughly 4459 out of every one hundred thousand blocks being gravel. It also spawns in large amounts in rivers, oceans, and different hill and mountain biomes.

Additionally, piglins can give players eight to 16 gravel in exchange for a gold ingot. This means that a Nether-based Minecraft gold farm can essentially be considered a gravel farm, given enough time and trading.

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4) Farm some flint

Make sure to use the Fortune-enchanted shovel (Image via Mojang)

Now that you've found some gravel, all you need to do is mine it with your shovel. Assuming you didn't skip the enchanting step, you should get a huge amount of flint quite easily. If you decide to skip enchanting, the process will take longer, but you'll still be able to convert every piece of gravel into flint eventually.