What is a zero tick farm in Minecraft?

Minecraft players always make an effort to gather as many materials as they can as quickly as possible. The best way to do this is to make a farm. Farms can come in all shapes and sizes and can be used to get many different materials quickly. Some of these are manual farms where players will harvest their own crops, and others are automatic redstone farms.

With automatic farms, players are able to harvest their materials much faster than the traditional method. However, there are certain ways that players can make farms even faster. One of these methods is by using a zero tick farm in Minecraft. This is a way of using redstone ticks to trick the game into making certain plants grow faster than normal and can lead to very fast farming.

---

What does a zero tick farm do in Minecraft?

Redstone works by using ticks. Ticks in video games such as Minecraft are time periods when the game runs one full cycle or loop. In Minecraft, this happens 20 times in 1 second on average. Redstone functions off of ticks that determine how long it takes to react to the redstone power. If players lower the ticks to a very low amount, such as 0, strange behaviors can happen in the game.

This is because the action is happening faster than the game produces the ticks. On average, a tick happens every 0.05 seconds. Zero tick speed is faster than that and can make certain plants grow faster. This is because plant growth is based on tick speed. A good example of this is sugarcane, which will grow higher when the tick rate is faster on the client's Minecraft copy.

---

What happens when a plant encounters zero tick speed?

In a 0 tick farm, players will be using a piston to quickly (instantly) replace plants that are harvested with zero tick speed. This effectively makes the plant that is replaced receive one random tick when it is replaced. Because of this, players can use the piston to quickly harvest the plant, which will grow back almost instantly. This is due to a bug in the programming, which can be patched out at any time.

---

A zero tick speed farm can be patched out at any time

Players who utilize a zero-tick speed farm should know that the behavior of the farm is not intended. The game essentially bugs out since the actions are occurring faster than the actual tick rate of the game. This is what makes the plants grow so fast. It was previously officially patched out in Java 1.16, in snapshot 20w12a. Players should use this method at their own risk.