Minecraft 1.21.5 Farming & Automation Overview: In Minecraft Java 1.21.5, many items are renewable through farms. “Fully automated” (AFK) farms require no player input after building, whereas “Semi-automated” farms need some player interaction (like replanting or manual killing). Below is a comprehensive list of farmable items, organized by category, with their automation level, difficulty, cost, and common techniques.
Crops & Plant Items
These are agricultural items (food or plant materials) grown on farmland or other surfaces.
| Item | Automation | Difficulty | Cost | Common Techniques |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wheat (Seeds) | Semi (player replant or villager to craft Bread) | Moderate | Low | Water flush harvests or farmer-villager crop farm. Villagers can harvest/replant fully-auto for bread. |
| Carrots | Fully (AFK) | Easy | Low | Villager-powered crop farm (villagers harvest & replant) or dispenser+bone meal micro-farm. |
| Potatoes | Fully | Easy | Low | Same as carrots – villager crop farm or bone-meal auto farm. Outputs can be cooked via furnace if desired. |
| Beetroots | Fully | Easy | Low | Villager farm (farmer villagers harvest & throw crops) or water-harvest design. Seeds collected for replanting or compost. |
| Sugar Cane | Fully | Easy | Low | Observer+piston harvester or flying machine sweeper when cane grows. Collected by hopper minecarts; very scalable but large farms are resource-intensive. |
| Bamboo | Fully | Easy | Low | Pistons or flying machine periodically break tall bamboo. Hoppers collect drops. Grows fast; often used for fuel. |
| Cactus | Fully | Easy | Low | Block trigger: Fences or glass panes next to cactus cause automatic break on growth. Uses water streams or hopper minecarts to collect. |
| Pumpkins | Fully | Easy | Low | Observer+ piston auto-harvest (stem growth update triggers piston). Items funnel into hoppers. Very cheap fully-auto farm. |
| Melons (Slices) | Fully | Easy | Low | Similar to pumpkin: piston pushes melon when it appears. Slices collected in hoppers (crafting to melon blocks via Crafter if needed). |
| Cocoa Beans | Semi | Easy | Low | Grown on jungle logs. Farm by piston breaking or water flushing pods, then manual replanting. (No auto-replant in vanilla.) |
| Kelp (Dried Kelp) | Fully | Easy | Low | Underwater farm: Kelp grows and is cut by pistons at a certain height. Items float into collection (water streams) and can be auto-smelted into dried kelp blocks for fuel. |
| Sweet Berries | Fully | Moderate | Low | Fox-harvester: Foxes can automatically pick berries and drop them into hoppers. Alternatively, pistons breaking mature bushes (semi-automatic, requires replant). |
| Glow Berries | Fully | Easy | Low | Cave vine farm: Dispensers with bone meal force vines to produce berries, which are then broken (shears or pistons) and collected by hoppers. Fully AFK with sufficient bone meal. |
| Nether Wart | Semi | Easy | Low | Grown on soul sand. Typically water flushing harvests wart, but manual replant is needed (no villager automation). Can be semi-automated with button-activated water streams. |
| Chorus Fruit (Chorus Flower) | Semi | Hard | Low | Grown in End on end stone. Semi-auto: flying machines or TNT dupers can break tall chorus plants, but planting chorus flowers usually requires player placement. Fully automatic chorus farms are complex (often using TNT to break plants and collect flowers). |
| Wildflowers (new 1.21) | Fully | Easy | Low | Wildflower patches can be bone-mealed to spawn more wildflowers. Use dispensers with bone meal and water streams/pistons to harvest the flowers for dye. |
| Firefly Bush (new 1.21) | Fully | Easy | Low | Bone meal on a Firefly Bush causes it to spread a new bush to adjacent block. Design: use dispenser with bone meal to propagate, then piston or water to break and collect bushes. (Emits light; decorative) |
| Mushrooms (Brown/Red) | Semi (fully possible with TNT) | Moderate | Low | Giant mushroom farming: bonemeal a mushroom to grow a huge mushroom, then manual or TNT breaking for mushrooms. Fully-automatic designs use TNT dupers to explode mushroom blocks, or pistons to push and break them, but setups are complex. |
Wood & Tree Products
Logs and related items from tree farming (both overworld trees and nether fungi).
| Item | Automation | Difficulty | Cost | Common Techniques |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Logs (All wood types incl. nether stems) | Semi (player input to plant) | Hard (for full AFK) | High | Tree farms: Often use TNT duplicators to blast logs for collection once grown. Player usually must place saplings (no automatic planter in vanilla), so fully-AFK requires a player or bot to refill saplings. With TNT, 100% drops from blown logs. Advanced piston pushers funnel logs to a blast chamber. |
| Saplings (All types) | Fully | Easy | Low | Byproduct of tree farms. When leaves decay or are exploded, saplings drop and are collected via hoppers. Simple leaf-decay farm with hopper minecarts under trees can gather saplings automatically. |
| Apples | Fully | Moderate | Low | Drops from decaying oak/dark oak leaves. Automatic oak tree farms (with TNT or leaf breakers) can collect apples along with logs and saplings. Rates are lower, but fully AFK when combined with TNT-based tree farm. |
| Nether Wart Blocks (Warped/Crimson) | Fully | Moderate | Medium | Huge fungus farm: Bonemeal on nylium grows Warped or Crimson giant fungi. TNT blast or piston machines break the wart block clusters and stems. Collect blocks via hoppers. (Often done to farm huge fungus stems; wart blocks are a bulk byproduct.) |
Flowers & Miscellaneous Flora
Various flowers (for dyes) and other renewable plantables.
| Item | Automation | Difficulty | Cost | Common Techniques |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1-block Flowers (Dandelion, Poppy, etc.) | Fully | Easy | Low | Flower farm: use dispensers with bone meal on grass in specific biomes to spawn flowers. Pistons or water then break them. Collection via hoppers. Yields all small flowers native to that biome. |
| Tall Flowers (Sunflower, Lilac, Rose Bush, Peony) | Fully | Easy | Low | 2-block tall flowers can be bonemealed directly to drop copies. An auto farm uses a dispenser with bone meal facing the flower to infinitely generate more. Hoppers collect the dropped flowers. |
| Wither Rose | Fully | Hard | High | Wither boss farm: Trap a wither in bedrock and feed it mobs (e.g. Endermen or farm animals). Every mob the wither kills drops a wither rose. Common setup is in the End: spawn Endermen around a caged wither to kill them, roses collected by hopper minecarts. Fully automatic once built, but very difficult (requires wither containment). |
| Sea Pickles | Fully | Moderate | Low | Grown on coral blocks underwater. A dispenser with bone meal on a coral block multiplies sea pickles (they spread in clusters) which can then be broken by pistons or collected by dispensers (in Bedrock). In Java, typically use piston/water to break pickles and hopper minecarts to gather. Provides lime dye when smelted. |
| Cactus Flower (new 1.21) | Fully | Moderate | Low | Grows on cacti in deserts (chance instead of height growth). An auto-cactus farm in a desert biome will occasionally yield cactus flowers when cacti attempt to grow. When the cactus auto-breaks, the flower drops as an item, collected via hoppers. (Used for pink dye.) |
| Short & Tall Dry Grass (new 1.21) | Fully | Easy | Low | Desert dry grass can spread with bone meal. Use dispensers to bone meal tall dry grass, causing new grass to grow adjacent. Pistons or water can then break and collect them (used for decoration or compost). |
Passive Mob Products
Drops from passive mobs (animals) that can be farmed. Many can be automated via breeding or mob mechanics.
| Item | Automation | Difficulty | Cost | Common Techniques |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wool (all colors) | Fully | Easy | Low | Automatic wool farm: Sheep in cells with an observer detecting wool regrowth. Dispenser shears the sheep when its wool grows. Wool is collected by hopper minecarts. Dye sheep beforehand for any color wool. Very simple and AFK. |
| Eggs | Fully | Easy | Low | Chicken coop: Enclose chickens on a hopper; they lay eggs that hopper collects. No player input needed. (Common to buffer eggs for chicken farms.) |
| Cooked Chicken & Feathers | Fully | Easy | Low | Chicken cooker: Eggs are auto-dispensed to hatch chicks. When they grow, lava or a campfire kills them, yielding cooked chicken and feathers. Uses hopper collection. Fully AFK once stocked with eggs. |
| Raw/Cooked Porkchop | Fully | Moderate | Medium | Hoglin farm (Nether): In a Crimson Forest, hoglins spawn and are funneled into a kill chamber (often using lava or fall damage). They drop porkchops (which can be auto-cooked via campfire or lava) and leather. Requires fungus bait or twisting vines to scare hoglins into traps. Fully automatic. |
| Raw Beef & Steak | Semi | Easy | Low | Cow crusher or breeder: Breed cows in a 1x1 until it entity-crams, killing excess for beef and leather. Semi-automatic (player must feed/breed). For steak, kill cows with fire (lava blade) so drops are cooked. Fully-auto cow farms are not possible in pure vanilla (breeding requires player). |
| Leather | Fully (via hoglins) / Semi (cows) | Moderate | Medium | Hoglin farms produce leather as a secondary drop (fully AFK). Alternatively, breed cows and kill manually (semi-auto). Leather can also come from rabbits or horses (generally manual). Hoglin method is most efficient for automation. |
| Honeycomb | Fully | Moderate | Medium | Bee farm (honeycomb): An observer detects a bee nest/hive at honey level 5. A dispenser with shears then automatically shears the hive, yielding honeycomb. Hoppers collect the 3 honeycombs. Campfires are placed under hives to pacify bees (so they don’t anger when auto-sheared). |
| Honey Bottles | Fully | Moderate | Medium | Bee farm (honey): Similar to honeycomb farm, but the dispenser uses glass bottles when honey level is full. Fills into honey bottles. Bottles are collected via hopper. Requires supply of empty bottles (which can be looped or refilled from witch drops). |
| Ink Sac (Black Dye) | Fully | Moderate | Low | Squid farm: Build spawning tank in river or ocean biome (water at specific y-level). Squid spawn and fall or are flushed into kill chamber (fall damage or magma blocks). Hoppers collect ink sacs. Fully AFK but requires clearing other water to focus spawns. |
| Glow Ink Sac | Fully | Moderate | Low | Glow squid farm: Similar to squid farm but in dark water (e.g., flooded underground caves in total darkness). Glow squids spawn and are killed by fall/magma. Drops glow ink sacs for specialty dyes. |
| Fish (Cod, Salmon) | Fully | Moderate | Low | Fish farm (guardian or natural): Guardian farms in ocean monuments produce large amounts of raw cod (as a drop), collected automatically. Alternatively, a manual fish farm using bucket of fish or automatic fishing (semi-nerfed on Java) exists. (Cod from guardian farm is fully automatic; salmon can be farmed with river-based fish traps.) |
Hostile Mob Drops
Drops from monsters and hostile mobs, often requiring trap mechanisms or spawners. These farms typically allow AFK item collection once built.
| Item | Automation | Difficulty | Cost | Common Techniques |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gunpowder | Fully | Moderate | Medium | Creeper farm: Uses spawning platforms with trapdoors (to only spawn creepers) and cats to scare creepers into trap doors/fall pits. Creepers fall onto campfires or magma blocks (or get killed by fall/TNT) and drop gunpowder. Hoppers collect it. Fully AFK. (Essential for TNT) |
| Bones | Fully | Easy | Low | Skeleton farm: E.g. spawner-based grinder (skeletons pushed by water to a drop or crusher). Alternatively, general mob farm will yield bones from skeleton spawns. Items collected in chests. |
| Arrows | Fully | Easy | Low | Same as bones – any skeleton farm produces infinite arrows. Often an excess byproduct (since one skeleton spawner farm can output stacks of arrows per hour). Collected automatically with bones. |
| String | Fully | Easy | Low | Spider/Cave Spider farm: Spawner-based or dark farm for spiders. Spiders led into kill zone (magma block floor or drowning chamber). String drops collected via hopper. (Also produced by cat gifts or bartering, but mob farm is primary.) |
| Rotten Flesh | Fully | Easy | Low | Zombie farm: Any general mob farm or zombie spawner yields rotten flesh. Collected by hoppers. Often a lower-value drop, but cleric villagers trade for emeralds (so it can be useful in bulk). Zombie piglin gold farms also produce tons of rotten flesh as secondary output. |
| Spider Eyes | Fully | Easy | Low | Produced by witch farms and spider farms. Witches have ~16% chance to drop spider eyes. A dedicated witch farm (using a swamp hut and shifting floors) yields spider eyes along with other drops. Spiders from spawners also drop eyes (rarely); those can be collected alongside string. |
| Slimeballs | Fully | Moderate | Medium | Slime farm: Find a slime chunk or swamp. In slime chunk, build spawning platforms below Y=40, use iron golem bait to lure slimes into magma or fall traps. Slimes die on magma blocks; hopper minecarts collect slimeballs. Fully AFK. (In swamp, use frogs or drowning trap at night, but chunk method is more common.) |
| Ender Pearls | Fully | Moderate | Medium | Enderman farm (in The End): Common design uses an endermite in a minecart as bait. Endermen spawn on a platform and rush toward the endermite, falling into a pit to die (fall damage or player kill). To fully automate, use sufficient fall distance or an automatic crusher so no player needed for pearls. Pearls collected by hopper system. |
| Blaze Rods | Fully (with tamed wolves) / Semi (player kill) | Hard | Medium | Blaze farm: Built around a Blaze spawner in a Nether Fortress. Blazes are funneled (with pistons or fall) into a kill chamber. Note: Blazes only drop rods if killed by a player or tamed wolf. Fully-automatic designs use tamed wolves to kill blazes in the chamber (counting as player kills), so rods drop without player. Otherwise, a player must hit them (semi-auto). Collected via hopper minecarts. |
| Ghast Tears | Fully | Hard | High | Ghast farm: Typically in Soul Sand Valley (Nether) or using Nether portal trapping. Large spawning platforms or flying machines trigger ghast spawns. Methods: funnel ghasts into portals to Overworld where an automatic killer (like suffocation chamber or minecart) kills them, or use turret (dispensers with arrows/fireballs). Tears are collected via hopper minecarts. Very resource-intensive and technically complex due to ghast size and destruction. |
| Phantom Membranes | Fully | Hard | Low | Phantom farm: Requires player not sleeping for 3+ nights to spawn phantoms. An automated design uses cats (which phantoms target) to lure phantoms into a trap with tripwire triggering crushers or a sweeping TNT cart. Alternatively, phantoms lured under a roof will suffocate at dawn. Membranes collected by hoppers. (Often semi-automatic because player presence to spawn is needed, but killing/collection can be automated.) |
| Witch Drops (Redstone Dust, Glowstone Dust, Sugar, Sticks, Glass Bottles) | Fully | Moderate | Medium | Witch farm: Built at a swamp hut (witch-exclusive spawn). Shifting floor or drop chute designs cause witches to fall to their death or into trapdoors with an entity cramming killer. Yields redstone and glowstone dust, sugar, empty bottles, sticks, and gunpowder. All drops funnel into sorting hoppers. Rates are good (up to ~ witches/hour) fully AFK. |
| Gunpowder (Ghast or Witch) | Fully | Moderate | Medium | See creeper farm above for primary gunpowder. Additionally, ghast farms yield gunpowder (besides tears), and witch farms drop some gunpowder (though in lower quantity). These are automatically collected similarly. |
| Magma Cream | Fully | Moderate | Medium | Magma cube farm: Often built in Bastion remnants (where magma cube spawners exist in treasure rooms) or in basalt deltas. Large magma cubes are funneled into a crushing chamber; ideally kill by player or tamed wolf to maximize drops (for XP), but magma cream drops even from auto-kills. Many designs use frogs to instead farm froglights (see Froglights below), so dedicated magma cream farms are less common. Collected with hoppers. |
Rare Items & Mob Rarities
Special items from bosses or unique mechanics, plus high-value drops.
| Item | Automation | Difficulty | Cost | Common Techniques |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wither Skeleton Skull | Semi (player or wolf kill) | Hard | High | Wither skeleton farm: Built in Nether Fortress intersection boxed in spawning platforms. Use wither roses to prevent other mobs spawning (wither skellies immune) and piglins or dogs to lure skeletons into trap. For skull drops, they must be killed by player or tamed wolf (looting sword recommended). Often designed so player AFKs swinging a looting sword at their feet (semi-automatic). Collection via hoppers. Very challenging build (needs Nether fortress alignment and wither roses). |
| Nether Star | Fully | Hard | High | Wither boss automation: Common method is to trap the wither under the End Portal bedrock in the End dimension, where it suffocates/gets stuck and eventually dies automatically. The nether star drop is collected by hoppers. This allows AFK wither killing for stars (beacons). Setup is very risky – misplacement can unleash the wither. (Duping soul sand or skulls can speed up spawning but is usually avoided in legit survival.) |
| Totem of Undying | Fully | Hard | High | Raid farm: Uses a villager to start raids (after player acquires Bad Omen). A multi-tier trap kills raid waves automatically (e.g., drowning chambers or fall damage). Evokers in raids drop Totems of Undying. In a well-designed raid farm, totems, emeralds, and other drops (redstone, gunpowder, glowstone from witches in the raid) are collected without player combat. Player may need to AFK at farm and occasionally trigger Bad Omen, but many farms include an outpost cage to get Bad Omen automatically, making the process fully AFK. Totems funnel into chests via hoppers. |
| Shulker Shell | Fully | Hard | High | Shulker farm: Utilizes the shulker duplication mechanic introduced in 1.17. By moving a shulker to a controlled environment (e.g., the Overworld) and having it hit itself or another shulker with a bullet, new shulkers will spawn. Automated designs use snow golems or pistons to provoke shulkers into shooting, and teleport new shulkers to specific cells. Shells are collected via hopper minecarts whenever a shulker dies. Extremely technical, but fully automatic shell farms now exist, yielding a renewable source of shulker boxes. |
| Goat Horns (all variants) | Semi | Hard | Medium | Goat horn farm: Goats attempt to ram entities. By placing goats and a target (like a stone pillar or hostile mob) in a controlled area, the goats will hit the block and drop a horn (each goat has 2 horns). Collection via hoppers. Automation is limited: you can AFK near the farm to have goats ram and drop horns, but periodically you must breed new goats or reposition them after they’ve lost horns. (No redstone needed aside from a collection system.) |
| Ominous Banner | Fully | Moderate | Low | Pillager captain farm: In a Pillager Outpost farm or raid farm, illager captains drop the ominous banner upon death. Automated pillager outpost farms use golems or traps to kill captains, yielding banners. Raid farms also produce banners from captains in waves. Banners are auto-collected in storage. (Mostly decorative use.) |
| Music Discs (13, Cat, etc.) | Semi | Moderate | Low | Creeper-disc farm: Use a trapped skeleton to shoot creepers. Setup: funnel creepers into a holding area and have a skeleton (with infinity bow) positioned to kill them. When a skeleton kills a creeper, it drops a random music disc. This can be automated to an extent (the farm can run AFK as long as creepers and the skeleton are being managed). Collection via hopper. It’s semi-automatic because initial setup is tricky and output is random discs. (All common discs except Pigstep/Relic can be obtained this way.) |
| Trident | Semi | Moderate | Low | Drowned farm: Drowned occasionally drop tridents. A typical design uses a drowned spawner (if available via world generation) or converts zombies to drowned (by water) and funnels them to a player or tamed wolf kill chamber. For best rates, player with Looting sword kills them (semi-automatic). Fully AFK trident collection is extremely slow and unreliable on Java (since only naturally spawned drowned drop tridents). Usually done in conjunction with copper farming. |
| Scute | Semi | Moderate | Low | Turtle farm: Turtles drop “scute” when baby turtles grow into adults. A semi-auto farm: breed turtles (player feeds seagrass), collect eggs in a safe sand hatchery. Babies that hatch and mature will drop scute, collected by hoppers. Player must periodically breed turtles and relocate eggs, so it’s not full AFK. (Scutes are used to craft turtle shells.) |
Minerals & Ores (Renewable)
Many mineral resources can be obtained through farms, usually via mob drops, villager trading, or generators. These farms often require some processing (crafting or smelting).
| Item | Automation | Difficulty | Cost | Common Techniques |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Iron Ingot | Fully | Moderate | Medium | Iron farm: Exploits villager gossip to spawn iron golems. Typically 2–20 villagers + a zombie in a cell cause golem spawns, which are funneled into lava or magma to kill. Each golem drops 3-5 iron ingots collected by hoppers. Infinite iron and poppies AFK. (Compact designs are Easy/Medium cost; very high-output designs can be complex.) |
| Gold Ingot | Fully | Moderate | Medium | Gold farm: Zombified Piglin farm in Nether—spawning platforms with trapdoors or giant nether portals funnel piglins to fall death or crushing. Drops gold nuggets (and rare ingots). Collected and crafted into ingots (nuggets auto-crafted via Crafter in 1.21). Also produces tons of rotten flesh. Piglin bartering can supplement (trade gold ingots for other items), but the gold itself comes from piglin farm. |
| Copper Ingot | Fully | Moderate | Medium | Drowned farm: Drowned zombies drop copper ingots (Java edition). Convert a zombie spawner setup by flooding the chamber so zombies turn into drowned, then kill (automatically via magma or trident killer). Many designs have drowned drop into magma block with minecart collection. Yields copper ingots infinitely (though slower than iron/gold farms). |
| Emerald | Fully | Hard | Medium | Raid farm: As described, raid waves include Vindicators and Pillagers that drop emeralds upon death. High-efficiency raid farms can produce thousands of emeralds per hour fully AFK, in addition to totems. (Alternate: Villager trading – semi-automatic: e.g., trading hall farmers convert crops to emeralds manually, but raid farm is the primary fully-auto method). |
| Coal | Fully (via wither skelly) / Semi (charcoal) | Moderate | Low | Wither Skeleton farm yields coal as a drop (along with bones and skulls). Fully AFK collection (wither skeletons killed by wither roses or fall, since coal drops without player). Alternative: automate charcoal production – a tree farm + auto-furnace system smelts logs into charcoal (renewable fuel). Charcoal automation is fully possible (tree farm feeds furnace array). |
| Lapis Lazuli | Semi | Easy | Low | Villager trading (Clerics offer lapis for emeralds) – infinite via trading but requires player clicks. No direct mob drop for lapis. (In 1.21, the Crafter doesn’t help since lapis isn’t craftable; bartering and fishing don’t give lapis in Java.) Thus, it’s renewable only semi-automatically through a cleric trading hall. |
| Redstone Dust | Fully | Easy | Low | Witch farm provides abundant redstone dust (among other drops). Also, Cleric villagers trade redstone for emeralds (semi-auto). The witch farm method is fully automated and yields a steady supply for technical builds. |
| Glowstone Dust | Fully | Easy | Low | Witch farm for glowstone is the main renewable source (besides bartering). Piglin bartering can also give glowstone dust occasionally (up to 8 per trade). Both methods are AFK once set up (bartering requires gold farm input). |
| Quartz | Fully | Easy | Low | Piglin bartering: Barter farm uses gold ingots (from gold farm) to trade with piglins, yielding ~4–8 nether quartz per trade among other items. Completely AFK if gold input is automated. (No vanilla mob farm directly drops quartz ore; bartering is the renewable source.) |
| Obsidian | Fully | Moderate | Medium | Piglin bartering yields obsidian (they drop 1–3 blocks occasionally). A gold farm + bartering setup can accumulate obsidian automatically. Additionally, End crystal farming (respawning dragons) yields obsidian towers but not collectible automatically. So piglin trading is the practical AFK method. |
| Crying Obsidian | Fully | Moderate | Medium | Also from Piglin bartering – up to 1–3 crying obsidian per trade. Same setup as above, fully automatic with enough gold. |
| Gravel | Fully | Easy | Low | Piglin bartering again: piglins often give 8–16 gravel per trade. This makes gravel renewable (for concrete, etc.) in a fully-automated way (gold -> piglin -> gravel). Collected by hopper minecarts from bartering droppers. |
| Clay (Clay Balls) | Fully | Moderate | Low | Mud-to-clay conversion: Place mud blocks over pointed dripstone with dripstone caves below – mud eventually dries into clay. Automated design: a mud farm (dispenser water-bottling dirt) feeds mud onto dripstone, pistons then push the formed clay and break it, collecting clay balls. Fully AFK with redstone clock and item collection. (Clay can then be crafted into clay blocks or smelted to bricks automatically.) |
| Amethyst Shard | Fully | Moderate | Low | Amethyst geode farm: Budding amethyst blocks grow crystals. A piston mechanism can be timed to break fully-grown amethyst clusters (yielding shards). Shards fall into hopper minecarts. Automation requires careful piston placement to not break the bud itself. Output is slow (growth is random), but fully AFK once built. |
| Prismarine Shard | Fully | Hard | High | Guardian farm: Built around an ocean monument. Water is cleared and guardians are funneled (via soul sand bubble columns or drop shafts) into a killing chamber (often fall onto magma or entity cramming). Guardians drop prismarine shards and fish; occasionally prismarine crystals. All drops auto-collected. Difficult due to needing to conquer monument and drain water, but fully automatic thereafter. |
| Prismarine Crystal | Fully | Hard | High | Guardian farm (as above) – guardians have a chance to drop crystals (used for sea lanterns) in addition to shards. Same collection process. High-cost build (sponges or sand to drain, lots of building), but yields rare prismarine materials infinitely. |
Other Processed & Craftable Resources
Items that become renewable through combinations of farms and the 1.21 Crafter block or furnace automation.
| Item | Automation | Difficulty | Cost | Common Techniques |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Charcoal | Fully | Easy | Low | Auto charcoal smelter: Feed a wood farm’s logs into furnaces (fuel can be some of the charcoal or bamboo). Charcoal outputs to chests. Completely AFK fuel production. Useful for torch making or furnace fuel. |
| Bone Meal | Fully | Moderate | Low | Composter farms: e.g. Moss farm – applying bone meal to a moss block can produce more moss & azalea, and actually create a surplus of bone meal. Many moss farm designs use a stone generator converted to moss, then auto-compost the moss drops to yield bone meal (output exceeds input). Also, excess seeds from crop farms can be auto-composted into bone meal. These systems can run continuously, giving a renewable bone meal supply (which in turn powers other farms). |
| Paper | Fully | Easy | Low | Sugar cane farm + Crafter: With 1.21’s Crafter block, sugar cane collected from a fully-auto farm can be auto-crafted into paper. This provides infinite paper for rockets or trading. (Prior to the Crafter, one would AFK gather cane then craft manually – now it can be 100% automated.) |
| Bread | Fully | Moderate | Low | Villager crop farm + Crafter: A farmer villager can harvest wheat and craft it into bread to throw to other villagers. In 1.21, a Crafter block can also craft wheat into bread automatically if supplied. Thus a wheat farm feeding a crafter can output bread with no player action. (Villager method is technically automatic but they drop bread entity which you collect). |
| Pumpkin Pie | Fully | Moderate | Low | Multi-farm + Crafter: Requires pumpkins, sugar, and eggs – all fully farmable (pumpkin farm, sugar cane->sugar via crafter, chicken farm for eggs). A Crafter can be set with the pumpkin pie recipe and ingredients fed in (e.g. via hoppers from those farms) to auto-craft pies. Complexity is moderate (managing 3 inputs), but resource cost is low. |
| Cookie | Fully | Moderate | Low | Cocoa + wheat farm + Crafter: Cocoa beans (from a semi-auto farm on jungle logs) and wheat (from auto farm) can be funneled into a Crafter set to craft cookies. Fully automatic cookie production is possible, though not commonly needed in bulk. |
| Dried Kelp | Fully | Easy | Low | Kelp smelter: Kelp farm (fully auto) feeds kelp into furnaces (which can be fuelled by dried kelp blocks or bamboo). The furnaces dry the kelp, and an auto-crafter can even craft 9 dried kelp into kelp blocks for better fuel. This creates a self-sustaining fuel loop. All steps can be automated, yielding an infinite fuel source. |
| Moss Block & Carpet | Fully | Easy | Low | Moss farming: Using bone meal on a moss block will spread moss and azalea to adjacent stone. Automatic moss farms use a stone generator, dispense bone meal to convert stone to moss, then use pistons to break and collect the moss blocks/carpet. The drops are collected and can be used or composted. The system can even be tuned to produce excess bone meal, effectively duplicating bone meal and moss endlessly. |
| Lava (Bucket) | Fully | Easy | Low | Dripstone lava farm: Place pointed dripstone under a lava source with cauldrons beneath. Cauldrons fill with lava over time (renewable). Hoppers can automatically pull filled lava buckets from a dispenser that collects from the cauldron. With enough cauldrons and dripstone, you get a slow but steady supply of lava buckets (useful for fuel). Completely AFK capable. |
Each of these farms and techniques allows players in survival to obtain resources indefinitely. With careful planning and the new Crafter block, even previously manual crafting steps can be automated in 1.21.5. Minecraft’s community continues to innovate these farms, so designs and efficiencies are always improving. By leveraging villagers, redstone contraptions, and game mechanics, virtually “almost any Minecraft item can be farmed” in some way – from common crops to rare drops – making large-scale projects and survival megabases possible.