How to get a head start in Minecraft Survival (By using automatic farms)

So, you joined or created a survival server. All your friends are on there. But you want to get ahead of them—you want to get diamonds before they even have the chance to make themselves armor. Today, we’ll discuss how you can do that, and the answer to most of your resource problems is automatic farms. Here, we’ll show you what farms to build, how to build them, and provide a few tips and tricks to make your automatic farming easier.

You may be asking, what are automatic farms? And what can they do for me? Well, at their base, automatic farms create or farm items for you without you, as the player, having to do anything other than build them. You can get infinite fuel, create infinite food, etc.

Now, here are the top 3 farms you should build early game:

Experience in Minecraft is important; it allows you to enchant items, repair items, and gets you those sweet, sweet bragging rights. Usually, it takes a while to build up. However, you can make this simple with an XP farm. The first thing you need to do is find a dungeon or a spawner in a mineshaft (skeleton spawners are the best). Next, you want to dig out an area underneath the spawner, big enough to allow mobs to spawn. Make sure to keep the area lit while doing so, you don’t want mobs to spawn while you are working!

Your spawner should look like this:

The next step is to place flowing water—to move the mobs toward your ‘Killzone.’ Place 3 buckets of water on one side of the chamber, equal distances apart.

After that, dig a trench on the opposite side from where you placed the water. Make sure the mobs can fit into it! Have the trench drop down about 2 blocks, and place gates to make sure no water slips down.

Then, in the trench, place two water buckets to move the mobs toward the middle. Dig a 3-block deep hole in the middle of the trench, place a fence gate or signs to stop the water, and place a slab at the bottom.

Now, remove the torches and your farm is fully operational! Simply stand at the bottom and kill anything that comes through. You can even place a hopper underneath the slab if you want to collect your drops!

Food is essential to survival in Minecraft. You need it to run, heal, and to survive. One of the best sources of food is baked potatoes. Not only are they amazing in real life (you cannot go wrong with a baked potato, sour cream and chives. Absolutely delicious), but they are an amazing food source in Minecraft. They give good food bars, good saturation, and are easy to grow and cook. You can embrace the true Irish spirit!

However, harvesting crops is annoying. You need to break everything and then plant everything again! What if you could take one of those chores away? I present to you: The Potatoer 9000! Well… it’s not really that impressive, but once you build it I can assure you that your Minecraft life will be much easier.

The first step is creating an 8x8 plot of farmland. Then, put water on two sides parallel to each other. It should look like this:

Next, add trapdoors over the water. This not only hides the water, and makes it look pretty but it also stops water and items from going over the side.

Then, dig a small trench in front of the farmland and fill it with hoppers leading into a chest. Make sure the hoppers lead into each other and then into a chest, otherwise they will not collect the crops that are being harvested!

After that, add dispensers on the opposite side facing the farmland. Hope you can find a lot of spiders to kill! Place a line of cobblestone behind the dispensers and put redstone dust on top of it. Add a button or a lever on one side, fill the dispensers with water buckets, and your crop farm is done!

Plant your crops and when they’re grown simply flick the lever or press the button to release the water. The crops will flow into the hoppers and into your chest, ready for you to pick up! Remove the water by flicking the lever again or pressing the button again and plant your crops to grow for the next harvest!

Yes yes, I know. A super smelter isn’t really a farm. However, it’s imperative in the early game. It allows you to smelt massive amounts of materials quickly without much work. If you want to build something large or for some reason need copious amounts of gold a super smelter is essential.

First, build a row of 6 hoppers going into a chest. This will take smelted items from the furnaces and keep them in one place.

After that, put furnaces on top of the hoppers with another row of hoppers on top of that leading into the furnaces.

Next, you’re going to want to place some hoppers leading into the furnaces on the back side. This will allow fuel to automatically go into the furnaces.

Now, place building blocks on the ends of the hopper lines in the position below. I’m using cobblestone here but any block such as wood or dirt is fine. This is for the minecart chests to top at and bounce off of. Then place rails and powered rails on top of them as shown in the picture. Place a redstone block between the rails on the far side.

Next, place a lever underneath the topmost building block on the near side. This will allow you to power those rails.

Finally, place your minecart chests, hoppers, and chests on top of that and you are ready to begin smelting! Place the items you want to be smelted in the top chest, and fuel in the lower chest, and watch your fully smelted items go into the ground-level chest! Make sure to only flick the lever once all of your items are in the minecart chest!

Other Useful Tidbits

1. Redstone is best found around -63 to 15
2. Late game, Enderman farms, Iron farms and Wither Skeleton Farms can be very useful. Here are some great tutorials: Ilmango Enderman Farm |  Ilmango Wither Skeleton Farm
3. Sometimes the best farms are the simplest ones

Closing

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