How to Build an Enderman Farm for Endless XP

An enderman farm is the best experience farm in Minecraft. Endermen drop far more XP than common mobs, and in the End they spawn in enormous numbers with nothing competing for the spawn cap. Once built, it takes you from zero to level 30 in a couple of minutes.

Why the End, and not the Overworld

Endermen do spawn in the Overworld at night and in the Nether's warped forests, but the End is dramatically better for one reason: almost every solid surface in the End is a valid enderman spawn location, and there are no other hostile mobs to compete for the spawn cap.

In the Overworld, your farm fights every dark cave within range. In the End, endermen are effectively the only thing spawning. That is why End farms produce rates the Overworld cannot approach.

You will need to have defeated the Ender Dragon first, or at least reached the End and survived, since you need to build there safely.

How endermen behave

Understanding these four behaviours explains every design decision:

• They are three blocks tall. They cannot spawn in a space shorter than three blocks, and this is how kill chambers stop them escaping.
• They teleport. Randomly when idle, and to escape damage. Water and rain make them teleport away, which is why you never use water to move them.
• They teleport toward a target they are attacking. This is the whole basis of the endermite lure.
• They take fall damage normally. A drop of around 40 blocks leaves them at low health so a single hit finishes them, which is what gives you the XP.

The endermite lure

Endermites are small hostile mobs that endermen actively hunt. When you throw an ender pearl there is a small chance an endermite spawns where it lands.

Put one endermite in a minecart at the centre of your farm, and endermen across the whole platform will teleport toward it, then walk into whatever hole you have prepared. The minecart matters for two reasons: it stops the endermite wandering off, and a mob in a minecart does not despawn the way a loose one does.

You only need one, and it will last as long as nothing kills it — so keep it protected from the endermen it is attracting.

The basic design

1. 1.Get high up, or use the void. Build your platform out over the void or high above the main island, far from any other surface. The point is that nothing else can spawn nearby.
2. 2.Build spawning platforms. Flat surfaces, at least 3 blocks of headroom, spread out around a central point. More surface area means more spawns.
3. 3.Place the endermite in a minecart at the centre, one block below or behind a barrier so the endermen path toward it but cannot reach it.
4. 4.Leave a hole around the lure. Endermen walking toward the endermite fall in.
5. 5.Drop them roughly 40 blocks. They land at low health.
6. 6.Build a kill chamber two blocks tall. Endermen are three blocks tall, so in a 2-block space they cannot teleport out and their heads poke into your reach. Hit them once each.
7. 7.Hoppers into a chest below to collect ender pearls automatically.

Stand in the kill chamber and the XP comes to you. Ender pearls pile up in the chest as a bonus.

Getting the rates up

• More platform area. Rates scale almost directly with how much valid spawning surface is inside the spawning range.
• Clear everything else. Any other surface within range steals spawns. If you build over the void, this solves itself.
• Stay in position. Spawning only happens 24 blocks or more from you, and chunks unload past 128. The kill chamber should sit inside that window relative to the platforms.
• Use Looting on the finishing hit if you want more ender pearls. It does not affect XP.

What you get out of it

• Experience, quickly. This is the main draw. Levels for enchanting and for anvil work, which our anvil and Mending guide explains how to spend efficiently.
• Ender pearls in bulk. For Ender Chests, eyes of ender, and fast travel. Combine with blaze powder for eyes of ender if you want to find more strongholds.

Pair the farm with a beacon at your base and Haste makes the mining you do with all those newly enchanted tools considerably faster.

Safety notes

Bring blocks, and never dig straight down over the void. Wear that carved pumpkin. Take an Ender Chest so a death does not cost you the trip. And build the outer edges with a lip or wall — falling into the void in the End loses everything permanently, with no item recovery at all.