Tutorial:Raid farming

Raid farming is a means to obtain items dropped by raid mobs (pillagers, vindicators, witches, evokers, and ravagers). Farms can be made from a village with a spawning platform for the raiders, or be made at a pillager outpost. In Bedrock Edition, a raid farm also yields special items dropped by these mobs during raids: emeralds, enchanted books, iron tools, and iron armor (of which half have enchantments).

Broadly, the components of a raid farm are:

• A village (1 bed and 1 villager are sufficient).
• A surface on which the raid is forced to spawn (the ground, or an isolated surface above). Raiders cannot spawn on leaves, scaffolding, glass, bottom slabs or liquids; this can be used to help localize the raid spawn point (such as raid farms being located above non-frozen ocean biomes to prevent excessive work on spawn-proofing).
• A way to funnel or guide raiders into the killing area.
• A killing area; that is, mob grinder to kill the mobs, or a holding area for the player to kill them and earn experience as well as loot.
• A way to get the Raid Omen effect again, so that the next raid can start:
  • Drinking ominous bottles, preferrably at the right timing (as soon as Raid Omen ends)
  • Forcing raid captains out of the raid context, so that they drop ominous bottles when killed.

Raid farms are primarily built as a very fast method to obtain emeralds and totems of undying. Most raid farms provide a sufficient number of emeralds to allow players to disregard the prices of villager trading due to the sheer number of emeralds they possess. Additionally, raid farms are an easy way to farm totems of undying, allowing players to stockpile an insane number of them and take on more lethal challenges.

Additionally, raids can drop saddles, iron axes, crossbows, ominous banners, and witch drops including sticks, gunpowder, redstone dust, glowstone dust, sugar, spider eyes, and glass bottles. In Java Edition, only mob drops are available from raid farming, as pillagers and vindicators in Bedrock Edition have their own raid loot table.

A raid farm can be built at least 7 chunks‌^{[JE only]} or 8 chunks‌^{[BE only]} away from any other blocks that aren't leaves or scaffolding^{[note 1]} and, in Java Edition, slabs, glass, or liquids too. Ocean biomes are recommended, (disregarding frozen oceans, since raiders can spawn on ice) keeping raid farms far away enough from any land to make them as easy as possible to build.

Below are a few variants of raid farms:

To make an automatic raid farm, it is required to build a setup that forces raiders not only to spawn there, but also to get automatically killed. An example of this is with a trident killer‌^{[BE only]}, that gives kill experience to the owner of the trident whenever it kills a mob. It is easier to build one of those in Bedrock Edition for several reasons.

In Java Edition, you'll have to build a mechanism that would be capable of getting rid of every single raider without limiting their spawning spaces, since trident killers do not exist there.

In Java Edition, as vindicators and evokers don't drop emeralds without the player, the farm would not produce any.

In Bedrock Edition, the rates can be boosted by the player holding a sword with Looting III.

Automatic raid farms are recommended in Bedrock Edition because they are practical and convenient. They counter the lack of parity of sword mechanics in Java Edition; thus, they are relevant even for the endgame. In Java Edition, however, this farm is pointless because no mob grinder gives players kill credit.

A basic raid farm is built either on the ground or above the ocean, and, contain a villager with a bed directly above a funnel with water which attracts raiders to the killing chamber, with the lava being above the hole to burn ravagers. The bed causes the raid captain to chase toward it, also guiding other raiders to do the same‌^{[JE only]}, eventually getting pushed by the water, however, in Bedrock Edition, raiders do not sprint toward a village, thus forcing raiders to spawn directly in a water funnel platform above the ocean is required. Raiders must take fall damage, such that they only take 1 hit to be killed by the player.

The item drop rates of a basic raid farm is small, because of interval between raid waves, the raid omen effect and time taken on raiders getting attracted into the farm. While raiders aren't detecting a raid captain nearby, chances are they begin to wander aimlessly and halt item production‌^{[JE only]}.

• In Java Edition, the Sweeping Edge enchantment is required to properly kill the raiders, otherwise you'll risk accidentally letting evokers summon vexes or witches throwing harmful potions at you.
• When building a raid farm above the ocean, make sure there is no land nearby in a 8 chunk render distance.

This type of farm is generally only useful for early to mid game stages for not being very robust, however it's extremely simple to build compared to other designs and is able to yield enough totems of undying for the rest of the gameplay. Keep in mind only works in Java Edition.

High-class farms in Java Edition depend on chunk coordinates (such as the northwestern corner of the spawning platform being at the horizontal center of a chunk) and rotation (such as the spawning platform extending southeastwards from the northwest corner) to work, are generally built above oceans, at least 6 chunks away from any land, and cost many more resources than other raid farms. They are very powerful, and because of this, they require a large storage system in order for the player to collect all the produced items.

• A spawning box, the area where raiders are forced to spawn and are funneled into the killing chamber with help of pistons. It is required to have a setup consisting of composters and lava cauldrons/nether portals and a mob grinder in the Nether there to take out ravagers. Other heightmaps at the farm should be spawn-proofed with glass, leaves, slabs, etc.
• A killing chamber, the area where raiders take enough fall damage on trapdoors that open after they land, then fall into the player's sword sweeping range to get killed by that player while using a sword with Sweeping Edge for best effect.
• In Hard difficulty, a beacon powered with Regeneration to prevent starvation, allowing longer AFK sessions.
• A redstone clock system which cycles every 30 seconds, which is the duration of Raid Omen, controlling when a player can drink ominous bottles, the raid engine and may also control the funneling system at the spawning box to make the farm a lot stabler. However, prior to 1.21, the clock system cycles a lot quicker and is designed differently, matching the player's auto-clicker cooldown.
• The raid engine, which consists of a few villagers with a job site block, generally composters, which can be interacted by pistons, separated by one chunk gaps vertically, with the farthest villager that does not lose their job site block, being separated by just one chunk apart from the second farthest, which is crucial to stop raids from ending as a defeat. There are three variants of raid engines and all three use observers to detect a change in those raid engines to cycle job site blocks:
  • Raid engines that cycle bubble columns. These engines generally go upward.
  • Raid engines that change the blockstate of walls, which is a method to instantly send redstone signals downward, therefore, these engines go downward.
  • Raid engines that change the blockstate of leaves using logs. These engines are the most versatile as they can go either up or down.

When the redstone clock cycles, villagers at the raid engine lose their job site blocks in order going away from the farm, then get them back, forcing the raid center to shift far enough (more than a 112 block spherical distance from raiders) to make the game spawn many raiders in a few seconds. It is crucial for raid engines to be at the exact same chunk as the farm itself to shift the raid center. For more information about raid spawning, see Raid#Raid wave spawning in Java.

• The storage system, which can store many more items than players. As unstackable items such as totems of undying are produced by the farm, unstackable item sorters with allays are used to store these totems. Optionally, saddles may be sorted the same way as well.

With everything altogether, high-class raid farms produce more items than other raid farm variants combined and it's possible to boost the rates with the Looting enchantment.

High-class raid farms in 1.21+ have much lower rates than in previous versions due to new mechanics on starting raids, but they are still pretty high. Instead, prior to 1.21, the player immediately gets Bad Omen (today called Raid Omen) when killing a raid captain, removing the 30 second delay between raids.

It is clear that it is recommended in endgame stages in Java Edition due to their really fast production rates, however, high-class raid farms in 1.21+ demand ominous bottles a lot faster, requiring a ominous bottle farm for the longest AFK sessions. Instead, prior to 1.21, there were simple enough designs to be early-game friendly because raids kept spawning infinitely without a cost.