Tutorials/Nether wart farming

Nether wart is a fairly difficult resource to obtain initially. It is only found in nether fortresses and usually in small supply. Once found however, it can be planted and grown on soul sand anywhere in any dimension.

Preparation
Before creating a nether wart farm, it's important to prepare in advance. Make sure you have the right location and the right materials before setting one up.

Location
Nether wart does not need light to grow up, but you have to be aware of creepers, so you should build your farm on a lit and enclosed place. To speed up growth of the nether wart, the farm should be someplace where it's often in your chunk update radius. Note that if you're playing on a version before 1.3.1, you will have to make the farm in the Nether. If this is the case, make sure to surround it with materials with a high blast-resistance so that the farm doesn't get blown up.

Depending on what design of a nether wart farm you're making, you may also need plenty of room to set up the redstone. Thus, it's best to know in advance the size of your farm, so that you will know how much space you need to clear.

Materials
Before making a nether wart farm, you will need the same number of soul sand as the number of nether wart you're planning to plant. You will also need at least one nether wart, although more is recommended, so that you don't continuously have to wait for nether wart to grow to start the farm.

The rest of the required materials depends on the design. You may need none, some, or all of the following materials:


 * Dispensers
 * Water buckets
 * Hoppers
 * Chests
 * Redstone dust
 * Redstone repeaters
 * Buttons
 * Pistons
 * Redstone torches
 * Building blocks

Design
Because nether wart must be planted manually, and farmer villagers don't plant nether wart, fully automatic designs for nether wart farms are not possible. However, the collection system can still be automated, making semi-automatic farms possible. On the Legacy Console Edition, designs must take into account the 200 item entity limit. If more than 200 item entities are created simultaneously, the game will delete them until only 200 remain.

Dispenser powered farms
In the following design, a row of dispensers activated by redstone circuitry make water flow down to a collection area with hoppers, that stores the nether wart into chests. A central corridor is built so the farming area can be accessed easily on foot to replant it, without stepping on the soul sand.

In this design, water flows to a central spot the nether wart is harvested with the press of a button, and flows to a central point for easy collection.

Piston powered farms
Piston movement can “shake" the nether wart off to be easily picked up and replanted. In the following video this type of farm is shown, using a simple redstone circuit that triggers the piston to push the soul sand and then to reset the placement.

de::technik:Netherwarzenfarm