Tutorials/Guardian farming

Guardian farming is a method of obtaining prismarine shards, crystals and fish from guardians.

Spawning
Guardians only spawn in ocean monuments, which themselves only spawn in Deep Ocean biomes. Guardians spawn in water blocks within a 58×58×23 area defined horizontally by the base of the monument and vertically from the floor level of the monument (usually if not always Y=39) up to just above the decorative structure at the top (usually if not always Y=61).

Locating a monument
Before a farm can be set up, a monument must be located. However, monuments are quite rare. Ways to help find a monument include:


 * Using a boat is the easiest way of searching for a monument
 * A potion of night vision helps to see the monument, as does the respiration enchantment.
 * If you have enough, ender pearls can help travel large stretches of water quickly.
 * Online tools, such as this one. can be used to locate monuments based on the world seed.

Preparing the monument
The three Elder Guardians will need to be killed, as the Mining Fatigue III they inflict makes breaking blocks almost impossible. Water breathing pоtions, strong weapons, and either invisibility potions or good armor are essential. Boots with Depth Strider III are very helpful for quicker movement.

To force guardians to spawn within the farm itself, it may be helpful to remove all other water from the spawning zone. Keep in mind that this is a big job and Guardians will be present throughout the process.
 * Inside the monument, Sponges are very useful: most rooms can be cleared by placing 2 or 3 sponges spread across the ceiling, and then repeating lower down if necessary. Larger rooms (e.g. the core and the more open wing) may need to be partitioned before using sponges.
 * Outside the monument, options include:
 * Build a wall around the monument (around 87 full stacks will be needed; sand or gravel may be preferred as they can be placed from above to fall to the sea floor), and then use sand or gravel to fill in the inside.
 * Build a wall as above, then use sponges to progressively remove the water. Partitioning may be used to allow for manageable areas to be cleared, or pistons may be used to push sponges into the water simultaneously across the width of the monument.
 * Build a ring, flood the inside with lava to turn a layer of water to stone, extend the ring down, mine out the stone, and repeat. This has the advantage of a much lower initial resource cost, although the mining will take a long time and will use a large number of picks.

If the design is to kill guardians with fall damage or is to have the player AFK near the bottom of the farm, all undersea caves (and any nearby islands) within a 128-block radius will need to be lit, slabbed, or flooded to prevent other hostile mobs from filling the mob cap. Alternatively, AFK spot high above the monument (around Y=160) may be used so only the monument is within the 128-block-radius sphere.

Farming
A farm requires a spawning area, a killing area, a method for transporting the mobs from the spawning area to the killing area, an item collection system, and a place for the player to wait.

Spawning area
As guardians spawn underwater, the spawning area must be flooded. The simplest designs involve simply placing a layer of signs under a pool of water a few blocks deep (either existing ocean or a pool newly constructed) and relying on the Guardians swimming or sinking too low and falling out of the water.

As guardians can spawn in flowing water, more active designs have downward-flowing water to push the Guardians more quickly out of the spawning area. As downward-flowing water requires an adjacent wall to actually exert force on mobs, these designs will typically have either a series of 2-block-wide pools, although a layout similar to that used for maximally-efficient sugar cane farming will provide more spawnable water blocks in a given volume.

Transport and killing
The simplest design is to leave a large room below the spawning pool. Guardians can also be easily transported by flowing water, so the usual canal or flowing-pool designs can be used to collect them into a central area for more concentrated killing.

While manual kill designs are possible, keep in mind that the Guardians' natural Thorns will damage players using swords rather than arrows or damaging potions, that guardians can fit through 1-block holes (thus attacking from above or around a slab or other small gap is needed to prevent escapees), and that Guardians don't have any unique rare drops or drops that are usefully affected by Looting. A manual-kill Guardian farm should thus provide for healing (e.g. a beacon with Regeneration) or potion brewing.

Having a health of, Guardians will require a 34-block drop to kill. Lava over a 12-block drop is sufficient to kill with a combination of fall, lava, and fire damage.

Iron golem kill designs will work, but will need replacement golems as the Guardians' Thorns and counterattacks take their toll.

Block-based suffocation traps will work well enough, although the drops will also wind up inside the blocks and may therefore glitch out in an unexpected manner. Cactus and lava traps also work well enough, particularly with Guardians' flopping around vigorously when out of water, but risk destroying the drops due to the same flopping.

Item collection and waiting
Guardian farms present few unique issues with respect to item collection and player waiting areas: hoppers or hopper minecart systems work well for collection, and except for manual-kill concerns mentioned above nothing special is required for a player waiting area.

Guardian Chamber
This design transports guardians to a collection pit, where they are then damaged with splash poison and instant damage potions.

Iron Golems
One of them is the Iron Golem method, where Guardians spawn and are funnelled using water currents to a trench filled with Iron Golems. As the Iron Golems attack the Guardians, the drops are collected using hoppers and deposited in chests. This method is fairly iron-heavy, due to all of the Iron Golems, which will need to be periodically replaced due to the Guardian's spike damage, and the large amount of hoppers used.

Super-efficient farm
Another farm is the 'OP', or super-efficient farm. This farm is very expensive to build in Survival mode, due to the amount of materials used, but produces over 100,000 items per hour.

Minecarts
Similar to the iron golem-based farm, except there is a drop down to bedrock instead of hoppers, some lava near the bottom to ensure no guardians are still alive, and a hopper minecart to collect the drops. An estimated raw resource count is:


 * 200+ solid blocks
 * 6.5 stacks of wood logs
 * 80 iron ingots
 * 6+ gold ingots
 * 55 redstone
 * 12 diamonds (for pickaxes)
 * 1+ sand (for glass)


 * 1. Build an iron golem-based farm without hoppers or golems (see above).
 * 2. Dig the central canal down to bedrock.
 * 3. Place down rails covering the canal, with powered rails every 20 blocks (recommended, although you could have up to 50 blocks spacing).
 * 4. Place redstone blocks under every powered rail except one (near a wall), then carve out a small room near the rail without power.
 * 5. Place a lever next to the unpowered rail, and a hopper underneath. Place 2 chests next to the hopper, make sure they are connected to the hopper. The lever should connect to the rail.
 * 6. Place some glass overlooking the rails, place down the hopper minecart, and you are done. For more storage, place down more hoppers and chests.