Tutorials/Warden farming

The warden is one of the most dangerous mobs in Minecraft, however they are the only renewable way to farm sculk catalysts. This tutorial shows the player how to farm the warden.

Why bother?
Wardens, despite being dangerous, drop a sculk catalyst when killed. The sculk catalyst can produce sculk blocks, veins, shriekers and sensors, but they cannot produce itself, therefore wardens are the only way to renewably farm sculk catalysts, which can be very useful for mob farms that kill mobs via fall damage or any other form that don't yield XP.

Spawning requirements
Wardens can be spawned only by naturally generated sculk shriekers, which can be exclusively found in deep dark biomes. Sculk shriekers generated by catalysts or placed down by players do not spawn wardens. Wardens can spawn in any 1×3×1 block space in a 11×13×11 box centered around a naturally generated sculk shrieker. Wardens do not spawn if a warden is within a 48 block area centered around the sculk shrieker, and wardens do not spawn on slabs and stairs. Shriekers spawn wardens only after the player has gained 4 warnings, which can be obtained by alerting shriekers. Shriekers shriek for 4.5 seconds and have a 10 second cooldown after each shriek. The easiest way to activate a shrieker is to stand on top of it and wait. Wardens spawn based on 20 attempts in the spawnable area, meaning that wardens can be prevented from spawning by warden-proofing certain areas on a spawning platform.

Loud sounds
Pistons, note blocks and bells linked to redstone clocks are overall the best method to move Wardens, horizontally. These can be used to lure Wardens into kill chambers, pitfalls and bubble column elevators.

Bubble column
Wardens can be moved out of the non-spawning radius of a sculk shrieker using bubble columns, which then allow more wardens to spawn. Soul sand bubble columns can move wardens upward and magma block columns can move wardens downward.

Methods of killing
The best way to kill wardens is to use entity cramming. The default entity cramming limit is 24, and when there are more entities in a single block than the limit, any entities and players that fall in take damage. Hypothetically, water can also be used to kill wardens, though wardens have extremely high HP and it would take a very long time to kill a single warden. Wardens could also die to dropped pointed dripstone or fall damage, though the latter is less effective due to the warden's high HP.

Loot collection
Placing hoppers or hopper minecarts feeding into chests is the best method to collect sculk catalysts dropped from wardens.

AFK chamber
The only way to automatically summon wardens is to stand on top of the sculk shrieker that the farm is based around. There is no reason to wall off the AFK chamber as Wardens can detect and attack players through walls, and most farms move the wardens before they could target players.