Zombified piglin farming is a method of obtaining gold nuggets and rotten flesh renewably by using spawn platforms or nether portals to spawn zombified piglins and moving them to a killing zone. The rotten flesh and gold nuggets can be traded to cleric villagers in large amounts to gain emeralds easily.
Nether[]
To construct a farm in the Nether, one can build platforms for zombified piglins to spawn on, with trapdoors on the edge, and place slabs on the floors of all surrounding areas (or just fill them in), so zombified piglins only spawn on those platforms.
Simple farm 1[]
The simplest zombified piglin farm is to dig a 3x3x1 trench and make a layer of dirt leaving a 1 block space. Shoot zombified piglins and swipe at them with a sword on their legs after they jumped into the trench. Turn on subtitles, so you can hear when you can come out. To get maximum spawn rates, slab off the blocks in a 128 block diameter. It is done! You can also use magma blocks which only zombified piglin can spawn on (if you are on 1.16).
Put hoppers connected to a large chest to collect the loot more easily rather than attaching a door to the trench since more zombified piglins might jump in and attack.
Farm with cactus[]
Another strategy is to place cactus in the nether, and then stand on a block on top of it. Shoot ranged weapons at zombified piglins to anger them, and they converge on the cactus, which helps to kill them.
ianxofour's gold farm[]
This farm is fairly easy to build, though it requires some digging so a Diamond Pickaxe enchanted with Efficiency II or up is recommended. The farm's optimal location is in a nether wastes biome below the nether roof. The zombified piglins are attracted to the turtle eggs hidden behind the portal and will attempt to crack them, only for them to be teleported to the overworld. In the overworld, 2 portals are built high up in the air, one where the zombified piglins came from and one where the killing chamber is located. The zombified piglins will gradually push each other to go to the second portal and go to the killing chamber, making it an easy kill for the player. The production rates are good, though the only problem for this farm is when another player is in the overworld, the piglins will despawn and the second issue is it has no dedicated storage, meaning players can either make a primitive one or an automatic sorter.
Ilmango's design[]
Ilmango's design consists of 3 circular shaped platforms made from magma blocks. The donut-shaped platforms start at y= 247, then the 2nd and 3rd layers start at 250 and 253 respectively. At y= 256, build a circular glass platform to prevent ghasts from spawning. Also, the farm had satellite piglins stationed around the farm, so that when new piglins spawn, they instantly get angry at the player. The killing method is fairly simple but expensive. The piglins are killed using entity cramming, and because they're angry at you, they also drop XP. There are around 4 holes the piglins can fall on, and each hole contains 24 minecarts, for a total of 96 minecarts (requires around 480 iron to make). The average gold block rate for the farm is 130 blocks per hour, and can get you from level 0 to level 130+ in around 30 minutes.
Gnembon's gold farm[]
Gnembon's gold farm consists of 19 small circular shaped platforms. How it works is that piglins will spawn and attempt to crush the turtle eggs, but will instead fall to the killing chamber, where they are to be killed. The killing chamber itself has 2 modes, automatic and manual. In the automatic method, the piglins are killed with fall damage, which doesn't drop XP and it makes around 130 gold blocks per hour. The manual method meanwhile, gives XP and can get you to around level 130+ in 30 minutes. Aside XP, it also produces around 600 gold blocks per hour with a Looting III sword, making it one of the most powerful gold farms out there. The only issues with it are: its complicated structure especially the redstone system and it also requires some spawnproofing below the bedrock, which might take some time.
Rays Works gold farm 1[]
In this design, there are 2 rectangle shaped platforms, with a slab roof on top to prevent ghasts from spawning. The AFK centre is connected by a path of slabs and the piglins are killed through entity cramming with minecarts. Unlike Ilmango's design, only one hole is present and is also extremely efficient, and you can reach Level 130+ in one hour. Also like Ilmango's design, there's one satellite pigman to order new piglins to attack the player, although only one is present.
A slightly modified version is designed by Namiature. The difference is instead of entity cramming, the piglins will fall into a 3x2 area, with the players sweeping on the piglins with a Looting III sword to multiply its efficiency.
Rays Works gold farm 2[]
Rays Works would later make another design consisting of only one layer. The zombified piglins are attracted to the middle of the spawning platforms by a turtle egg and either an iron golem or zoglin and are killed using fall damage (Using a zoglin is more efficient as they won't kill, whereas an iron golem will sometimes kill before they fall). The farm also drops XP as the zombified piglins are made angry by the iron golem/zoglin before they die. The farm is pretty fast in terms of XP, getting you to approximately level 80 in 15 minutes.
Dashpum's gold farm[]
This gold farm is one of the most powerful gold farms out there, able to make 1600 gold blocks per hour. The farm consists of 34 circular-shaped platforms. In the middle of these platforms, there are 4 portals and an egg hidden in the middle to attract the piglins. They'll get teleported to the overworld and will float to another portal up in the sky using bubble elevators. The glass pillars are around 140 blocks long and it will take around 50 seconds for the zombified piglins to enter the second portal, which is enough time for them to enter another portal. The second portal leads to the killing chamber, which by the way had boats to have an unlimited mob cap of mobs. Just like the other designs, the spawning platforms had a glass roof to stop ghasts from spawning. Other bonus thing that are recommended although not necesarry is a beacon that has strength, regeneration and resistance effects. Strength speeds up the killing process allowing for more mobs to spawn and both regen and resistance are if you're gonna do long AFK sessions and will prevent you from dying from starvation. In 24 hours, it can get you from level 0 to level 862.
Overworld - Java version[]
For Bedrock specific farms see the next chapter below.
To build a farm in the Overworld, one can build a lot of large nether portals, interlocked to save obsidian, and put signs or open trapdoors on the edges of the bottom obsidian blocks, so that zombified piglins (ZPs) will walk off. From here, one can use water to collect them into a fall or suffocation trap. Snow golems can be an alternative for pushing them around, or at least getting them moving.
One fundamental problem with Overworld gold farms is that it is occasionally possible for angered ZPs to return to the Nether through a portal, and perhaps anger others while there. Without proper precautions, you may be ambushed by one or more angry ZPs when they return to the Nether though a nearby portal. You will need to make sure that all your farm portals lead into a containment area where the ZPs will be isolated. This area should have enough room for any mobs there to get away from the portal for their 15 second cooldown, so that they can then go back to the Overworld. (Also include a fence-gate exit, just in case you stumble in yourself!) Similarly, one must be careful not to use a portal in the Nether which takes them into the farm for the same reason. Returnees can be minimized by use of turtle eggs to lure zombified piglins out of the portals. This ensures they will move and fall even without players nearby.
Since the availability of larger portals, it is no longer necessary to make a prism of portals as large portals can do as well. However, the same practice can still be used to make a hyper-efficient farm by building portals in concentric rings (one open to each cardinal direction) from a small inner ring (usually 5x5, to have a single center block) out to the maximum of 23x23. Note that even the inner ring can be 23 blocks tall (more portal blocks mean more spawns). A ring of size n and height h will take 8(n-1) +4(h-2) = 8n+4h-16 obsidian, with 4(n-3) =4n-12 trapdoors (3n-9 logs) needed to line the inside. If all the portals are to be 23-tall, the obsidian cost can be simplified to 8n+76.
- The extreme here is to put the nether portals directly adjacent, with a 5x23x5 square of portals surrounded by a 7x23x7 square, and so on out to a 23x23x23 cube (the tops and bottoms will merge into a solid ceiling and floor, with the portal sides forming diagonals). This can culminate with 10,080 portal blocks, using 1,800 obsidian for a maximum space efficiency of 82.8%. Walling off the outer side of the largest portals and placing trapdoors on the edge of the smallest inner portals will allow ZPs to spawn and wander into the drop or push each other into it. The turtle eggs become very important here, as the ZPs from outer portals need to move all the way to the center. Contrary to intuition, they can't actually go to the Nether: They have the same 15 second cooldown as if they had actually come through the portal, so they can't go through until they have gotten away from that solid mass of portal blocks for 15 seconds. And when they do reach the middle, they should be going down that 3x3 shaft, which can easily be narrowed to 1x1. (Of course, make sure of the Nether containment area anyway, just to be safe!)
- A slightly less expensive scheme is to alternate portals with empty rings, with the inside bottoms of each portal lined with open trapdoors. That is, the 5x5 portal is surrounded by a 9x9 portal, then 13x13, and so on, all of them up to 23 blocks high. This way, ZPs will fall much more quickly, and a large water pan can collect them to a central point.
- The build can be done in stages, according to resources:
- 5x23x5: 40+92-16=116 obsidian, 6 logs
- 9x23x9: 72+92-16= 148 obsidian, 18 logs
- 13x23x13: 180 obsidian, 30 logs
- 17x23x17: 212 obsidian, 42 logs
- 21x17x21: 244 obsidian, 54 logs
- total: 900 obsidian (14 stacks and change), 150 logs.
- If you still want more, you can ditch the trapdoors and upgrade it in place to the "solid" version above.
- The simplest collector is a 27x27 water pan, with two levels.. You will need 676 blocks and/or slabs (most of them can be slabs) plus 104 for each perimeter block (each layer in the outer wall), not counting any doorways or decorations you may add.
- Start with a classic 9x9 pan surrounding the 1x1 drop chute. Move up a level to surround it with the rest of the large pan -- slabs or blocks will do for most of this, but at the inner/outer border you'll want real blocks, so you can place water on them.
- The outermost ring of the pan should be a 25x25 square of walls or fences on the same level as the pan bottom -- that is, you'd have a half-step up from the outer pan to the fences. Iron bars or glass will also work, without the half-step.
- Surround this with the 27x27 outer wall.
- Now the water sources:
- As usual, the inner pan gets a water source at each corner, which should send the flow in to surround the hole.
- For the outer pan, water sources go every other block on top of the fences (place them against the outer wall), but not in a complete ring. First place the sources every other space along two opposite edges (north/south or east/west); you will see the flow running exactly to the edge of the inner pan, straight across the entire outer pan. For the other two edges, place 5 sources on each side, covering that dry middle third. (Still every other space; one at the midpoint, and two on each side.) This will send the water flow to the other edges of the inner pan. Warning: If you do try to finish the ring of water sources, you will get new water sources forming from the corners, and your nice neat collector will turn into a sheet of sources that floods over the inner pan.
- The build can be done in stages, according to resources:
Regardless, the mobs will be gathered to a central point, generally a 1x1 dropshaft. At the full scale of this farm, a complex grinder is unecessary: The farm can produce enough spawns that simply forcing them all into a single space will start killing them off through crowding ("suffocation"). They can be dropped onto a bottom-slab exposing their feet to you, with a hopper beneath that which can go to an item sorter. This setup has three main modes of operation:
- The crowding damage will let the farm run unattended as long as a player is close enough to keep the mobs from despawning, producing a stream of gold nuggets and rotten flesh.
- Alternatively, you can take your Looting III sword and kill the ZPs manually, for about three times the gold and some grindstone experience.
- Or, the two can be combined: Wield the Looting sword, but don't use it (much). Let the ZPs accumulate in the catcher, but occasionally punch one of them to aggro the group, then immediately go back to the Looting sword. Once the crushing damage sets in, their deaths will be considered your kills, yielding experience and the more generous gold drops. The catch here is that you need to stay mostly in front of the ZPs, to maintain the aggro -- if you move out of line-of-sight, their forgiveness timer starts ticking and they will eventually calm down.
This farm will reward at least a minimal item sorter setup, if only to divert the rotten flesh away from more valuable stuff. After that, separating out nuggets leaves the occasional gold ingots, and unstackable golden swords (and occasional armor). For the rotten flesh, it's likely worth setting up some system to automatically destroy overflow from the system. (Bringing in a cleric villager is also an option.) For gold nuggets, you'll just need to regularly check the chest, and craft the take into more compact ingots or blocks. Swords can be sent to a blast furnace by way of a double-chest; every so often check the chest and hoppers for enchanted swords you can feed to the grindstone (and then put back to be smelted). When enough swords have accumulated, drop some fuel in the blast furnace to clear out the chest.
Channeling trident[]
A different way to spawn zombified piglins is to have a pig struck by lightning, meaning a trident enchanted with Channeling can be used in combination with pig breeders for an Overworld gold farm that requires no obsidian such as the design in this video: Note that this method will yield no swords.
Glotz' gold farm[]
This farm is arguably the most powerful one in Minecraft Java. It consists of 24 portals stacked together, with both zombified and normal piglins instantly spawning on the portals. Then they're gonna get teleported to the overworld (except the piglins, as they're gonna get teleported back to the nether). Once in the overworld, they will be attracted to the turtle egg in front of the portal and will fall to the killing chamber. In the chamber, there's an armour stand on which the player will hit to sweep the piglins and kill them. The rates of the farm is 44,000 gold ingots per hour or 4,444 gold blocks per hour, significantly more powerful than Dashpum's gold farm. Due to the sheer amount of loot you can acquire, a huge complex storage system is needed to be constructed, coupled with shulker loaders. A beacon is also recommended for long AFK sessions to avoid starving to death. A crafting system is also recommended to quick craft all the gold nuggets to gold ingots.
Overworld - Bedrock version[]
For Bedrock Edition there is only one way to make a portal system function properly in the overworld. You need a portal of 23x23 with an activation + deactivation system and a catch system for the zombified piglins to fall in.
We have two options at our disposal for the activation system.
- A dispenser with flint and steel in it, with a redstone clock attached to ignite the portal every self set amount of ticks. Positive: A cheap way to light portal. Negative: You need lots of flint and steel, because they wear out pretty quickly.
- With lava on top of observers, that update trapdoors next to it. This will try to ignite the portal every game tick. Positive: System will always work, without extra supplies. Negative: Observers are not cheap to craft and you generally need 6 to start with.
The deactivation system has to be done with a dispenser containing a water bucket. A redstone clock will let the dispenser, dispense the water every self set amount of ticks.
- Manual farm
You can make a cheap and simple manual farm, where you just catch the mobs as they spawn from the portal, then transport them to a kill chamber for manual killing. This would be the cheapest way to construct the farm.
With the maximum looting on a sword, you'll get XP, gold nuggets, gold ingots, rotten flesh and gold swords. The swords can be smelted down to gold nuggets as well.
Some swords are also enchanted and before smelting them, you could use a grindstone to un-enchant them and receive extra XP from them.
This video shows how to make a manual killing farm:
- Falling farm
The next option that is fairly cheap to construct a farm, is a falling farm. We catch the zombified piglins after spawning and transport them to a drop chute. Where after a fall of more than 24 blocks they will die and drop gold nuggets and rotten flesh.
- Fall breaker farm
Instead of letting the zombified piglins fall to their death, we can also use a fall breaker to make sure they get damaged, but don't die. This allows us to use a looting sword to get XP, gold nuggets, gold ingots, golden swords and rotten flesh. Depending on the height of the drop, you can make sure that you could kill the zombified piglins with only one blow. Making it easy to kill and less hard on your sword in terms of durability.
- Automatic farm
When we place a trident killer at the bottom of the drop chute, we instantly have a farm that kills the zombified piglins automatically. The trident killer consists of a kill chamber with pistons and a trident in the middle. The pistons push the zombified piglins around and against the trident. This way they get damaged each time they hit the trident, until they die. This then gives us XP, rotten flesh, gold nuggets, gold ingots and golden swords. If we hold a looting sword when in the area of the farm, the looting will be transferred onto the trident and we get more loot with each kill.
This video shows how to make a fully automatic farm with a complete sorting system underneath and furnaces for smelting the swords:
Item filtering[]
It is also possible to make a fully automatic farm using a more advanced setup. Because many of the zombified piglin farms produce a significant amount of golden swords, which may quickly clog up a player's storage system, an item filtering system can be used to filter out the rotten flesh, gold nuggets, and gold ingots. A redstone clock can be installed to a dispenser, and if hooked up correctly, the item filtering system can be used to spit the swords into a furnace which can then be smelted into golden nuggets.