Tutorial:Zombified Piglin farming

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.

A zombified piglin farm attached to a mob grinder.

Mechanics

Spawning

Zombified piglins primarily spawn in two ways, from natural spawning in the Nether, and from Nether portal blocks being random ticked. Natural spawning farms are generally better on Java Edition, but they are more complex because they rely on natural spawning. Portal-based farms are simpler to build and can be used in the Overworld, but are usually slower than natural spawning farms. However, on Bedrock Edition, if a portal turns on and off rapidly, then zombified piglins will spawn much faster. If this mechanic is used, then portal-based farms become better than natural spawning farms on Bedrock Edition.

Zombified piglins naturally spawn in the Nether in nether wastes and crimson forest biomes, with a higher spawn weight in nether wastes. They also spawn in nether fortresses in any biome. They follow basic monster spawning rules, and are counted towards the hostile mob cap. Like many other Nether monsters, zombified piglins are immune to fire, meaning they can spawn on magma blocks. Also like other Nether monsters, they spawn at a higher light level than Overworld monsters, spawning at light level 11 and lower. Nether portals create a light level of 11, meaning that zombified piglins can spawn directly inside them.

It is also possible to spawn zombified piglins by striking pigs in the overworld with lightning, which can prove to be a good - if sporadic - source of gold for players who don't wish to build a proper farm.

Shared aggression

If a zombified piglin is attacked by another entity, it will alert every other zombified piglin within a set distance, causing them to also become angry at the target, and this anger will be maintained indefinitely as long as an angry zombified piglin has line of sight with the target entity, and the target entity has not been killed. When angry, zombified piglins move more quickly than they do when passive.

Natural spawning farms

Simple farm

The easiest farm design is to dig out a small trench or pit in a nether wastes biome, then use the shared aggression of zombified piglins to lure all of them in the area into it where they can be easily killed without risk to the player. Although simple, this method isn't commonly recommended over others due to how slow it is, but it can be useful situationally.

Others' designs

ianxofour's design

This design is quite easy to build, and requires no spawn proofing, making it an ideal early game farm. An area is excavated directly below the bedrock ceiling in a nether wastes biome, and nether portals are constructed in the center with turtle eggs behind them. The zombified piglins are attracted to the turtle eggs, causing them to enter the portals. In the Overworld, a bridge is built in the air with a portal at each end. The zombified piglins push each other across the bridge, providing enough time for their portal cooldown to expire before they reach the second portal, which leads to a killing chamber high above the Nether roof, where the player can kill the zombified piglins with a sword enchanted with Looting III. The main downside of this design is that in multiplayer it requires a second player to be at the bridge in the Overworld to prevent the zombified piglins from despawning.

This design produces around 50,000 drops per hour with Looting III.

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 spawn and attempt to crush the turtle eggs, but 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 fall into a 3×2 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 it doesn't kill, whereas an iron golem sometimes kills 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.

DashPum4'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 get teleported to the overworld and float to another portal up in the sky using bubble elevators. The glass pillars are around 140 blocks long and it takes 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 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 necessary is a beacon that has strength, regeneration and resistance effects. Strength speeds up the killing process, allowing for more mobs to spawn. Both Regeneration and Resistance are needed for long AFK sessions to prevent you from dying from starvation. In 24 hours, it can get you from level 0 to level 862.

The gold farm uses a mechanic called "Boat Looting" where all zombified piglins are forced to enter the boat. The farm is built in the nether wastes biome and the spawning platform is made of magma blocks so only zombified piglins spawn and no other mobs and spawn on the platform. The zombified piglins go through the portal and up through the bubble columns then land on top of the killing chamber and pushed through the portal back to the Nether using sticky pistons and slime blocks with packed ice to let them slide through the portal much faster. The items are dropped under the powder snow and then collected by the hoppers. There's also chunk loaders in the overworld so that it functions properly in single player. Although it may seem hard, click the link to watch full video to understand how this farm works.

Glotz's design

By building a block of Nether portals above the Nether roof, skewed so that ghasts and magma cubes are unable to spawn, you can create a farm that teleports the zombified piglins to the overworld as soon as they are spawned. In the Overworld, the zombified piglins are lured out of the portal by a turtle egg, and fall down where they can be killed by a player. Unlike other designs, this one doesn't prevent regular piglins from spawning, but those that do spawn will zombify in the Overworld before teleporting back into the Nether. The main downside of this design is that it doesn't work on singleplayer at all without the use of mods, as a second player is required to be in the Nether to spawn the zombified piglins.

Nico is LOST's design

This design is very impractical for most players and is not recommended due to the high amount of required bedrock breaking, but it represents the absolute limit of zombified piglin farming without the use of world border portal linking mechanics. Despite being much smaller than Glotz's design, this farm achieves higher rates thanks to more optimized spawning. By removing the nether roof and bedrock floor, building the spawning platform at y=0, and creating a spawn proofed area around the farm, it's possible to achieve almost perfect spawning rates, with almost every spawning attempt finding a valid location. The zombified piglins immediately enter a nether portal and get teleported to the Overworld, where they are killed.

World border designs

When a nether portal is built at a location that would link outside the world border in the Overworld - beyond approximately 30 million blocks in any direction - they will link to the nearest location within the world border. This allows for linking significantly more portals to a single portal in the Overworld than would otherwise be possible. This enables building large spawning areas that will all link to a single killing chamber.

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 open trapdoors on the edges of the bottom obsidian blocks, so that zombified piglins (ZPs) 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. Make sure that all your farm portals lead into a containment area where the ZPs are 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 that they 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 5×5, to have a single center block) out to the maximum of 23×23. 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 takes 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 5×23×5 square of portals surrounded by a 7×23×7 square, and so on out to a 23×23×23 cube (the tops and bottoms 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 allows ZPs to spawn and wander into the drop or push each other into it. The turtle eggs become 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 3×3 shaft, which can easily be narrowed to 1×1. (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 5×5 portal is surrounded by a 9×9 portal, then 13×13, and so on, all of them up to 23 blocks high. This way, ZPs 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:
    • 5×23×5: 40+92-16=116 obsidian, 6 logs
    • 9×23×9: 72+92-16= 148 obsidian, 18 logs
    • 13×23×13: 180 obsidian, 30 logs
    • 17×23×17: 212 obsidian, 42 logs
    • 21×17×21: 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 27×27 water pan, with two levels.. You 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 9×9 pan surrounding the 1×1 drop chute. Move up a level to surround it with the rest of the large pan -- slabs or blocks suffice 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 25×25 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 also work, without the half-step.
    • Surround this with the 27×27 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); the flow runs 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 sends the water flow to the other edges of the inner pan. Warning: If you do try to finish the ring of water sources, you get new water sources forming from the corners, and your nice neat collector turns into a sheet of sources that floods over the inner pan.

Regardless, the mobs gather to a central point, generally a 1×1 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 starts to kill them 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 lets 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 are 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 eventually calm down.

This farm rewards 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 yields no swords.

Overworld - Bedrock Edition

While on Java Edition you need a large amount of portals for an effective farm, on Bedrock Edition you can make much faster gold farms with far fewer portals by making the portals rapidly turn on and off. You need at least one 23×23 portal with an activation + deactivation system and a system to catch the zombified piglins.

We have two options at our disposal for the activation system.

1. A dispenser with flint and steel in it, with a redstone clock attached to ignite the portal every self-set amount of ticks. Positive: This works even with fire spreads turned off. Negative: You need lots of flint and steel, because they wear out pretty quickly.
2. With lava on top of observers, that update trapdoors next to it. This attempts to ignite the portal every game tick. The lava must be exposed to air above. Positive: System always works, requiring no additional resources after construction. 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 or preferably a powder snow bucket. A redstone clock let the dispenser dispense the water or powder snow 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 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 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 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 is transferred onto the trident and we get more loot with each kill.

This video shows how to make a fully automatic farm:

This video shows how to make another fully automatic farm but with a complete sorting system underneath with 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 that can then be smelted into golden nuggets.