Pick a farm
13 designs, scaled to however long you plan to AFK
Projected output
What Iron Golem Farm (4-cell) yields over 1h
| Item | Per hour | Total |
|---|---|---|
| Iron ingot | 3,000 | 3,000 |
| Poppy | 1,200 | 1,200 |
Stack 4 villager pods. Requires beds + workstations. AFK 64+ blocks below the kill chamber.
Why rates vary
Mob caps, simulation distance and Looting
The numbers above assume vanilla Java, default difficulty, an optimal AFK position, no nearby mob caps, and chunk loading active.
The hostile mob cap base is 70 — the actual per-player cap scales with how many chunks are loaded around you (roughly 70 × loaded_chunks ÷ 289). Mobs only count if their chunk center is within 128 blocks horizontally of a player, so light up caves inside that sphere or your tower falls behind.
Simulation distance in server settings caps how many chunks tick mobs. Drop it on weak hosts, but expect to lose throughput.
Looting raises the maximum common drop count by +1 per level (Looting III = +3 max) and gives rare drops an extra roll per level. Apply it to the killing weapon for maximum output.
Last verified for Minecraft 26.2
More Minecraft tools
The rest of the set, for the parts of the farm this one doesn't touch
Frequently asked questions
Mob caps, AFK platforms and maximum spawn rates
How does the mob cap work in Minecraft? +
The hostile mob global cap is 70 in Java Edition (per minecraft.wiki/w/Mob_spawning). When multiple players are loading mob-eligible chunks, that cap is split across them. Mobs only spawn within a 128-block sphere around each player.
Do I need an AFK platform for a mob farm? +
Yes — players must stay within 128 blocks for mobs to spawn, and below 24 blocks for natural despawn protection of the farm itself.
What's the maximum mob spawn rate I can achieve? +
With proper light/level/biome conditions and an AFK platform, the global hostile cap (70 in Java) is filled near-instantly: the hostile spawn cycle runs every game tick — 20 attempts per second — per minecraft.wiki/w/Mob_spawning. Throughput is then gated by how fast you kill or pipe mobs out of the spawnable area.