A Minecraft Iron Golem farm is quite haunting but incredibly useful. If you don’t mind spawning these gentle giants to lead them straight to their demise, an Iron Golem farm will generate stacks of one of the most useful resources, and best of all, this process can even be automated.
One of the few downsides of the Minecraft Caves and Cliffs update, one of the most important to come to one of the best PC games, is that iron is now harder to find in the sandbox game than ever. However, Minecraft Iron Golems drop between three and five iron ingots when they die (read: “are brutally lured to their death”). You can either manually bring them to life or – for an automated farm – force them to generate using their simple spawn requirements, so you can create a never-ending supply of iron without ever having to pick up your diamond pickaxe.
How to make an Iron Golem in Minecraft
While Iron Golems do spawn naturally in villages, the easiest way to meet one is to play god and create it yourself. Do this by placing four iron blocks in a T-shape, before adding a Jack O’Lantern or carved Minecraft pumpkin on top. The actual direction of the shape can be whatever you want, but the layout matters, and there has to be air in the four corners of the 9×9 square space. As soon as you place the pumpkin, the lifeless iron shape will spring to life.
If you don’t have the 36 iron ingots required, you can also find Iron Golems in pillager outposts. Here though, they are found inside cages, having been trapped by the pillagers. The good news is that you can free them, and they’ll then help you take care of the pillagers nearby, making them very powerful allies. We’ll let you decide whether this makes them harder to kill.
How to make an Iron Golem farm
If you still want to kill these creatures for their flesh, we won’t judge you much. There are loads of ways to do this, but you can find a simple, up-to-date tutorial in Shulkercraft’s video above.
Here’s what you’ll need to make a Minecraft Iron Golem farm:
- At least three Villagers
- A hostile mob
- Beds
- Hoppers
- Chests
- Lots of blocks
The number of items you need from the above list will depend on how big you want your farm: the more iron you want to farm, the larger your farm will be. As Iron Golems spawn in villages, the villagers are there to encourage the spawn – even when you’re not there. Then, since the golems are programmed to protect and kill any hostile mobs, having one of those in your farm will force the movement of the golem, leading it to its death, mostly likely by lava.
What is a Minecraft Iron Golem?
An Iron Golem is a neutral mob, but it serves a very good purpose. The primary function of these incredible things is to protect villagers, but they’ll also help protect you in most circumstances. That’s not all either, despite being able to punch the life out of most things, they’re also incredibly kind-hearted and can often be spotted offering villagers poppies that they can magically create in their hands.
Aside from that, they spend a lot of their time wandering around the villages they protect or standing guard nearby. They also don’t take any fall damage, they can’t drown (though they avoid water if possible), and will seek out most hostile Minecraft mobs within sixteen blocks of themselves. A word of warning though, if you upset the village they’re in, then they can turn on you permanently. If you reach -15 or less popularity, then you’ll make these imposing creatures your enemy. That’s right: no poppies for you.
Now you know how to make a Minecraft Iron Golem and how to farm them automatically, you’ll never be short on iron, which is a handy resource for the survival game. If this has got you wanting to automate even more, then take a look at some of the other Minecraft farms ideas you can build, and get some build ideas to improve their aesthetic. Do also check out the latest features coming in the Minecraft 1.20 update, as new items may use iron as part of their recipes.