5 best mobs to farm in Minecraft in 2022

A cow crusher on a survival world (Image via Minecraft)

Minecraft has many mobs. There are several dozen mobs in the game, ranging from passive mobs that will never attack the player to neutral mobs that will only attack the player if provoked. The passive mobs include many farm animals in Minecraft, and the neutral mobs include wolves and endermen, as well as hostile mobs that will attack on sight, including the game’s iconic creeper.

Most of these mobs have drops that are either unique or incredibly helpful, such as the creeper dropping gunpowder for firework rockets, or endermen dropping ender pearls to access the End dimension to beat Minecraft.

Detailed below are five of the best mobs to farm in Minecraft, either for their XP or for their useful drops.

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The five most useful mobs to farm in Minecraft

5) Cows

Cows are an incredible early-game mob to set up a farm for. This is due to how simple the farm is to build and also how useful the drops from cows are in the early game.

For example, cows drop raw beef, which is cooked into steak, an incredibly useful food for the entirety of Minecraft. Cows also drop leather, which is vital for new survival worlds. This is because leather turns into books, then bookshelves that are needed to get level 30 enchantments from an enchanting table.

The cow farm, known as a cow crusher, is incredibly simple, with the most advanced component being a single dispenser. The farm uses entity crushing to kill off adult cows, dropping their beef and leather into a hopper, leaving the remaining adults and baby cows for the future.

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4) Wither

The Wither is a strange mob to list as a good mob to farm as it is a boss mob. However, players can set up an area in which the Wither is spawned, which is inside of the end’s bedrock portal frame. This causes them to instantly die and drop their nether star. This star can be used to make a beacon, one of Minecraft’s most powerful player buffing features.

Additionally, players can use a different style of farm to cause the Wither to kill other mobs. This will cause the mobs to drop wither roses that can be used in other farms to kill mobs as they deal contact damage. While wither roses are not something that players need in abundance, they are nice to be able to farm.

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3) Endermen

Endermen are the main focus of the first farm that players should build after killing the ender dragon. Players should build a farm roughly 100 blocks away from the main island since it will cause all endermen to spawn in the farm. From here, the clever placement of an Endermite will cause the Endermen to fall into a hole, taking enough damage to leave them with half a heart.

From there, players can kill huge numbers of Endermen. This makes for one of the best XP farms the game has, and will also give players ample Ender pearls if they prefer using these consumable teleportation items to traverse the world.

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2) Iron golems

Iron is one of the most useful resources in Minecraft. It is used to make shields, which are often the only thing that keeps players alive in sticky situations. It can also be used to make hoppers, which nearly every automated farm uses as a means to move output items into temporary storage systems for players to collect.

Thus, Iron golem farms are very useful. As iron golems drop a few iron ingots on death, and the farms are simple enough to build in the first few days of a new world, there really is no reason not to set up an iron farm. Especially, if the players set it up in a chunk that is always loaded, it will run in the background until players need the iron within.

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1) Witches

Witches are an interesting mob. They are typically very rare and serve as almost a miniboss for a typical night of cave exploration. They are able to heal themselves and poison the player. However, players can make farms for them, surrounding the witch huts that can be found in the game’s swamps.

Witches are an incredibly useful mob to farm as they drop a plethora of useful items, including sticks for villager trading, redstone for components and farms, glowstone for light and potions, gunpowder for TNT, and firework rockets, sugar for food and potions, and sider eyes for potions.