Day-1 iron farm (iron armour on your first day)

258 iron an hour · 544 blocks · 0.47 an hour per block · 8 iron to build · underground farm with a sideways chute

Villagers scared by a zombie summon iron golems; the farm kills them and collects their iron in a chest.

To build it: 8 iron in hand, 1 bucket of lava and 3 villagers from the village. Starts by itself the first night. Restarts by itself when you come back after days away.

38 minutes from the first block to a full set of iron armour, then 258 iron an hour · needs no redstone

258 iron an hourIron farm3D view loading (or not available in this browser)

Try it

Press play to watch it work: the villagers sleep at night and panic at the zombie by day, golems spawn and die, and the hoppers carry their iron to the chest; the top right counts the game's time, the golems and the iron. The magenta floor is where a golem can spawn, seen through the blocks (Spawn spots hides it). The chest tagged OUT, under the last hopper, collects the iron. In the game, build it and wait near it.

How this design does it: Day-1 iron farm dug into the ground beside a village: two villagers on their beds watch a zombie parked in a boat and keep summoning iron golems.

Build it

Download .litematic Download the design as text

The .litematic opens in Litematica (Minecraft 26.3): every block of the design in one region. The text file is the same build written as plain text, block by block.

Pour in the water and the lava where the view shows them.

Blocks used: chest cobblestone cobblestone slab hopper lava oak boat oak button oak fence gate oak pressure plate oak trapdoor oak wall sign red bed villager wall torch water

What it is made of

Each part of this farm, what it takes to build, and the version of it this farm uses: follow a part to see its other versions side by side.

part	this farm's	blocks placed	blocks dug	build time
Villager cage	its own · other versions	14	23	14 min
Sleep trigger	its own · other versions	1	0	6 s
Golem spawn area	its own · other versions	26	0	2 min
Golem drop	its own · other versions	15	329	7 min
Kill chamber	its own · other versions	16	81	5 min
Collection	its own · other versions	2	0	3 min
Access	its own · other versions	2	31	44 s
At the farm's spot	25 cobblestone slabs capping stray golem spots and 23 cobblestone seals	53	97	counted above
The whole farm		129	561	32 min

Details: how it works, measurements and properties

In depth

villagers scared by a zombie summon iron golems; the farm kills them and collects their iron in a chest

How to try it

Press play to run the farm. The villagers sleep in their beds at night and panic at the zombie by day, golems spawn, fall and die in the lava, and the hoppers carry their iron and poppies to the chest. The chest tagged OUT, under the last hopper, collects the iron. The top right shows the game's time, the golems so far and the iron in the chest; the speed menu plays it faster or slower. Drag to look around, pinch or scroll to zoom.

Measurements

On Hard, through rain, thunder and lightning.

metric	value	what it means
iron per hour per block	0.47	iron ingots an hour for each block you place
iron per hour	258	iron ingots an hour
iron range	95% 253-263	the range its rate falls in, 95% sure
golems per hour	64.9	iron golems an hour
seconds per golem	55.4	the time between two golems
share of ceiling	54%	how close it comes to the game's limit: one golem every 30 seconds for each group of villagers
modules	1	groups of villagers that each summon golems on their own
iron per hour per module	258	iron ingots an hour for each group of villagers
kill	24.65 s	how long a golem lives before the farm kills it, at the longest
kill tail	the longest 33.8 s: no golem outlived 1 min in 10,390 golems (95% bound 0.03% a golem)
golems at the zombie	0 of 10,390 golems targeted the farm's zombie
lips	none (no golem stands dry beside a current)
restarts after a missed night	yes	whether it starts again by itself after a night its villagers could not sleep (rain at dusk, a storm, you away)
restarts after days away	yes (unloaded or not ticking	whether it starts again by itself when you come back after days away
back	by day or at night: the first golem 0.0-0.1 h after the return)
rain	clear day 259 iron/h; rain day 259 iron/h; thunder day 255 iron/h	iron an hour on a clear day, a rainy day and a stormy day
lightning	about 0.0 iron lost per thunderstorm; no villager ever turned into a witch; the zombie's boat broken never; a fire that can reach the farm (its flammable blocks or mobs or drop path) never; site note: a fire on the site that cannot reach the farm about every 7.6 game days; AFK spot struck: about every 1,627 game days (a 7 x 7 opaque non-flammable roof over the player's column with its block 4 above the player's feet prevents it: a single block over its column does not); no natural flammable block lies on a fire's way to the farm; a skeleton trap horse on the farm about every 390,300 game days (every 5,577 game days of thunder; a lightning rod topping its column within 128 blocks prevents it); a skeleton trap horse that triggers (within 10 blocks of the AFK spot) about every 3,839 game days (a lightning rod within 128 blocks topping its column takes the bolts: none then); lightning never breaks the farm; thunderstorms 1.4% of the time (5 min 10.55 s each on average)	what thunderstorms cost: the iron a strike burns, and how often a strike turns a villager into a witch, breaks the zombie's boat or starts a fire
thunder loss	0.0	iron lost for each hour of thunder
sunburn	never (the zombie never sees the sky)	whether the zombie can burn in daylight
fire	never	whether the lava can set the farm on fire
bill	8 iron, 0 quartz, 3 villagers, 3 beds, 1 zombie	what it costs in survival: iron (hoppers, the bucket and every tool you need), quartz, villagers, beds
payback	2 min	how long the farm takes to make back the iron it cost
build time	32 min at day-1 prices (129 placed with 25 cobblestone slabs capping stray golem spots and 23 cobblestone seals, 561 dug (the stair down to the chest: 84 dug, 5 placed), 1 lava trips, 3 villagers moved; the most: 561 dig 561 s, 3 villager_moved 540 s, 1 zombie 180 s, 1 hopper 154 s, 129 place 129 s, 1 lava_trip 120 s, 1 tool:bucket 90 s, 184 travel:stairs 46 s)	about how long the build takes: placing and digging its blocks, fetching the lava, moving the villagers in
time to an iron kit	38 min at the cheapest spot (from dawn of day 1 until the chest holds 24 iron; runs 37-40 min; 38-40 min over the 12 nearest spots)	about how long from starting the build to a full set of iron armour (24 iron), its own iron counted
build minutes	31.8
t kit minutes	38.3
collecting	14 s per trip to the chest (2 x its depth, 29 layers
at	the access's speed)
iron per hour sleeping	292
volume per module	3,528
entities alive	5.5
entities peak	8
tools	bucket 3	the tools you need and the iron each one costs: a bucket for lava and water, shears for leaves, an iron pickaxe for redstone dust
lava sources	1	lava source blocks to bring: one bucket trip each
materials	day 1	the stage of the game its materials need: day 1, the Nether (quartz, slime, magma...) or the End
chunk columns	2	how many 16 x 16 chunk columns it covers
storage	6.0 h (32 slots; 65 poppies/h)	how long its chests and hoppers hold the iron and poppies before they fill
hoppers per 1000 iron/h	3.9	hoppers for each 1000 iron an hour: each hopper costs the server a little work every tick
spot	village-edge at -351 61 246 (the cheapest of the 12 nearest valid spots)
exposures	in village-edge (-351,246): C2 entry bat 462 cells; C4 presence village villager 702 cells
village	golem 1,361; C5 reach baby zombie 6 cells
cave	spider 6
pillager	6
skeleton	6
slime	6
zombie	6; C8 creepers creeper 83 cells
creeper	109; C10 flyers phantom 1 cells
build minutes	flat 31.9
villagers	left 5
hostile	break days exposed: C8 creepers
redstone dust	none	the redstone dust its blocks take to craft (a repeater or a comparator 3, an observer 2, a piston 1...): redstone ore needs an iron pickaxe to mine

Notes from its designer

Day-1 iron farm dug into the ground beside a village: two villagers on their beds watch a zombie parked in a boat and keep summoning iron golems. At nightfall a third villager lies down in its bed, its pressure plate lets go and a trapdoor hides the zombie: the two fall asleep, then see it again from their beds and wake scared, so golems come day and night. Golems appear on a water pad 7 blocks down; its water carries them sideways along a channel cut through the rock to a pit 17 blocks away, too far for the villagers to sense them, so they summon the next golem while one burns in the pit's corner under one lava source; the iron drops into a hopper and a chest below it. Nothing is built on the surface: the farm lies deep enough that no golem can appear up there.

Properties

Study	Mob farms
Kind	Day-1 iron farm (iron armour on your first day)
Blocks placed	544
Box	6×21×28 (3528 blocks of space)
Inputs / outputs	no input / OUT
Flags	variation
Design file	`d1u-side`

The design file

on GitHub

Design file (647 lines)

# Iron farm: 258 iron an hour · 544 blocks · 0.47 an hour per block · 8 iron to build · underground farm with a sideways chute
# https://vjeux.github.io/redstonepedia/farms/iron/d1u-side.html
# CIRCUIT: seconds per golem 55.5
name: iron-day1-underground-side-6
afk: 2.5 12 4.5
circuit: mob-farm iron_ingot
ground: 11
how: water carries golems sideways to a pit beyond the villagers' reach
restart: yes
terrain: cells
port output: 0 -17 17
entity: minecraft:villager 0.5 0.5625 0.5
entity: minecraft:villager 2.5 0.5625 0.5
entity: minecraft:oak_boat 2.5 0.5 -6.8 {Passengers:[{id:"minecraft:zombie"}]}
entity: minecraft:villager 3.5 2 -5.5
origin: 0 0 -8
palette:
  A minecraft:air
  B minecraft:cobblestone_slab[type=bottom,waterlogged=false]
  C minecraft:chest[facing=north,type=single,waterlogged=false]
  D minecraft:cobblestone_slab[type=top,waterlogged=false]
  E minecraft:oak_fence_gate[facing=north,in_wall=false,open=true,powered=false]
  F minecraft:oak_pressure_plate[powered=false]
  G minecraft:oak_trapdoor[facing=south,half=bottom,open=true,powered=false,waterlogged=false]
  H minecraft:hopper[enabled=true,facing=down]
  I minecraft:oak_trapdoor[facing=west,half=top,open=false,powered=false,waterlogged=false]
  J minecraft:oak_wall_sign[facing=east,waterlogged=false]
  K minecraft:oak_wall_sign[facing=south,waterlogged=false]
  L minecraft:lava[level=0]
  M minecraft:red_bed[facing=west,occupied=false,part=foot]
  N minecraft:red_bed[facing=west,occupied=false,part=head]
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  R minecraft:red_bed[facing=north,occupied=false,part=foot]
  W minecraft:wall_torch[facing=east]
  c minecraft:cobblestone
  o minecraft:oak_button[face=wall,facing=south,powered=false]
  r minecraft:red_bed[facing=north,occupied=false,part=head]
  w minecraft:water[level=0]
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