How to Design a High Efficiency Gold Farm

A deepdive into gold farms! Hope you enjoy.
Join the discord for access to our free, public SMP, technical support, and just generally good vibes.
Discord Link:
discord.nicoislost.com
For perks like early access, video shoutouts, and exclusive world downloads join my patreon, it is really appreciated:
/ nicoislost
As always feel free to comment if you have any questions.
Portal Farm Credits:
@ilmango: • Maximum Possible XP Fa...
@RaysWorks: • Quick AFK Portal Gold/...
Natural Spawning Credits:
@gnembon: • Simple yet Powerful Go...
@ianxofour: • Minecraft Elegance: In...
@DashPum4: • Minecraft Boat Looting...
@JustGlotz: • How to make the FASTES...
#Redstone #Minecraft #gold
00:00 Introduction
01:44 The Fundamentals (fundimentals...)
02:17 Portal Spawning Gold Farms
07:33 Natural Spawning Farms
09:26 Aggression Based Spawning Farms
14:33 Non-Aggression Based Spawning Farms
17:51 Optimizing Pigmen Farms
23:24 Ultra High Efficiency Pigman Farm

[@NicoisLOST]

Note: Gold farms are also GREAT XP farms! I forgot to mention that at all. Also, the JustGlotz farm can be built under the nether roof as a bridge between the portal spam on the roof and the MEOL (Mock-EOL, I.e. the last farm). It won't require breaking any bedrock but does require a world eater. @Strome showcases this farm in his video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/enmZanaVgNqjd9ksi=isL589M_TYyDMxhF . Also! World border farms are very much faster, but I kind of consider them a niche option, and focus on farms that are in "normal applications", which is defined arbitrarily... ;-]

[@MysticDeer-tu4ei]

Just tried making a pigeon farm and got 4 baby zombie Piglins in a row I think that the chance for that is like 1 in 375 k or so (R.I.P)

[@captainfishpants682]

Yeah that's the reason people not use looting with aggro farms. They are basically AFK. and some servers don't allow auto clicking etc.

[@Maelt_]

They are great xp farms, but that is a WHOLE other topic. (most gold farms will give the same amount of xp, due to the size of the xp orbs they drop).

[@Annoyance1969]

I personally think that you should have mentioned the updated suppressed MEOL farm (suppressed portals on magma blocks in two chunks) as it is reasonable in terms of effort (only about 100 hours of manual work). Also extra mobcaps are a method that would exponentially increase the efficiency of the poor quality farms and trivial to set up in survival. And world border gold farms are reasonable to build in survival (maybe not the update suppressed version, but the 80% efficiency version is something that anyone could build)

[@penguinminecraft]

I would like to add that EOL means end of light and is not what the farm you showed means. That is a sliced portal farm and is the same concept as glotz, just with lower heightmap because built at y0 and has sliced portals. If Mojang patches "EOL" that would mean glotz and any other farm with pigmen spawning directly inside portals would break. With new snapshots you can use ghast or tnt looting with one player as projectile ownership is now kept upon travelling through dimensions. (also shouldve mentioned world border farm cuz funne)

[@priddl3]

the reason that most donut farms don't use looting is because they are designed as XP farms not gold farms. Agro based gold farms are the best way to get constant afk XP if you don't want to use a script. They aren't optimised to give gold mostly just to give afk XP which also allows for enchanting whilst gaining XP constantly or mass anvilling.

[@DucksAreEpic]

I had the same thought

[@kevinz241]

Had the same answer. I built it for xp mainly. It was hard to build enderman farm.

[@6torthor]

Can easily just turn it into a looting setup though

[@sailingintosunshine]

@@zetaggwp8473 if you're fine using an autoclicker, you can also hold right click and off-hand a stack of food. Concerning the original comment, a maximised guardian xp farm is superior, the player can only pick up so many orbs each second and guardians drop orbs that are worth more than zombie pigmen. Also according to the wiki, zombie pigmen drop a 1-3 xp orb next to their guaranteed 5 xp orb (guardian drop 7xp and 3xp) IF they don't drop their weapon. Assuming you get enough orbs for them to build up (easily achieved by farms similar to those in the video) you thus lower the amount of xp you get if you use looting, as looting increases the chance of additional 1-3xp orbs that lower the average xp of your orbs.

[@sailingintosunshine]

​@@zetaggwp8473and a guardian farm is an absolute pain to build compared to a pigmen farm. Really, and evaluation that considers ease of building should favour the pigmen, but to say that the pigmen farm is outright the best source of afk xp... Perhaps if you plan to afk a long time, but if it's just a few minutes, you could easily setup some water stream splash potion killing system for example.

[@NotchArrow]

I hope this video blows up for you like your iron farm one did, and allows people to tweak things and make their own designs

[@apfelmann]

Hey, I just want to tell you that I love the videos you are making, especially the mathematical aspect of them. Keep up the good work :))

[@mikeylewark4567]

with the new version of MC killing through portals with looting is possible, try adding that

[@SplashesInPuddles]

As an engineer I love the way you approach and analyze these farms

[@Delques1843]

Great video as always! IMHO what makes your videos a cut above is how you deliver these information. All the info in the video is not new, they can be found by just a google search, but HOW you put all of these together in a easy to understand video is amazing. Also, I want to add 2 things. One, with 1.21 coming out, a bug where projectiles traveling thru nether portals loses their ownership status will be fixed. This will enable the use of looting in the nether while the mobs stays in the overworld. Rays Works did a video on this a few days ago. This, I believe will make boat looting obsolete, and will make a farm like Ian's farm much better. Two, I BELIEVE Mojang said that entities spawning on portals in the nether side is unintended behavior and will be patched out. This might make JustGlotz's farm goes the way of the EOL farms.

[@devilproductions3041]

The Level of Detail you go into is absolutely Astonishing

[@fontajo]

Another thing to mention, portal based farms are helpful if you need a fully afkable source of xp in the overworld. They can be used to mend tools you might use for a different farm, and you can just build this on the side.

[@nyx_9841]

Only light-suppressed farms are EOL. Since zombified piglins aren't limited to a specific light level, no light suppression is necessary, and therefore, there are no EOL gold farms. As far as sliced portal spam goes, it'd be very, very difficult for Mojang to successfully prevent us from slicing portals just due to how updates work, so it's still a very valid option of you're willing to put in the effort. Also, with developments in cannon tech, it could be extremely easy in the near future to make a nether perimeter, meaning that spawnproofing also isn't much of a concern.

[@NicoisLOST]

Yes this is true, I maybe should have said "portal splicing farms" instead as that is what I meant.

[@divy1211]

Wow, this is an amazingly comprehensive explanation of gold farm mechanics, the amount of effort that must've gone into this video is insane, well done!!

[@johannesergezinger997]

I LOVE YOUR videos. The technical side is absolutely perfect. i have watched all of your videos and i love all of them. thank you for douing this

[@RusselJJackson]

Thanks for your detailed research pn this topic, im gona use a lot of it when building the next gold farm!

[@MagnusMss]

Great video, man! Keep it up. You really have something special.

[@euphoricanimal]

im never building a gold farm but this was so interesting to watch, great work mate, u have my sub

[@carsonk.6200]

Thanks for your videos. Really informative. I just built a modified ianxofour farm, and this was the kind of video that I wanted to better understand the limit and how to get there

[@rudra3107_]

Finally now I can understand Gold Farming Mechanics Thanks A Lot 😊

[@mayonnaiseeee]

Amazing video, thank you for putting all the work into this and giving us an array of options for builds. This is some of the highest quality Minecraft content. Also 25:20 love seeing the zombie pigbabies on the chickens just falling into the void

[@louisBrother1988]

I feel like another important category for many people is being able to get XP from the farm.

[@KhaelaMenshaK]

yup. i'm using IanX0four's design mainly to get huge buckets of XP. The gold is a welcome bonus.

[@NicoisLOST]

Yes this is certainly true and I should have mentioned it, but once you hit the absorption cap, higher rates add nothing to XP. But yeah, missed mentioning it, and didn't realize until it was too late :-P, agreed.

[@miaudadodidadaddeldidadoof6118]

the fact that i was able to design my own gold farm after this video means you succeeded in creating an easy fo understand and well put together video. well done!

[@RaysWorks]

Thanks for the mention! Btw the nether portal spam farm is originally from me but many people reshowed it and some without proper crediting unfortunately. You can see my nether potal spam farms pre-date all others. I would appreciate being given credit in your description for it.

[@RaysWorks]

By the way if you want looting 3 with 1 player I made a setup with looting 3 through nether portals with ghast, you should check out.

[@vincenthills5024]

​@@RaysWorksno, you did not invent the portal spam gold farm, mojang intended for it when they added the piglin portal mechanics so why do you deserve that credit, because you read the patch notes earlier? If you want to stay on the topic of crediting, Ianxo4 made a single player portal based gold farm 2 years ago, long before you did yet you did not credit him. Perhaps you argue you have changed it since you made it afk without a macro (although you did not mention this in your comment), in which case I point you towards the FastJaz afk ghast based looting setup made 1 year ago, long before you did and you made 0 innovations upon what he created, yet you did not credit him. How ironic, the one obsessed with credit when he does not deserve, does not credit others when they clearly deserve.

[@gamefinity7568]

I have been waiting for a gold farm video from you. Finally

[@dABiGfATLol]

I'm so glad you mentioned boat looting. I've been using it in so many applications since Emdy's video and its freakin awesome! ofc setting up the stacked boats in the nether is kind of a pain though wish minecraft would let us place boats w.o water D:

[@smygbakis]

Love the videos, the effort to produce them is incredible!

[@sir_marijn8107]

this is just what i needed, thank you

[@gabeybaby3398]

i love how simple you are able to present somewhat complex mechanics

[@desomator5803]

I love the technical videos thankyou. p.s hope this video gets as much attention as your iron farm video.

[@voxorox]

My main issue with a gold farm is never the spawn/kill rates. Those are manageable. The issue for me is the transport, sort and storage of the drops. After a certain point, hoppers just don't cut it, and other methods have their own limitations (size, tile-ability, etc). They tend to back up pretty bad if you run them for too long.

[@JamesTDG]

Indeed. Even the Allay isn't viable here

[@xn85d2]

Hopper minecarts maybe? It's effectively just letting you use more hoppers per block where the drops land.

[@Noah-tq1du]

There are designs for chest minecart loaders which are extremely useful for gold farms, because it lets you move items very easily. if you need to move items a long distance you can do a railway, a piston bolt, or make a flying mashine

[@poppinlochnesshopster3249]

..what? You just have an arbitrary amount of hoppers connected to 2x speed 1wt loaders. Even the portal spam y1 farm at the end of this video could be handled by filtering out nuggets and ingots and burning the rest and probably 20 or 30 2x speed loaders.

[@theeyeofomnipotent]

How about this from 2no2name a 2 million item sorter from a scicraft member (i think they actually need it): kzbin.info/www/bejne/rZzJhpuEotWld5Ifeature=shared

[@lim8]

:O ive been wondering about the gold mechanics for a while now, ive been trying to design one recently

[@MANGAMOODS123]

i love all your videos man thank you for being a entertaining efucator

[@Skyware0]

I usually don't comment on videos but I just wanted to say I love these kinds of videos. It's hard to find a content creator that can simplify Minecraft farms as you do. Love your work man, keep it up!

[@OMIPII]

Just what i needed for another bit of procrastionation! Love the vids Nico

[@eyadikramy7674]

The effort put in to this video is astonishing

[@user-fw5xo4qo1p]

I was watching this video on my Tv and I really found it helpful so I have subscribed on both KZbin accounts

[@CromextheCoder]

absolutely love this vids. especially your iron farm vid helped me sooo much man. can u do raid farms next pls?

[@wallop560]

Love these videos. Keep it up

[@Dylan-eq6xw]

These videos are so good, caus I don’t just want a nice design: I wanna understand why the builder did what and be amazed. Thank you very much for all the information and Grafiks used

[@loltubelvr007]

Amazing. As always.

[@samuelborn9004]

Very informative!

[@LOLLO2WIN]

you make the best videos ever! they are so interesting to watch

[@redteam6631]

Excellent video. Here's my take: 1- I for one don't like portal spam, because it's op and mindless. I like simple and technical builds that make use of the core game mechanics in a clever way to farm the items. 2- Because portals are op, they are subject to a nerf in the future and might probably be broken. I remember once hearing that mojang intends to stop mob spawning in portals altogether but unsure when. 3- I also don't like to use 2 dimension farms, because of the issue of loading the 2 dimensions and it also being brain dead. 4- I've also heard that mojang intends to nerf the pigman aggression mechanic, where non player kills don't drop xp and ingots. This forces players to use looting, which makes it non fully automatic. For all these points above I use gnembon's farm, because it has both afk options for looting and non looting,hence nerf proof. For the future videos why not also have these points considered when building a truly perfect farm: nerf proof and automaticity/semi-automaticity/manual. Cheers.

[@vanfisher3613]

There are so many MC KZbinrs with millions of subs who post such low effort content. It is an absolute tragedy that a channel like this has so few. Please keep making amazing videos like this - the subs and money will come.

[@tonyzamora5529]

Good explanations!

[@foxcraftgg829]

Very good video!, you explain really well, I just want to add that you can try improving the last farm by using tnt looting, because you can't use boat as you said before, very good video!

[@velislav_simeonov]

Awesome work. This is true content here

[@Helliwiki]

Funny how I'm watching this while making an iron farm, and watching the iron farm video while fixing my gold farm before lol

[@enderyu]

17:52 I made a gold farm some while back based on those two farms, trying to mesh Ian's farm simplicity/cost and gnembon's max rate goals, and it worked pretty well! Just saying that combining the portal method for the killing chamber and following gnembon's principles is feasible and worth looking into if you are interested. Some details for those interested: -I built it on top of the nether roof. It's a lot easier if you don't have to worry about what's below the bedrock and also easier to build. -The goal was reach the max XP limit with manual killing chamber for looting. I don't remember exact rates but I'm sure it was more than 20 items/s (= 1.3 ingots/s = 528 gold blocks/hour) and less than 40 items/s (= 1056 blocks/h), because of how I built my sorting system (which were with hopper minecarts). Yes the farm did produce more XP than what the player could absorb. -The design consisted of 2 towers, each with a center "column" of turtle eggs, which would attract pigmen to the portals immediately surrounding it, which lead to the overworld, in a setup similar to 19:36 to pre-damage the pigmen, leading into the killing chamber (If I were to rebuild it, I would look into the boat looting method) -Each of the 2 towers was 6 portals tall, with 12 layers (2 layers per portal), the platforms were (6 + 5 from portal + 6) blocks in diameter, the dimensions and timing were carefully crafted to prevent hitting the mob cap. If anyone read all that, feel free to ask any details. I can give you tips from what I learned designing it, so it can better fit your needs

[@harrywheeler4032]

as someone switching to java from bedrock (finally abt to get a PC) this new info is very useful! will watch all ur vids! I'm used to all bedrock redstone and spawning me hanics so a weird change

[@BT10e]

The educational content we needed

[@truyerroe]

great video!

[@dablueice2083]

man i didint understand how and why all these looked so different, thanks!

[@DangerKitty124]

YOU DID IT!

[@TheHeroViper]

Nice Video keep the work up❤

[@Xmodius]

A couple of tweaks I would add to the last one is using Agro for lure the pigskins instead of turtle Eggs since it’s faster and also if you were gonna make a full void peri you may as well add a pack spawning skirt

[@Sextus_Empricus]

another sick video!

[@chickenobsession230]

Very good video!!

[@DomiaAbrWyrda]

I designed an automatic looting 3 gold farm on my world and this gives me new ideas to improve 👀

[@H0LMES7777]

I really love this videos

[@melontusk2591]

Another banger bro 🤙

[@justnormi5605]

Really great content there

[@_Zardari_]

Awww yeah! The king is here first Iron now Gold!

[@M113sAldrich]

I really love these types of videos over others because it isn't a good farm it's how a good farm works

[@zetzkropkiem]

Hey! 1) spawn proofing is not so time-consuming with the nether world eater. Some people decide to do it for huge amounts of debris. 2) Breaking bedrock with redstone lag isn't that time-consuming either. It would be a huge project, but doable in a reasonable amount of time. Great job! Thanks for this video!

[@slemns]

great video

[@tesseractcubed]

Semantics note on percent increases: the Looting farm (0.28) is ~350% of the non-Looting farm (0.08), but is only ~250% better. Great video!

[@TPU111]

Actually entertaining 😮

[@Majin2222]

I've started to do a nether perimeter of 500x500 with roof removal for a gold farm and Have been working on a gold farm at the lowest layer possible....It's been a month and I still have a layer of bedrock to remove and the world eater to build...I don't know if I want to remove the bedrock at the bottom of the world but if that's the case I have three months more to go ! I've been testing those farms and wanted to do a single dimension, lowest layer farm, your video is on point ! As always, awesome work and I wil try to build your famr with boat looting, seems interesting ! Also, what do you think of piglin TNT looting, why is it not used a lot ?

[@DungeonMobs]

i love your channel not explaining to fast and not " WaTCh oT ThE eND To FInD OuT" you deserve a sub heck you deserve 1m

[@LachsFloete]

Currently building glotz‘ farm, really interesting to watch!

[@piciaxel]

this gave me a interesting idea... a small factor farm that only breaks berdrock ceiling for it's footprint might be really efficient

[@laurenlambdin2774]

Wow, these farms are insane! I bet it took so much research to make these. I am curious though, do these work on Realms?

[@andribassi8617]

Great video

[@DylynKay]

My phone bricked trying to load the video for that last farm. Good God!

[@fortun8diamond]

There is one improvement to aggro farm Nico did not mention. Instead of aggroing to the player, the pigment can aggro to another mob, situated on the nether rooftop. This allows the farm to be built lower and improves the rates significantly. Used in combination with portals. I have a gold farm that uses that concept. It combines portals, aggroing, practicality, and lower elevation without portal spam.

[@gerardmatthieu907]

Do you think that iron golem/skeleton agroing could be used in the borders of the Ultra High Efficiency farm that Nico showcased, in order to furthermore improve its rates , is so by how much approximativly ? Good luck on your soon to be 2k subscribers by the way .

[@fortun8diamond]

@@gerardmatthieu907 my farm is better seen as a bridge between practical designs and high rates

[@benrichardson4820]

i like how you referenced ianxo4 that guy has some of the best farms ive seen

[@DashPum4]

i may or may not have made glotz portal spam gold farm work with boat looting in singleplayer. gets 5400ish gold blocks per hour. working on getting a video out about it

[@NicoisLOST]

Ohhh very cool. I'll keep an eye out for it. If you want another eye shoot me a DM on discord ;-). I wouldn't mind helping out if you are interested!

[@tantanthespaceman1923]

24:05 NOOOOO!!! LITTLE JOCKEY, DON'T FALL!

[@leocompot]

Just started Minecraft for the 1st time in my life (m22) so that's quite useful for me

[@tiagobeaulieu1745]

Leaving a timestamp for myself for my preferred farm for when I boot up my next MC world =D. 20:48

[@no_u_420]

I wish he made videos deep diving bedrock farm mechanics. We need more swole brains like nico in the bedrock community for these insane breakdowns, we have all the budget brand KZbinrs 🤣

[@pabloalejandro06]

Yeah, its funny how on bedrock, the best gold farm is the overworld portal ticking spamming method, while on java is the worst by far

[@no_u_420]

@@pabloalejandro06 yeah bedrock has really laughable farms when compared to what Java can do. Thankfully we have trident killers+looting buff to kinda help alleviate such a terrible spawning algorithm that we deal with on bedrock.

[@glaedr3413]

The last one is interesting for skyblock, where spawnproofing and breaking bedrock isn't a thing

[@EmdyMC]

Just a PSA, Nico is aware of the Chronos/Bread's world border gold farm before you comment about that

[@user-oc6ve4dw6c]

Love it

[@jmira03]

kinda funny that we went through the exact same thought processes but I stopped and just did DashPum4 under the nether roof since I was on a server and was a bit restricted like no building on the nether roof.

[@PCHSwS]

I found it interesting that you didn't split the Portal Spawning farms into Shared Aggression and Other Lure Methods as well. Also, great video as always.

[@dementionalpotato]

It’s probably because it doesn’t really matter how you lure them since the mobcap is irrelevant.

[@RadicalElder]

So you're saying "make this legit in hardcore" ... got it. I'm on it. haha

[@Deatzi]

he sounds like tobi from the office... not saying that is something bbad it was just funny to me xd ty for the information about gold farms! always down to get more educated on minecraft

[@plpmito5519]

I used to be the redstone/farm builder guy on a server with friends and they would all leave whenever I said I wanted to test my farm... but when they came back they'd have a double chest or 2 full of whatever they needed

[@paulchomedey2073]

It might be bedrock only, but repeatedly breaking and lighting a portal will spawn a lot more zombie piglins than using random tick. With a trident killer, these farms can double as very fast xp farms.

[@coelhodiferenciado7422]

This is cool

[@nighteule]

Boat looting is cool, but maybe there's something better for portal farms, found by Ray's Works. A bug was recently fixed that allows projectiles sent through a portal to keep the data of the player that fired them. This makes it possible to kill mobs, with looting, remotely _through the portal_ without sending them back to the nether, making the mob cap less of a limiting factor. He showed a wither skeleton far using this method, killing by shooting precisely timed fireworks in the offhand through the portal, or a ghast behind that shoots its fireball right in front of you to redirect into the portal. The mobs pile up in the overworld in a bubble column with a scaffold to avoid cramming, until being killed through the portal

[@meloniletsplay5557]

Maybe a video about a Shulker farm?

[@berdysz9390]

To increase a portal farm rates, you could inplement, you could inplement tnt looting or looting using a ghast, possible due to the new bug fix

[@user-ds4ev3co4f]

There is a 4.3million( or 5 million with portal splicing) gold nuggets (without smelting golden swords) farm by GaRLic BrEd. It is portal based, using lazy chunk tnt looting with a bot or second player, and it is at the world border (the overworld one) so that portals in the nether more than two chunks away can still link to the same overworld portal, making it possible to have a spawning platform that is the max size (128 radius) and at the y level 0. (obviosly building it in survival is basicly impossible).

[@Astrophilicus]

Awesome video (so far)! However, you misspelled the second timestamp "the fundimentals". Have a great day everyone reading this :)

[@NicoisLOST]

No suprise there :-P I'll fix it when I get a chance, thanks ;-)

[@axpley9982]

The hell did Pikmin do to you! :( nintendo will sue you Btw amazing video as always

[@nezons]

yoo sick

[@joshuahammer4454]

awesome

[@indolent_canadian1759]

nico is literally mythbusting "when am i ever gonna use this in reallife"

[@supriyomandal1641]

Yeah good friends 😁

[@naecker8974]

the goldfarm that you show isnt made by gnembon. its a modification from gnembons farm made a hermit (i think its made by iskall85 but im not shure). his origianl farm had 19 platforms instead of 11 as well as the platforms werent as big. the ogriginal farm also yielded more rates but the difference is tiny