Want to know the best ways to get XP in Minecraft? Players will need experience points sooner or later if they're playing the game in Survival Mode. XP levels are used as a resource for various tasks, including enchanting gear, repairing or modifying it at an anvil, powering the Mending enchantment, and even increasing a player's final score. This is part of the reason why players seek out XP early and often.
Experience is obtained in Minecraft through various means, but some are more productive than others. As of Minecraft 1.21 update, there are plenty of methods that players can employ to get levels upon levels of experience for all of their future needs.
Players can rely on the following activities to rack up plenty of XP in Minecraft to use however they'd like.
Note: This list is subjective and reflects the opinions of the writer
Best ways to get Minecraft XP
1) Killing mobs
Killing in-game mobs is one of the oldest ways to collect plenty of XP in Minecraft and still remains one of the best methods. By creating an automated or manual Minecraft farm that spawns and places mobs into a killing zone, players can eliminate tons of entities and bank the experience points for later use.
Even better, there are new designs emerging for mob farms on a regular basis, thanks to the creativity of the game's community. Many of these improve on existing farm builds to become even more efficient and beneficial.
2) Smelting machines/farms
Each time a Minecraft player smelts certain materials in a furnace, they'll receive a little bit of experience. While doing so occasionally doesn't move the needle much for XP gain, creating a large number of smelters and making them create items around the clock can be much more helpful for collecting easy experience.
Some of the most popular designs for acquiring quick and plentiful XP involve smelting blocks like cacti into green dye. A creation such as this can make tons of dye while players are away. When they return, they can simply flip a switch and collect levels' worth of XP in a heartbeat.
3) Villager trades
Trading with Minecraft villagers is certainly useful when it comes to sourcing items or emeralds. However, every trade also yields a little bit of experience. Players can use this to their advantage by creating a villager trading hall that allows them to trade for massive amounts of items at a low price to rack up XP.
Granted, it isn't easy to rank up villager professions and get their discounts by curing them from being zombified. However, the final results are well worth the effort.
4) Fishing
It may be a bit time-consuming, but fishing yields plenty of goodies in Minecraft, especially when players have access to enchantments like Luck of the Sea. Although collecting a few fish is a decent way to gain XP, the real draw comes from enchanted books and gear, which can be placed in a grindstone to get extra experience points.
Even better, players who find the act of fishing a bit boring or those who are busy with other tasks can create an AFK fish farm. These are used to automatically cast a player's fishing rod line after each caught fish or treasure item without them needing to be physically present.
5) Mining sculk
Sculk was introduced alongside the deep dark biome in Minecraft 1.19. At first, players didn't realize its potential for experience gathering. Be that as it may, the community is very aware now, thanks in no small part to sculk's ability to rapidly grow and store the experience levels of dead mobs within it.
Not only is sculk excellent at storing XP, but players can also break it easily with a gardening hoe for fast collection. With a solid Minecraft sculk farm capable of regenerating sculk at a quick rate, players can snag dozens of levels of experience in a very short amount of time.
6) Killing bosses
This method admittedly isn't easy and is best reserved for veteran players, but continuous killing of the Ender Dragon and the Wither can lead to thousands of experience points in a fairly short amount of time. It's a dangerous undertaking, but one that fans certainly can't argue with when they receive untold numbers of experience levels.
Although farming the Ender Dragon or Wither is a fairly complex undertaking, designs capable of killing these bosses and then re-summoning them exist all the same.
7) Animal breeders
This method is occasionally overlooked since animals aren't conventionally considered a great source of experience points and are instead prioritized for resources. However, each time a player breeds an animal, they get a small amount of experience, and there are ways to explore this to collect plenty of XP orbs.
Many animal breeding farms operate on the concept of entity cramming, where a machine continually breeds creatures until a single-block space can no longer accommodate all of the individuals within it. Minecraft's engine then kills off the excess animals, leading to their experience drops being banked for players.
8) Piglin bartering
Much like villagers, piglins residing within the Nether in Minecraft have plenty to offer players by way of the bartering system. If players have gold to spare and don't mind wearing a little, they can toss a few ingots to piglins to receive more than a few quality items and some experience in the process.
Since piglins can provide enchanted gear as part of their bartering, Minecraft fans can create bartering farms to accrue tons of XP and then drop the enchanted items into a grindstone for even more experience returns.
9) Mining
Before Minecraft players have the tools or resources to make farms, they can still rack up plenty of experience just by heading underground and mining plenty of ores. It's a laborious and time-intensive task, but mining ores, particularly the likes of diamonds and emeralds, can result in some solid experience gains.
Even better, Minecraft players can always take their raw ores and toss them into a smelter, which will result in even more experience when the ores are refined into additional resources.
10) The /xp command
Depending on the situation, using Minecraft commands may not always be possible. However, if players have cheats enabled on their world or have OP status on a server, they can always give themselves as much XP as they want through the use of the /experience and /xp commands, which serve the same function.
In just a few keystrokes and with knowledge of command syntax, Minecraft fans can have all the experience they'll ever need as long as cheats or commands aren't disabled in some form or fashion.