Minecraft 1.20 mob tower build guide for beginners

Minecraft players have been building mob towers (also known as mob grinders or tower farms) since the game's earliest days. They continue to be an effective way to kill hostile entities and collect experience orbs and item drops, and there are a ton of different designs to choose from. Even if players are fairly new to the game, they can create a functional mob tower as long as they have the resources.

Although many different such concepts exist in Minecraft, beginners are often best suited if they start off with a basic design. The good news is that this can be accomplished with basic building blocks, and as long as players are using the right location, a simple mob tower will still fullfil its purpose.

If newcomers are curious about building a mob tower farm, it doesn't hurt to examine the process as of the Minecraft 1.20 update and later.

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Creating a basic mob tower farm in Minecraft 1.20+

The inside of a traditional mob tower utilizing Minecraft 1.20 blocks like cherry trapdoors (Image via Rediscover Redstone/YouTube)

Although mob towers are fairly straightforward builds, they do consume quite a few basic resources in Minecraft. This is particularly true for basic building blocks that compose the tower's main structure as well as trapdoors, which are necessary to assist with the spawning and funnel of hostile mobs.

Moreover, players may prefer to use automatic killing to collect their mobs' items instead of a manual concept, where they must kill the latter after fall damage. Fortunately, this can be achieved with a wide range of different blocks that shouldn't be difficult to source.

The collection area of a Minecraft mob tower (Image via 1upMC/YouTube)

Building the foundation of a mob tower in Minecraft 1.20+

1. Begin by finding a place to construct your tower. Ideally, placing this Minecraft structure in the ocean and away from the shore will allow the tower to be more productive as nearby chunks won't generate as many hostile mob spawns. This allows the tower to maximize its spawning capabilities since the game won't be doing so nearby.
2. Start the build at the surface of the ocean and use building blocks to build upwards until you hit height level Y=163.
3. Jump back down into the ocean and place ladders up your block column so you can access it back at the top.
4. At the top of the column, build a flat platform to stand on and house the shaft of the tower.
5. Begin the foundation of the tower by placing blocks to form a square on the platform. There should be four blocks' worth of space in the center of the square. Light the platform so hostile Minecraft mobs won't spawn here.
6. Using this square as a base, build 22 blocks upward on all sides of the square. Then head back down to the platform and destroy the six front' facing vertical blocks of the tower.
7. In front of the blocks you destroyed, place a double chest. Then place four hoppers behind it that are connected to the chest.

An in-progress Minecraft mob tower featuring the needed columns that will later become water channels (Image via JC Playz/YouTube)

The mob tower's four branches connected into a common platform (Image via Voltrox/YouTube)

Building the mob tower's spawn area

1. Atop the hoppers, place either slabs or campfire blocks. The latter will allow you to kill mobs automatically, while the slabs are used for a manual tower. Then replace the top two blocks that you destroyed in Step 6. There should be a small slit between the square shaft of the tower and the chest you placed.
2. Back on the very top of the tower, build 8x2 rows extending outward on each side of the square.
3. Next, construct a wall that is two blocks high surrounding the top of the farm including the rows you just constructed.
4. From here, connect the four rows built in Step 9 together to create a large square platform.
5. Build another two block-high wall around this platform.
6. You'll now notice you have four near trenches leading into the center of the tower shaft. Use water buckets to place water flows into each trench. They should be flowing directly into the center of the tower without pouring down into the shaft itself.
7. On the edges of the trenches, place trapdoors along their entire length and then activate them so that they face downward. They should be flush against the trench walls.

Adding the roof and finishing touches

1. Construct a flat roof on the tower platform. You'll need to keep at least three blocks of height inside of the trench room to ensure that every hostile mob can spawn.
2. Place slabs surrounding the roof in a ring. Then, place slabs on the roof to prevent spawns appearing on top of the tower.
3. Lastly, if you used campfires at the base of the tower, be sure to activate them so that hostile Minecraft mobs will fall and burn in them.

The tower's structure including its collection area and slab-constructed spawn-proofed roof (Image via FryBry/YouTube)

Once Minecraft fans have followed these steps, they simply need to spend time near the structure for a few minutes. Hostile mobs will spawn at the top of the tower, fall into the water trenches, then fall to the bottom of the tower where they can be killed and have their item drops collected.

Minecraft players who used slabs at the bottom of the tower can then use a weapon to kill the hobbled mobs to collect items and XP. However, the use of campfires will allow the mobs to drop and be burned to death by the burning blocks before their item drops are inhaled by the hoppers below.