If totems of undying and unlimited emeralds sound appealing, a raid farm is where you’re headed next. It’s one of the most rewarding builds in the game, but also one of the most misunderstood, especially after recent mechanic changes shook up how raids actually trigger. This guide breaks down everything you need, step by step.
What You’ll Need
| Item | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Ominous Bottle(s) | Required to trigger Raid Omen and start a raid |
| A village (1 bed + 1 villager minimum) | Raids can only be triggered inside a village |
| Sweeping Edge sword | Prevents evokers from summoning vexes and reduces witch potion chaos |
| Iron golem or armor stand bait | Attracts raiders into your kill zone |
| Hoppers + chests | Automatic loot collection |
| Bell (optional) | Lets you visually track incoming raid waves |
| Redstone for a raid engine | Needed for advanced, sustained farms |
Step 1: Understand How Raids Actually Work
- A raid only starts when you have the Raid Omen effect and step into a village.
- Raid Omen currently comes exclusively from drinking an Ominous Bottle, which you get by defeating raid captains or opening vaults in Trial Chambers.
- Once triggered, the raid spawns 5 waves of increasingly dangerous mobs pillagers and vindicators first, then witches, ranged units, and finally mixed waves with ravagers and evokers.
- Each wave takes roughly 20–40 seconds to fully spawn, and totems of undying mostly show up in waves 3 through 5.
- If you wander too far from the Raid Omen player, the raid pauses, so your farm needs to keep you within range while staying safe.
Step 2: Secure a Steady Supply of Ominous Bottles
Since Ominous Bottles are now the only way to trigger a raid, most serious raid farms start with a pillager outpost trap.
- Find a pillager outpost and set up a golem-bait or tripwire trap to lure pillagers and captains into a kill zone.
- Kill raid captains specifically they’re the ones with a banner, and they drop the Ominous Bottles you need.
- Store your bottles somewhere accessible, since you’ll be drinking one every time you want to restart a raid.
Step 3: Pick a Farm Type
| Farm Type | Difficulty | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| Basic hole trap | Easy | Casual raid loot, early-to-mid game |
| Raid engine (stacking) farm | Hard | Long AFK sessions, mid-to-late game |
| Multi-player coordinated farm | Very Hard | Endgame servers with friends, maximum totems/hour |
If you’re new to raid farming, start with the basic hole trap. Save the redstone-heavy raid engine for once you understand wave timing and want to automate the whole cycle.
Step 4: Build the Basic Raid Farm
- Choose or create a village with at least one bed and one villager.
- Build a spawning platform on solid ground where raiders are forced to spawn remember, they can’t spawn on leaves, scaffolding, or liquid.
- Add a funnel system, like a hole with trapdoors, that channels spawned raiders down into a kill chamber.
- Drink your Ominous Bottle while standing in the village to trigger Raid Omen and start the raid.
- Use a bell near your chamber to visually track each wave as it approaches.
- Finish off raiders with your Sweeping Edge sword as they funnel through, and let hoppers collect the drops.
Step 5: Set Up a Raid Engine for Sustained Farming
Once the basic version feels too manual, a raid engine automates the repeat cycle for you.
- Set up a group of villagers on job site blocks, usually composters, spaced roughly one chunk apart.
- Use pistons to interact with the job sites and observers to detect the changes, cycling them to reset the raid state.
- Add a redstone clock that matches the 30-second Raid Omen duration, timing when the next bottle gets used and when your funneling system opens.
- Keep a small Ominous Bottle farm running alongside this, since 1.21+ raid engines burn through bottles faster than older designs did.
Troubleshooting: Common Situations and How to Fix Them
| Situation | Likely Cause | How to Fix It |
|---|---|---|
| Raid won’t trigger at all | You don’t actually have Raid Omen, or you’re not in a real village | Confirm you drank an Ominous Bottle and that the location counts as a proper village |
| Raid pauses mid-wave | You’ve moved too far from the Raid Omen player | Build your AFK spot closer to the village center, within raid range |
| Evokers summon vexes or witches spam potions | You’re not using Sweeping Edge | Switch to a sword enchanted with Sweeping Edge before engaging raiders |
| Loot keeps disappearing | Drops are despawning before collection | Speed up your hopper/collection system Java drops despawn after 5 minutes |
| Raid ends in defeat unexpectedly | Too many raiders escaped or died outside the raid context | Tighten your funnel so raiders can’t wander off before reaching the kill zone |
| Old stacking farm stopped working after an update | Mechanic changes broke the previous trigger method | Rebuild the raid engine around Ominous Bottles instead of the old instant Bad Omen trigger |
| Server lags badly during raids | Too many entities dying at once, particles and sounds piling up | Build the farm 500+ blocks from spawn, or in another dimension if playing on a busy server |
| Getting decent loot but no totems | You’re ending raids before wave 3 | Let the raid run its full course totems mainly drop in waves 3–5 |
Java vs Bedrock: Know Before You Build
| Edition | Notes |
|---|---|
| Java | Full raid engine support, faster AFK-able designs, Ominous Bottles obtainable the same way |
| Bedrock | Special mob drops during raids (emeralds, enchanted books, iron gear) but some efficiency tricks, like holding a looting sword in the offhand while drinking a bottle, aren’t possible |
This gap has actually become a recurring point of discussion in the community. Plenty of players have pushed back on the idea that raid farms are “overpowered,” arguing that Bedrock players already can’t reach the same efficiency Java players get from optimized engines, so further nerfs would hit the two editions unevenly.
The Bigger Debate: Was the Ominous Bottle Change a Good Idea?
Since Bad Omen became something you have to choose to drink instead of getting it automatically from a captain kill, opinions in the community have been pretty split. Some players appreciate the extra control it gives over when a raid starts, since accidentally triggering one used to catch people off guard.
Others feel it took away some of the tension the mechanic used to have, comparing it to needing “consent” from the player before illagers retaliate. Either way, most agree on one thing: any raid farm tutorial that doesn’t build around Ominous Bottles is outdated and needs a redesign to work in current versions.
Final Thoughts
A raid farm is one of the best ways to stockpile totems of undying and emeralds, but it’s also one of the builds most affected by recent mechanic changes. Get comfortable with the Ominous Bottle cycle first, start with a simple hole trap, and only move to a full raid engine once you’re ready to commit to the redstone.