Mob Grinding Utils Wiki

Mob Grinding Utils is a toolkit of blocks and items built around one goal: automatic mob farms that spawn, herd, kill, collect and bank experience with no redstone. Vanilla mob farming relies on dark rooms, water streams and fall damage; this mod replaces all of that with purpose-built machines that do each job cleanly.

A complete farm chains a few of these blocks together: a Mob Spawner clones the mob you choose, Fans push the mobs into a kill zone, Spikes or the Saw finish them off, and an Absorption Hopper vacuums up the drops while siphoning the experience into an XP Tank. Capture tools like the Golden Lasso and Dark Lasso let you scoop mobs up and carry them around. The result is a compact, self-running farm you design once and leave to work.

The Mob Spawner block is the heart of the farm - it clones a chosen mob over and over.

• Set the target with a Mob Swab. Right-click a living mob with a Mob Swab to sample its type, then apply the swab to the spawner to lock in what it produces.
• Feed it experience. The spawner runs on stored experience (supplied via an XP Tank), spending it to keep producing copies of the sampled mob.
• Continuous output. Once set and fueled, it spawns that mob type directly above itself, ready to be pushed into your kill zone.

Because you choose the mob, you can build a farm for exactly the drops you want - bones, string, gunpowder, rotten flesh, or rarer mob loot.

Fans move mobs without water channels or pistons.

• A fan blows a steady stream of air in the direction it faces, shoving any mob in front of it.
• Chain fans along a floor to herd spawned mobs from the spawner toward the kill zone.
• Fans can also push mobs off ledges or hold them in place against a wall, giving you full control of mob flow with no redstone timing.

Point the fans so the airflow funnels every spawned mob into a single corner or channel where your killing block waits.

Two blocks turn herded mobs into loot:

Spikes

• Iron Spikes are placed on the floor and damage mobs that walk or are pushed onto them.
• Spikes also drop the mob's experience, so the XP can be collected rather than lost.
• Mobs killed by spikes do not count as player kills, which keeps the farm fully automatic.
• Diamond-tier spikes deal more damage for tougher mobs.

Saw

• The Saw is a spinning blade that slices any mob passing over or beside it.
• It works well at the end of a fan-driven corridor, cutting down the stream of mobs as they arrive.
• Like spikes, it lets the farm run hands-free.

Pick spikes for a flat kill floor, or the saw for a powered blade at the end of a conveyor path.

The Absorption Hopper is the collection hub of the farm.

• It vacuums up every item drop in a wide area around itself - no need to line the floor with hoppers.
• Connect it to a chest or storage system and it funnels all the loot in automatically.
• It also pulls in the experience orbs from the killed mobs and pipes that XP into an attached XP Tank, so nothing is wasted.
• Tank and filter upgrades let it hold more and sort what it keeps.

Place it under or beside the kill zone so its collection radius covers where mobs die.

These two blocks store and bank the experience your farm produces.

XP Tank

• Stores liquid experience collected by the Absorption Hopper.
• Acts as the fuel reservoir the Mob Spawner draws from, and as a buffer you can draw XP back out of.
• Tank upgrades raise its capacity for big farms.

XP Solidifier

• Converts stored liquid experience into Solidified Experience - a solid block/item you can pick up and carry.
• Lets you bank XP for later and cash it in when you need to enchant or repair, instead of losing it on death.

Together they make experience a storable, portable resource rather than something that vanishes if you walk away.

The lassos let you capture and move mobs.

Golden Lasso

• Used on passive mobs (animals and other friendly creatures).
• Right-click a mob to scoop it into the lasso; right-click the ground to release it unharmed.
• Great for relocating breeding animals or stocking a farm with a starter mob.

Dark Lasso

• The hostile-mob counterpart - captures monsters that the Golden Lasso cannot.
• Lets you safely carry a dangerous mob from where you found it to your spawner or holding pen.

Lassos make it easy to gather the exact mobs you want before sampling them with a Mob Swab.

Supporting items round out the kit:

• Mob Swab - sample a living mob's type, then apply it to a Mob Spawner to set what it produces.
• Sieve - process certain materials as part of resource gathering.
• Saw upgrades - improve the killing blade's reach or power.
• Tank upgrades - increase the storage capacity of the XP Tank and Absorption Hopper.

Craft these as you scale up, turning a small starter farm into a high-throughput mob grinder.

A typical automatic farm comes together like this:

1. Capture or find the mob you want, then swab it with a Mob Swab.
2. Place a Mob Spawner, apply the swab to set its target, and supply it with experience from an XP Tank.
3. Lay out Fans so their airflow pushes the spawned mobs along a floor toward a single point.
4. At that point, place Spikes or a Saw to kill the herded mobs automatically.
5. Set an Absorption Hopper within range to collect every drop into a chest and route the XP into the XP Tank.
6. Add an XP Solidifier to bank surplus experience as solid blocks you can carry.

The whole loop runs with no redstone - design it once and it spawns, herds, kills, collects and banks on its own.

• Choose the mob to match the drop - swab a creeper for gunpowder, a skeleton for bones and arrows, a spider for string.
• Funnel with fans into a single kill block rather than many - it keeps the farm compact and reliable.
• Always route XP into an XP Tank so the spawner stays fueled and experience is never wasted.
• Use spikes for XP - they drop the mob's experience, unlike a plain drop kill.
• Solidify spare experience before risky trips so a death never costs you your XP bank.
• Upgrade tanks before scaling up output, or the farm will back up when storage fills.

How do I pick which mob the spawner makes? Sample a living mob with a Mob Swab, then apply that swab to the Mob Spawner.

Does the farm need redstone? No - fans, spikes, the saw and the absorption hopper all work without any redstone wiring.

Where does the experience go? The Absorption Hopper pulls in XP and pipes it into an XP Tank; an XP Solidifier can turn stored XP into solid Solidified Experience you can carry.

How do I move mobs around? Use the Golden Lasso for passive mobs and the Dark Lasso for hostile mobs to capture and release them.

Why use spikes instead of a normal drop? Spikes kill the mob automatically and drop its experience, and the kill doesn't count as a player kill, keeping the farm hands-free.

How do I collect all the drops? Place an Absorption Hopper near the kill zone - it vacuums every drop in a wide radius into an attached chest.