A dark room only 1.8 blocks high, where creepers are the only mob that can spawn. Snow golems in the middle make them walk over open trapdoors into a pit with soul campfires. No cats and no redstone.
This design works in Minecraft Java 1.21+.
You need 13 kinds of materials (917 items, about 31 inventory slots) — see the shopping list.
Blocks on this layer tap a name to find it in the plan
What to do here in the guide's order
In the room under the pit, place three double chests side by side (6 chests). This is where the gunpowder ends up.
You need a flat area of grass or dirt of at least 19 × 19 blocks – the natural ground is the floor of the spawning room (grey in the 3D view). Mark its middle.
Around the middle, dig a pit 9 blocks across with cut corners (the octagon in the plan), 2 blocks deep, but leave the 5 × 5 blocks of ground in the very middle standing: that island is where the snow golems will live. Below the middle of the pit, dig a small room 3 blocks deeper for the chests and hoppers, and a way into it.
In the room under the pit, place three double chests side by side (6 chests). This is where the gunpowder ends up.
Chest×6Put a hopper on top of each double chest (in the row nearer the pit's middle, pointing down into the chest), then two more hoppers behind each of them, pointing west into the first one: 9 hoppers in a 3 × 3 square. Sneak while you place them so they connect.
Two wall torches keep the room from spawning mobs.
Place 9 soul campfires on the hoppers (3 × 3). The creepers burn to death on them – a creeper killed by fire drops its gunpowder, and the items fall through the campfires into the hoppers.
On top of the campfires, place 9 oak fence gates and open them. Then pour water into the eight outer corners of the pit floor (one block below the island): it flows towards the middle and carries every creeper that falls into the pit onto the open fence gates, through which it drops onto the campfires.
Close the gap between the island and the edge of the pit with 40 trapdoors placed on the top half of the floor and flipped open. Mobs walk over open trapdoors as if they were solid ground – and fall into the pit.
Build a wall 2 blocks high around the 19 × 19 area (stone bricks in the design – any solid block works). The room inside is only 1.8 blocks high once the ceiling is on: creepers fit, zombies, skeletons and endermen do not.
Stone Bricks2 stacks + 16×144On 2 layers: Y +6, Y +7
Place a bottom slab on every third block of the floor in both directions (20 slabs – see the plan). Spiders are 1.4 blocks wide and cannot spawn next to a slab or a wall, so no spider can spawn anywhere in the room.
On the island, put 8 fences around the middle block so it becomes a 1 × 1 pen, and place buttons on the ground around the fences (16 buttons). The buttons keep mobs from spawning right next to the pen.
Oak Button×16
Oak Fence×8Cover the room with trapdoors placed on the TOP half of the block one above the floor, closed – leave the space above the pit and the island open (see the plan). With this ceiling the room is 1.8 blocks high, which only creepers fit into.
Spruce Trapdoor3 stacks + 32×224Put a solid roof over the whole room (17 × 17 stone bricks on top of the trapdoors and the open middle). The room must be completely dark.
Stone Bricks4 stacks + 33×289Place 4 torches on the roof so nothing spawns up there.
Torch×4From the middle of the roof, build a pillar 120 blocks high (the design uses scaffolding, which you can climb). At the top, put 8 glass blocks around it and a slab two blocks above the top of the pillar. You stand on the pillar while the farm runs.
Why so high? Mobs spawn only between 24 and 128 blocks from you. Up there, the room is within range, but most caves and the ground around the farm are not – so the creepers spawn in the farm.
Scaffolding1 stack + 56×120
White Stained Glass×8
Smooth Stone Slab×1On 121 layers: Y +9, Y +10, Y +11, Y +12, Y +13, Y +14, Y +15, Y +16, Y +17, Y +18, Y +19, Y +20, Y +21, Y +22, Y +23, Y +24, Y +25, Y +26, Y +27, Y +28, Y +29, Y +30, Y +31, Y +32, Y +33, Y +34, Y +35, Y +36, Y +37, Y +38, Y +39, Y +40, Y +41, Y +42, Y +43, Y +44, Y +45, Y +46, Y +47, Y +48, Y +49, Y +50, Y +51, Y +52, Y +53, Y +54, Y +55, Y +56, Y +57, Y +58, Y +59, Y +60, Y +61, Y +62, Y +63, Y +64, Y +65, Y +66, Y +67, Y +68, Y +69, Y +70, Y +71, Y +72, Y +73, Y +74, Y +75, Y +76, Y +77, Y +78, Y +79, Y +80, Y +81, Y +82, Y +83, Y +84, Y +85, Y +86, Y +87, Y +88, Y +89, Y +90, Y +91, Y +92, Y +93, Y +94, Y +95, Y +96, Y +97, Y +98, Y +99, Y +100, Y +101, Y +102, Y +103, Y +104, Y +105, Y +106, Y +107, Y +108, Y +109, Y +110, Y +111, Y +112, Y +113, Y +114, Y +115, Y +116, Y +117, Y +118, Y +119, Y +120, Y +121, Y +122, Y +123, Y +124, Y +125, Y +126, Y +127, Y +128, Y +131
Build 3 snow golems in the pen (2 snow blocks and a carved pumpkin each – build them right there or lead them in). Snow golems throw snowballs at every creeper they see.
Place: 3× Snow Golem
Climb the tower and stand on top. Creepers spawn in the dark room; when a snowball hits one, it turns on the snow golem and walks towards it – right over the open trapdoors. It falls into the pit, the water carries it to the middle and it burns on the soul campfires. The gunpowder collects in the chests.
Keep cats away from the farm (creepers flee from them) and play on Easy or harder.
Your progress is saved in this browser. Log in to keep it on every device and earn 25 points for completing the farm.
Tick what you have gathered — it is remembered together with your build progress. A stack is 64 items (signs 16; buckets, beds and boats do not stack); a shulker box holds 27 stacks.
Stone Bricks6 stacks + 49×433Spruce Trapdoor4 stacks + 8×264Scaffolding1 stack + 56×120Smooth Stone Slab×21Oak Button×16
Hopper×9
Oak Fence Gate×9
Soul Campfire×9Oak Fence×8
Water Bucket×8White Stained Glass×8Chest×6Torch×6Shulkercraft built this farm for Minecraft 1.21 and newer (his litematic is from 1.21.5). It relies on old mechanics – mob sizes, open trapdoors that mobs treat as floor, creepers turning on whatever hurt them – so it should also work in somewhat older versions, but we only tested 1.21.11 and 26.3.
Our test runs in an empty test world, where the room is the only place mobs can spawn. In a real world the rate depends on how much other dark space is within 128 blocks of you: light up caves near the farm. Creepers do not spawn in mushroom fields, and snow golems melt in hot biomes.
~420 Gunpowder/h — Measured on 26.3 (Nov 4, 2026). Measured with our automated test on a local Minecraft server (fake player at the AFK spot); your rate depends on render distance, difficulty and surroundings.
Download the original The schematic / world is offered by the creator or the tutorial author — we link to the original download.
This gunpowder farm works with the shape of the spawning room: its ceiling of trapdoors makes it exactly 1.8 blocks high, so zombies, skeletons and endermen do not fit and slabs on every third block keep spiders out – only creepers spawn.
Three snow golems stand in a small pen in the middle. When one of their snowballs hits a creeper, the creeper turns on the golem and walks towards it, straight over a ring of open trapdoors that mobs mistake for solid ground. It falls into a pit, water carries it onto soul campfires and the gunpowder drops into hoppers and chests.
You wait on top of a tall pillar above the farm: from up there most caves and the surface around the farm are too far away to spawn mobs.
