A nether brick platform inside a fortress's bounding box: wither skeletons spawn on it, go for an iron golem and walk through a portal into an overworld corridor, where they wait until you kill them for skulls. No spawn-proofing.
This design works in Minecraft Java 1.16+.
You need 14 kinds of materials (1,238 items, about 30 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
Build a 30 × 30 platform of nether bricks at Y 63 (any other block lets normal nether mobs spawn instead). In its middle, put four chests as a 2 × 2 floor – the iron golem will stand on them.
Wither skeletons spawn only inside a nether fortress's bounding box – the box around all its bridges and corridors – and there only on nether bricks. Find a fortress (ianxofour recommends one in a soul sand valley, away from other fortresses) and work out how far its bounding box reaches (MiniHUD can show it). The platform must be inside the box: in Shulkercraft's world it is at Y 63, the box reaches up to Y 66.
Put out any fire and remove lava and other light sources near the spawning area – the platform must stay dark.
Build a 30 × 30 platform of nether bricks at Y 63 (any other block lets normal nether mobs spawn instead). In its middle, put four chests as a 2 × 2 floor – the iron golem will stand on them.
Nether Bricks14 stacks×896
Chest×4Place stone brick walls on every third block of the platform in both directions (single posts, see the plan). Mobs path around them, which spreads them over the platform.
Stone Brick Wall1 stack + 32×96Around the 2 × 2 chests build the golem's pen (see the plan): a ring of stone brick walls with slabs on it, stone bricks and iron bars, and a roof of repeaters and slabs. Wither skeletons attack iron golems – they all walk towards the pen but cannot reach the golem.
On 4 layers: Y +1 (world Y 64), Y +2 (world Y 65), Y +3 (world Y 66), Y +4 (world Y 67)
On the south side of the pen, build a nether portal 4 blocks wide on a row of stone brick walls (its bottom is one block above the platform), and four stairs leading up to it (slabs on both sides). Light it with flint and steel. Wither skeletons that walk around the pen to reach the golem step up the stairs and into the portal.
If many skeletons crowd at the pen's wall instead, ianxofour's tip is to move the portal 1 block lower.
On 7 layers: Y +1 (world Y 64), Y +2 (world Y 65), Y +3 (world Y 66), Y +4 (world Y 67), Y +5 (world Y 68), Y +6 (world Y 69), Y +7 (world Y 70)
Put a turtle egg on each of the four corner posts. Zombified piglins are drawn to turtle eggs, so they gather in the corners instead of crowding around the portal.
Build an iron golem in the pen (4 iron blocks and a carved pumpkin, before the roof goes on). It stands on the chests and is the bait for the wither skeletons.
Place: Iron Golem
Mobs spawn only within 128 blocks of you. Go up to the nether roof and build a small glass room exactly above the platform, with its floor at Y 190 – 127 blocks above the platform, so most of the platform is within range while almost no other nether ground is. The design adds a ladder and a portal up there for your way to the overworld storage.
White Stained Glass1 stack + 17×81
Obsidian×20
Smooth Stone Slab×10
Stone Bricks×4
Ladder×4
Spruce Trapdoor×2Stone Brick Wall×1
Oak Door×1On 10 layers: Y +127 (world Y 190), Y +128 (world Y 191), Y +129 (world Y 192), Y +130 (world Y 193), Y +131 (world Y 194), Y +132 (world Y 195), Y +133 (world Y 196), Y +134 (world Y 197), Y +135 (world Y 198), Y +136 (world Y 199)
The portal on the platform leads to the overworld at 8 times the coordinates. Build its overworld side yourself, high in the sky (Shulkercraft's is at Y 190, where nothing else is around): a 3-block-wide corridor of stone bricks, 10 blocks long, with the farm's portal at one end and cobwebs in front of it. The wither skeletons that come through wait in the corridor – nobody is in the overworld while you AFK in the nether, so they never despawn.
AFK in the room on the roof. Wither skeletons (and some blazes, skeletons and zombified piglins) spawn on the platform and go for the golem; on their way around the pen, the wither skeletons walk into the portal and gather in the overworld corridor. When you want skulls, walk through your portal to the corridor and kill them with a Looting III sword – a wither skeleton skull drops 2.5 % of the time, 5.5 % with Looting III, and only when you kill it yourself.
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.
Nether Bricks14 stacks×896Stone Brick Wall2 stacks + 1×129White Stained Glass1 stack + 17×81Smooth Stone Slab×48Obsidian×34Stone Bricks×16
Redstone Repeater×12Chest×4Ladder×4
Stone Brick Stairs×4
Iron Bars×3Spruce Trapdoor×2Oak Door×1ianxofour built this farm for Java 1.16 and newer. In 1.18 the rates dropped to about 100 skulls per hour; 1.19 restored them (ianxofour). The rule it uses: inside a fortress's bounding box, a monster that spawns on nether bricks is picked from the fortress list (wither skeletons, blazes, skeletons, zombified piglins, magma cubes).
The skulls drop only when you kill the wither skeleton yourself: 2.5 % of the time, plus 1 % per level of Looting (5.5 % with Looting III).
How we tested it: in an empty test nether in which the platform's height counts as inside a fortress (the farm has to be built inside the fortress's bounding box anyway), with the test player standing in the AFK room. Every wither skeleton that came through the portal was killed by the player straight away, without Looting – that gave about 5,000 wither skeletons per hour and 131 skulls, 1,637 coal and 4,972 bones. With a Looting III sword you get more skulls and coal from the same kills. In a real world other dark places near the fortress compete for the mob limit, so expect less.
~131 Wither Skeleton Skull/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.
Inside the bounding box of a nether fortress, every mob that spawns on nether bricks comes from the fortress list – mostly wither skeletons. This farm is a 30 × 30 nether brick platform built inside that box, with an iron golem in a pen in the middle. Wither skeletons attack iron golems, so they all walk towards the pen; the ones that go around it walk up a few stairs into a nether portal.
On the other side, in the overworld high above the ground, they gather in a short corridor. Nobody is in the overworld while you wait in the nether, so they never despawn. When you want skulls, go through your own portal to the corridor and kill them with a Looting III sword – skulls only drop from wither skeletons you kill yourself.
You wait in a small room on the nether roof, 127 blocks above the platform: from there, the platform is within the 128-block spawning range, while almost no other part of the nether is. That is why the farm needs no spawn-proofing.
