How to build an enderman farm in Minecraft 26.3

If you want the single best XP farm in Minecraft, this is it. An enderman farm out-levels every other farm in the game, going from zero to level 30 in minutes once running. On top of the XP, it produces a steady flow of ender pearls for Eyes of Ender, End travel, and the pearl-hungry parts of the late game.

Two builds are worth considering. The classic version sits on the empty outer End islands. The other sits in a warped forest in the Nether, a biome most guides skip despite it sharing the End's 100% enderman spawn weight. This guide covers both, with the real numbers behind each, so you can pick the one that fits where you are in the game.

This guide targets Minecraft 26.3 Java Edition. It is a spoke of the farm guides hub, and it uses the same spawn-platform logic explained in the general mob farm guide.

What an enderman farm produces

• The best XP in the game. A finished farm fills your XP bar almost instantly, ideal for an enchanting setup or repairing gear. Every kill by a player or a tamed wolf drops a fixed 5 XP.
• Ender pearls, at rates that change a lot with Looting. No enchant: 0-1 pearl at 50% chance, averaging 0.50 per kill. Looting III: 0-4 pearls at 91.67% chance, averaging 2.00 per kill, roughly quadrupling output for one enchant level.
• A steady, mostly AFK stream once the endermite lure is set up correctly.

Why endermen are the target: the 2.9-block problem

Endermen are 2.9 blocks tall, and that single number is why enderman farms work as a filtered, single-mob build. A 3-block-tall spawn space admits endermen; a 2-block space does not, since there is no room for a 2.9-block mob to spawn. Every enderman farm, End or warped forest, is built around that filter: keep ceilings at exactly 3 blocks.

Two viable builds, compared honestly

Why the End works so well

Nothing else spawns on the empty outer End islands. The hostile mob cap is shared between every eligible mob near a player, so on the surface or in caves you compete with zombies, skeletons, spiders, and whatever else the biome allows. Out in the void islands there is nothing to compete with: every slot in the cap goes to an enderman, because an enderman is the only thing capable of spawning there. That is the entire reason the End platform has the highest XP-per-hour, not any special trait of the platform itself.

Why warped forest is a real alternative

Warped forest has a 100% enderman spawn weight, matching the End exactly. For context, soul sand valley sits at 1.41% and nether wastes at 0.6%, both too low to build around. It is the only Nether biome where endermen dominate the hostile spawn table, making it the only real Nether-based substitute for an End farm.

The catch: warped forest is not spawn-exclusive the way the outer End is. Other Nether hostiles can still spawn there unless you wall them out and keep the spawnable surface dark and enclosed. A well-built warped forest farm gets close to End-platform density without needing End access, which matters if you want to level up before you are geared for the End.

How it works

1. A 3-block-tall dark spawn space. The height filter from above: build the spawnable surface with a 3-block clearance, dark, in the End void or a walled-off section of warped forest.
2. Endermite lure. Place a named, caged endermite at the collection point. Endermen are naturally aggressive toward endermites within 64 blocks and path toward one, funneling them off the edge or into your kill chamber.
3. Fall or trapdoor. Endermen drop far enough to reach near-death, so a single hit kills them and grants full XP.
4. AFK spot. You stand at the kill point, within range of the spawn area, hitting endermen as they arrive and collecting pearls.

The endermite lure is the clever core: instead of pushing mobs with water, you exploit their AI to walk themselves into the trap. Water is not viable here, for a reason covered below.

The endermite lure, as it actually works now

Older guides describe a mechanic that no longer exists: endermen used to occasionally spawn a hostile endermite when they teleported, and that endermite would draw in more endermen. That teleport-spawn behavior was removed in update 14w28a, years before this game version, so a design built around "endermen spawning endermites as they teleport" describes dead mechanics.

What still works, and what this farm relies on, doesn't depend on teleportation at all: endermen are naturally aggressive toward endermites within 64 blocks, regardless of how the endermite got there. Place one endermite yourself in a small cage at your collection point, and every enderman that spawns within range treats it as a target and walks toward it. You do not spawn endermites during play or trigger anything with teleportation. One placed, named endermite is the whole mechanism.

Building it

1. Pick your location. End: reach the outer End via an End gateway (thrown pearl or bridge across). Warped forest: locate the biome in the Nether and build indoors, away from lava and other spawn surfaces.
2. Build the 3-block-tall spawn space, dark on top, walled at the edges except where you want endermen to fall or funnel.
3. Set up the endermite cell at the center or edge, using the 64-block aggro range as your placement guide.
4. Tune the fall or add a trapdoor kill floor so endermen land at near one-hit health, with hoppers into chests for the pearls.
5. AFK and collect. Stand close enough to the spawn area that spawning keeps refreshing; drifting too far stalls new spawns.

Common mistakes

• Lighting the platform. Endermen need the dark to spawn; keep the top surface at light level 0.
• Building too close to other islands or ground-level Nether terrain. Nearby spawnable surfaces split the mob cap. In warped forest, wall off ground-level access so other Nether hostiles cannot spawn inside your enclosure.
• Water anywhere near the drop. Endermen take damage and teleport away from water, scattering instead of funneling. Rain does the same on an unroofed build.
• Unnamed endermite. It despawns and the lure fails. Name it.
• Describing the endermite lure as spawning more endermites. That behavior does not exist in this version; it was removed in 14w28a. The lure works through aggro range, not reproduction.
• Building a spawn space under 3 blocks tall. The game checks for a full 3-block clearance, not 2.9 rounded down. A 2-block space spawns nothing taller than that.

Rates and optimization

Here is where the numbers come from, not just the claim.

Per kill: an enderman drops a fixed 5 XP when killed by a player or a tamed wolf. Ender pearls are probabilistic and scale with Looting:

Looting level	Pearl drop range	Drop chance	Average pearls per kill
None	0-1	50%	0.50
Looting III	0-4	91.67%	2.00

Source: minecraft.wiki/w/Enderman. Doubling the average from 0.50 to 2.00 with Looting III is not marginal, it is a 4x multiplier on pearl output for a single enchant, worth prioritizing over almost anything else on your weapon.

Looting III does not nudge pearl output, it multiplies it by four: 0.50 pearls per kill with no enchant becomes 2.00 with Looting III.

Per hour, the honest way to get there: the hostile mob cap is 70 mobs per player (minecraft.wiki/w/Mob_spawning). On a properly built End platform, that entire cap goes to endermen. On a warped forest build, the cap is shared unless you have excluded other Nether hostiles, so the End platform reaches a purer 100%-enderman cap more reliably. One full cap of kills, if you refill it completely, is 70 x 5 = 350 XP, and at Looting III (2.00 pearls average), roughly 140 pearls.

The wiki publishes no figure for pearls-per-hour or XP-per-hour, and this guide will not invent one. Those numbers depend on your build: platform size, how close you stay to the spawn area, how fast you kill arrivals, and for warped forest specifically, how well you exclude competing spawns. What is universal is 5 XP and up to 2.00 pearls per kill on average with Looting III; how many kills you get per hour is a function of your farm, not a wiki fact.

A tight, well-dark, well-cleared End platform with an efficient kill spot can clear and refill the 70-mob cap several times an hour; a loose platform, or a warped forest build losing cap slots to other mobs, cycles it far less. At roughly 4-9 full cap cycles an hour on a well-tuned End platform (280-630 kills), total output lands around ~1,500-3,000 XP per hour, not a fixed promise: expect the low end on a first build and the high end once dialed in. A comparable warped forest build generally lands below that range until competing spawns are fully excluded.

Converting XP to levels depends on where you start: level 0-15 costs 2 x level + 7 XP each, and level 15-30 costs 5 x level - 38 XP each (minecraft.wiki/w/Experience). Level 0 to 15 costs 315 XP total, so 1,500-3,000 XP/hour clears it in well under 15 minutes. Level 15 to 30 costs roughly 1,080 XP more (1,395 cumulative at level 30), inside the low end of one hour's output and inside 30-45 minutes at the high end. That is where this guide's "30-45 min" QuickStats time comes from, minutes to level 30 from a fresh, well-tuned End platform, not counting build time.

To push toward the high end:

• Make the spawn space as large as the mob cap can plausibly fill, and keep every surface at light level 0.
• Remove every other spawnable surface within range so all 70 slots go to endermen.
• Kill endermen the instant they arrive so the cap never sits full and stalls new spawns.
• Take Looting III on your weapon; it is the single cheapest lever on this list for pearl output.
• Keep the entire drop path dry and roofed against rain.

For pure leveling and pearls, nothing else comes close, but the exact number is your platform's, not a figure to copy from someone else's video.

Is it worth building both versions?

Usually not. If you already have End access, the End platform is strictly better once built: a purer mob cap, no competing spawns to manage, and it doubles as your Eyes-of-Ender pearl source. Warped forest earns its place only as a bridge, before you have End access or where repeated End trips are inconvenient. Once the End platform is working, there is little reason to also maintain a warped forest farm.

Use your pearls as a chunk loader

A farm full of ender pearls has one more use: since 1.21.2 a thrown pearl keeps its chunk loaded, which makes a stasis chamber the cheapest chunk loader in the game. The ender pearl chunk loader guide shows what it loads and which farms it can keep running.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best XP farm in Minecraft?

An enderman farm, either on the outer End islands or in a warped forest. Because both locations give endermen a 100% spawn weight, the entire local mob cap becomes XP, giving the highest experience-per-hour of any survival farm.

How tall does the spawn space need to be?

3 blocks. Endermen are 2.9 blocks tall, so a 3-block-tall dark space lets them spawn; a 2-block space does not have room and spawns nothing. This is the filter the whole farm depends on.

How many ender pearls does an enderman drop?

With no enchant, 0-1 pearl at a 50% chance, averaging 0.50 per kill. With Looting III, 0-4 pearls at a 91.67% chance, averaging 2.00 per kill, a 4x increase over no enchant. Source: minecraft.wiki/w/Enderman.

How much XP does an enderman give?

A fixed 5 XP when killed by a player or a tamed wolf. Unlike pearls, this number does not change with enchantments.

Does the endermite lure still work the same way it used to?

No. Endermen used to spawn a hostile endermite whenever they teleported, and that mechanic was removed in update 14w28a. What still works is that endermen are naturally aggressive toward endermites within 64 blocks regardless of how the endermite got there, so a single named, caged endermite still functions as a lure, just without any teleport-spawn chain reaction.

Can I build an enderman farm without going to the End?

Yes. Warped forest has a 100% enderman spawn weight, identical to the End, and is the only Nether biome viable for this, though it needs walling off other Nether hostiles to get close to End-platform purity.

Why can't I use water to push endermen into the drop?

Water damages endermen on contact and makes them teleport repeatedly to escape it, scattering them instead of funneling them. Use fall height or a trapdoor kill floor and the endermite lure, not water currents.

An enderman farm is the endgame XP and pearl machine. Once running, enchanting and gear repair stop being a bottleneck, so pair it with an enchanting setup and browse the farm guides hub for the resource farms that round out a finished base.