A raid farm is the most efficient source of two things that are otherwise hard to farm at scale: emeralds and totems of undying. It works by repeatedly triggering raids in a controlled arena, funneling every raider to a kill point, and collecting their drops automatically. With player kills on evokers, you get a guaranteed totem drop every time one spawns.

This is a complete guide to the mechanics and a minimal farm concept, version-pinned to Minecraft 26.2 Java Edition.

Tested on: Minecraft 26.2, Java Edition, vanilla survival. Mechanics described are documented behavior as of this version. Throughput depends on your farm geometry and reset speed; measure your own setup.

Bad Omen trigger method: verify for your version. The way Bad Omen is obtained changed significantly in the 1.21 line. The old behavior (killing a raid or patrol captain directly gave the player the Bad Omen effect) was reworked to involve an Ominous Bottle intermediate item. The exact current acquisition path for 26.2 should be confirmed against the Minecraft Wiki - Bad Omen before you build. The raid-triggering mechanic itself (entering a village while under Bad Omen) has not changed, but how you obtain the effect may differ from older guides you find online.

How raids work

A raid is a wave-based assault on a village triggered by a player who enters a village while carrying the Bad Omen status effect. The key pieces:

Bad Omen acquisition. In current versions, Bad Omen is linked to the Ominous Trial system introduced in the 1.21 line. Ominous Bottles can be found in certain structures and used to apply the effect. The older mechanic of gaining Bad Omen by killing a patrol or outpost captain directly appears to have been replaced or significantly altered. Confirm the exact current method for 26.2 on the Minecraft Wiki - Bad Omen page before committing to a farm design, because the trigger mechanic is the only renewable part of the loop.

Village detection. The game defines a village by the presence of at least one bed and the associated village boundary. Stepping inside that boundary while under Bad Omen triggers the raid. You do not need a large or populated village. A minimal structure with a few beds is sufficient as the trigger site.

Raid waves. A raid consists of multiple waves. The number of waves and the composition of each wave scale with the current game difficulty and, in some versions, with the level of the Bad Omen effect the triggering player had. The raider types that can appear:

  • Pillagers - the base raider; drop arrows and occasionally crossbows
  • Vindicators - melee; drop emeralds and rarely iron axes
  • Witches - support casters; drop potion ingredients, glass bottles, glowstone dust, sugar, sticks
  • Ravagers - large mounts; can carry pillagers or evokers
  • Evokers - appear in later waves; the priority target of any raid farm

Evoker drops. Each evoker killed by a player drops exactly one Totem of Undying, guaranteed. This is the only survival-renewable source of totems in the game. Evokers also drop emeralds. Because the totem drop is player-kill-only, evokers must die to player damage (or a tamed wolf), not lava, fall damage, or other non-player kill methods.

Raid completion. Surviving all waves and winning the raid grants the Hero of the Village effect, which gives a substantial discount on villager trades for a limited duration. In a farm context this is a pleasant bonus, but the primary output is the loot from the raiders themselves.

Raid reset. After a raid ends (either by completion or by all beds in the village being destroyed), a new raid can be triggered the same way: re-apply Bad Omen and re-enter a valid village boundary. The reset speed of this loop is what determines farm throughput.

Why this farm is advanced

Most mob farms spawn mobs in bulk passively. Raid farms have a manual trigger step. Each raid requires the player to:

  1. Obtain Bad Omen (confirm current method for 26.2)
  2. Walk into the village boundary to start the wave
  3. Stay present and kill evokers before totems despawn (5-minute item timer)

The automation handles raider routing and collection. The trigger and evoker kills remain player-involved. This is not a fully AFK farm; it is a farm you actively run, and throughput scales with how quickly you can reset and retrigger.

The minimal farm concept

A raid farm has four functional zones:

1. The trigger village

The smallest valid village: one or a few beds placed in a defined area. The player stands near the bed cluster to trigger the village boundary check, then steps just inside that boundary with Bad Omen active to start the raid. Keep the village boundary small and well-defined so you know exactly where to stand.

A platform elevated off the ground near the village, inaccessible to raiders, is the standard trigger and observation point. Position it so you can see evokers below and reach them quickly with a sword, bow, or crossbow.

2. The spawn area and funnel

Raiders spawn in a ring around the village boundary during each wave. They path toward the village centre and toward any linked villager beds. A farm shapes the terrain so the path raiders naturally take leads them into a single collection point.

Common designs use the raiders' pathfinding against them. An elevated village with no accessible ground-level entry funnels raiders toward a single opening, then water streams or drops push them to the kill chamber.

Raiders (particularly pillagers and vindicators) are not swimming-friendly and will path around or through water rather than swimming optimally. Test your funnel with a small raid before you commit to the full farm geometry.

3. The kill chamber

The kill chamber has different requirements for different raider types:

  • Pillagers, vindicators, witches: can be killed by lava, fall damage, or any automated method. Their drops (emeralds, arrows, potion ingredients) land in hoppers below.
  • Evokers: must be killed by the player (or a tamed wolf). Position a gap or observation point so you can hit evokers in the chamber without taking damage from other raiders. A 1-block-wide trench with a viewing slot is the standard setup.

Hopper chains under the kill point feed item drops into chests. Evokers should ideally be isolated from lava or other instant-kill mechanics so there is time for the player to land the kill.

A practical layout: most raiders are funneled into lava or a long drop for automatic kills, but evokers are separated by a gate or a slightly shorter drop path that keeps them at low health without killing them. You approach, one-hit each evoker, and the hopper collects the totem.

Totems drop as items with the standard 5-minute despawn timer. If evokers are in a lava-kill section, they die instantly but as a non-player kill, no totem drops. Ensure your kill chamber lets you deal the final blow to every evoker before they hit lava or otherwise take lethal environment damage.

4. Item collection

Hoppers underneath the kill zone collect emeralds and other raider drops. A sorted chest system downstream separates emeralds from arrows, bottles, and other debris. See the item sorter guide if you want automated sorting downstream.

Totems, as player-killed drops, appear at the evoker's death location. If the evoker dies at an elevated kill spot, ensure a hopper is positioned directly below or use a waterstream to push the totem item to a hopper within the 5-minute window.

Throughput: what actually drives output

Do not build this farm based on a specific "totems per hour" number from another source. Raid farm throughput depends on:

  • Reset speed. How long it takes you to re-apply Bad Omen and retrigger the raid is the biggest limiter. If each reset takes 3-4 minutes, your totem-per-hour ceiling is determined entirely by that cycle time, not by the kill speed.
  • Bad Omen level and wave composition. In versions where Bad Omen has multiple levels (from Ominous Bottles of different potency), higher levels produce larger or harder waves with more evokers. Confirm whether 26.2 supports Bad Omen levels and what effect they have on evoker count per wave.
  • Wave size and evoker frequency. Evokers appear in the later waves of a raid, not every wave. The exact number per wave depends on difficulty and Bad Omen level. Harder difficulties and higher Bad Omen levels generally produce more evokers.
  • Kill speed. Slow evoker kills mean you are idle during the raid. A Sharpness V sword or Power V bow reduces per-evoker kill time meaningfully.

Honest throughput advice: AFK for 10 complete raid cycles with a timer. Divide your totem count by the time. That number is real for your setup and game difficulty. Numbers from external sources are not.

Chunk loading considerations

The village and kill chamber must be in loaded chunks for raiders to spawn and path correctly. Use /forceload to keep the farm chunks active:

/forceload add <village-x> <village-z>

Unlike a passive spawner farm, a raid farm requires the player to be present anyway for the evoker kills, so chunk loading is mainly relevant for keeping the raider AI active between waves. See the chunk borders and forceload guide for ENTITY_TICKING requirements.

Performance notes for servers

Raids spawn a substantial number of entities at once: up to a full wave of pillagers, vindicators, ravagers, witches, and evokers, plus any mounts. On a multiplayer server with poor TPS, wave spawning can cause noticeable lag spikes. If you run the farm on a server, check that the host can handle the entity burst before investing heavily in the build. The Server RAM Calculator helps estimate resource needs, and our hosting comparison covers hosts with better entity-handling performance.

Linking this farm to the rest of your economy

The emerald output from a raid farm feeds directly into villager trading, which converts emeralds into enchanted books, tools, and other high-value items. A trading hall next to the raid farm site makes the emerald-to-enchantment pipeline short and efficient. See the villager trading hall guide for a compact trading hall layout optimized for bulk purchases.

The iron from your iron golem farm complements this: iron trades reliably with weaponsmiths and armorers and is the foundation of the Minecraft barter economy. The iron golem farm guide covers a minimal 10-villager design.

Common mistakes

No totem drops from evokers. Evokers are dying to lava, fall damage, or environmental hazard instead of a player kill. Redesign the kill chamber so evokers survive to player interaction. A kill chamber that separates evoker kills from the automated raider kill section is standard.

Raid not triggering. Either Bad Omen is not active (check your status effects with the inventory screen), or you are not inside the village boundary when you cross the threshold. A minimal single-bed village has a very small boundary; you may need to stand right beside the bed rather than near it.

Raiders not funneling correctly. Raider pathfinding is less predictable than generic mob pathfinding; raiders actively path toward the village centre and any beds. Test the funnel at your actual village location and bed position before building around it.

Totems despawning. The 5-minute timer starts on drop. If you are slow to collect after evoker kills, or hoppers are not positioned under the kill spot, totems disappear. Ensure hopper coverage directly beneath every possible evoker kill location.

Raid not resetting. The next raid cannot start until the previous one ends (either by completion or failure). If raiders are stuck somewhere in the funnel without dying, the raid hangs. A manual escape route or a fallback lava layer at the bottom of the funnel prevents soft-locks.

This guide is part of our Minecraft farm guides collection for 26.2.

Sources & further reading: