A totem of undying is the single item that turns a fatal hit into a warning. It cancels the killing blow, refills your health, and it comes from exactly one renewable source in the entire game: an evoker. The only reliable, repeatable way to get totems is to run raids and make sure evokers show up in them.
This guide is narrower than our general raid farm guide, which covers the full raid-farm build: trigger village, funnel, kill chamber, and emerald collection. Start there for the structure. This article goes deeper on the output raid farms exist to chase: totems specifically, how often evokers actually appear, whether a player kill is required, and whether the whole project beats just clearing villages by hand.
Tested on: Minecraft 26.2, Java Edition, vanilla survival. Mechanics described are documented behavior as of this version. Where a number could not be independently verified against current-version sources, it has been left out rather than guessed.
Why totems only come from evokers
Totems of undying have exactly one source: evokers. There is no loot table, no trade, no chest anywhere in the game that produces one. Evokers themselves spawn in only two places:
- Woodland mansions, where a fixed number generate on the second and third floors as part of the structure.
- Raids, from Normal difficulty upward, in the later waves.
A woodland mansion gives you a one-time batch of evokers tied to that structure. It is not renewable: once you have cleared the mansion, there are no more evokers there. Raids are the renewable path, because a raid can be triggered again and again at the same location, and each sufficiently advanced raid has a chance to spawn evokers in its later waves.
This is the entire reason a "totem farm" and a "raid farm" are the same structure. You are not farming totems directly. You are farming raids, and treating evoker kills as the payoff wave.
Do you actually need a player kill for the totem to drop?
A lot of older raid-farm guides insist evokers must die to player damage or the totem will not drop. That claim does not hold up against the current drop mechanics: an evoker drops its totem of undying unconditionally on death, regardless of what killed it, and Looting has no effect on that drop since it is always exactly one. The player-kill requirement applies to a different drop entirely, the evoker's emeralds, which in Java Edition only drop when the kill is credited to a player or a tamed wolf.
Practically, this means your kill chamber does not need to babysit evokers separately from the rest of the wave. A design that lets everything, pillagers, vindicators, evokers included, die to fall damage or automated hits still yields totems, just without the evokers' bonus emeralds, which need a player or wolf credited kill.
This contradicts the "player kill required" claim that circulates in a lot of older raid-farm writeups, including some for earlier versions. Test it on your own farm before relying on it for a design decision: kill a couple of evokers with an automated method (fall damage, a lava edge that still lets the totem clear the flames before despawning) and confirm a totem lands in your hopper.
When evokers actually show up in a raid
This is the number that matters more than any "totems per hour" figure: evokers are not guaranteed in every wave, and whether they show up at all depends on your world's difficulty setting, not just the raid itself.
- Easy difficulty: raids are shorter, and evokers only have a chance to appear starting partway through, not a guarantee. A totem farm run on Easy will be noticeably slower and less consistent than the same farm on a harder difficulty.
- Normal and Hard difficulty: evokers become a reliable part of the later waves rather than a chance-based bonus, and Hard raids run more waves overall with more evokers layered into them.
- Raid Omen level (formerly Bad Omen level): the effect that triggers a raid now has potency levels. A higher level adds an extra wave on top of the difficulty's base wave count and increases the enchantment level on raiders' gear, which matters for how dangerous the raid is to survive, not directly for evoker count.
The practical takeaway: on Easy, totems trickle in unreliably no matter how good your funnel and kill chamber are. That is a difficulty-setting issue, not a build-quality problem, so check your world's difficulty before troubleshooting a farm that "isn't working."
Exact per-wave evoker counts and percentages vary by edition and have been revised across game versions. Confirm current wave-by-wave evoker odds for 26.2 against the Minecraft Wiki - Raid page before assuming a specific raid on your difficulty will contain evokers. Treat this guide's guidance as directional: harder difficulty and higher Raid Omen levels mean more evokers, not an exact count.
Triggering raids: Raid Omen, not Bad Omen alone
The trigger mechanic has an extra step compared to older versions. Bad Omen is obtained by drinking an Ominous Bottle, gained from killing a raid captain outside of a raid or from vault rewards. Bad Omen by itself does nothing until you walk into a village boundary; at that point it converts into Raid Omen, a 30-second countdown effect. If Raid Omen expires without being cancelled, usually by drinking milk, the raid begins.
For a farm, your reset loop is: reapply an Ominous Bottle, walk into the trigger village, wait out the 30-second Raid Omen window, then fight the raid. That wait is fixed and adds to every reset cycle, on top of however long it takes to reacquire the bottle itself.
What to bring
Shopping list
- Building blocks for the trigger village and kill chamber (whatever matches your raid-farm design, see the raid farm guide for layout)
- A stack of beds to define the trigger village boundary
- Hoppers and chests for totem and item collection
- A weapon with Looting (helps emerald and other item drops, not the totem itself)
- A stock of Ominous Bottles for repeat triggers
- Milk, kept on hand in case you need to cancel a Raid Omen mid-setup
Bad luck and consistency: there isn't really "bad luck" on the totem itself
Because the totem drop is unconditional, there is no bad-luck protection mechanic to design around, and none is needed. The randomness in a totem farm lives entirely upstream, in whether evokers spawn at all during a given raid's waves, not in whether a spawned evoker drops its totem. If you killed an evoker, you got a totem. Every session's totem count is just a count of how many evokers you managed to kill that session, no drop-chance roll involved after that point.
This is a meaningfully different situation from something like wither skeleton skulls, which have a genuine per-kill drop chance and benefit heavily from Looting. See the wither skeleton farm guide for a farm where drop-chance optimization actually matters. A totem farm's only lever is getting more evokers in front of your weapon, not improving the odds on each one.
Is a dedicated totem farm worth building?
Pros
- Renewable and repeatable at a location you control, unlike a woodland mansion's fixed evoker count
- Once built, the trigger-and-kill loop is fast to repeat compared to traveling to find a new mansion or a natural raid
- The same farm produces emeralds and other raid loot alongside totems, so the trip is not single-purpose
- Totems from a raid farm are player-killed by design if you choose to fight in melee, so you also get the evokers' emeralds
Cons
- Requires an Ominous Bottle supply chain (raid captains or vaults) to keep resetting, which is its own side project
- Every reset carries a fixed 30-second Raid Omen wait before the raid even starts
- Evokers are not guaranteed per raid, so throughput is inherently uneven and hard to predict
- Significant build effort (funnel, kill chamber, trigger village) for output that is capped by how many evokers happen to spawn, not by farm efficiency
- Not meaningfully AFK: you need to be present to fight evokers and keep the raid moving
If you only need a totem or two, hunting a woodland mansion or triggering a manual raid in an existing village is faster than building a dedicated farm. A dedicated farm earns its cost if you want a standing supply you can top up in minutes, the same logic that makes a villager breeder worth building once you need more than a handful of villagers.
Common mistakes
Assuming Easy difficulty will still produce totems reliably. Evokers are chance-based there rather than guaranteed in later waves. Check world difficulty before reworking the farm itself.
Killing evokers with lava and assuming the totem is lost. The totem still drops; a "missing" totem is almost always a despawn or a hopper not positioned under the actual kill spot.
Letting totems sit uncollected. Like any dropped item, totems despawn after five minutes. Hopper coverage under every kill point is required.
Never restocking Ominous Bottles. Killing raid captains or hitting vaults for bottles needs to be part of your loop or the farm sits idle.
Assuming raids work on Peaceful. They do not occur on that difficulty at all.
Frequently asked questions
Do evokers need to be killed by a player for the totem to drop?
No. The totem of undying drops unconditionally when an evoker dies, regardless of the kill method. The player-kill requirement applies to the evoker's separate emerald drop, not the totem.
Why are no totems dropping from my raid farm?
Most likely no evokers are spawning in your raids at all, which is common on Easy difficulty where evoker spawns are chance-based rather than guaranteed. Check your world's difficulty first. If evokers are spawning but totems still seem to be missing, check that hoppers cover every point where an evoker can die, since totems despawn after five minutes like any dropped item.
Can I get totems without building a raid farm?
Yes. Woodland mansions generate a fixed number of evokers on their upper floors, and you can also trigger one-off raids in any natural village. Neither is renewable at the same location the way a dedicated farm is, but both work for a small, one-time totem supply.
Does Looting increase totem drops?
No. Evokers always drop exactly one totem regardless of Looting level. Looting affects their emerald drop and other raid loot, not the totem.
What is the difference between Bad Omen and Raid Omen?
Bad Omen is the effect you get from drinking an Ominous Bottle. It converts into Raid Omen, a 30-second countdown, only once you enter a village boundary. If that 30-second window expires without you drinking milk to cancel it, the raid starts.
This guide is a companion to the full raid farm build guide, which covers the trigger village, funnel, and kill chamber in detail, and part of our Minecraft farm guides collection for 26.2.
Sources & further reading:
