Useful Redstone Contraptions In Minecraft

Summary

• Redstone contraptions in Minecraft can automate tasks like farming, making gameplay more efficient and fun.
• Easy-to-follow tutorials on YouTube can help build useful contraptions like Villager Breeders and Micro-Crop Farms.
• Redstone designs, like a Block Swapper or Bubble Elevator, offer creative and practical ways to enhance gameplay in Minecraft.

When it comes down to it, Minecraft is a fairly simple game to play. Things are pretty intuitive in terms of crafting, especially since a recipe book allows you to go back and check all the recipes you know so far. However, there’s one form of craft in the game that’s only reserved for the smartest: Redstone contraptions.

If Redstone in Minecraft feels like a foreign language, no need to worry. Just replicating a few basic farms tends to teach the basics to a player. Redstone is worth getting into because of how much things can be automated and simplified. Less time tending to crops will be more time spent building or exploring. Without further ado, here are some Redstone contraptions that are insanely useful.

Updated February 22, 2025 by Ben Painter: The latest major update, Tricky Trials, has been released for some time now. Gamers can head back into their worlds to explore older features and build up their worlds. A great way to do this is to start on some easy Redstone contraptions that will make life easier in the game. Some of the ideas in this list are insanely easy to use.

Redstone may be difficult to get one’s head around, but it is easier than it looks, and there is always a tutorial on YouTube that will lend a hand. This update adds five more easy Redstone contraptions and provides more information on how easy each one is to make in Minecraft.

The difficulty level of these contraptions is ranked out of five, with five being the most difficult.

1

Minecart Loading Station

A Quick Way To Get Down Into The Mines

• Difficulty Level: 2/5
• Blocks Required: Building blocks, Dirt, Crops, Composters, Minecarts, Rails, Button, Beds

Building a mine is a given in Minecraft. It’s important to dig deep to find items like Diamonds, Redstone, and underground structures. Minecarts are something used as a quick way to get up and down those mines. However, they are easily lost, meaning a new cart may be needed for each journey.

Building a quick and easy minecart station is something to help keep track of minecarts and for an easy and smooth journey down into the abyss. Also, it looks better from an aesthetic point of view, having some sort of structure in the mine to help build up the world. MumboJumbo has a simple version of this build over on YouTube.

2

Ender Pearl Station

An Easy Method Of Equipping Throwable Items

• Difficulty Level: 1/5
• Blocks Required: Building Blocks, Buttons, Redstone, Redstone Torch, Dispensers

Ender Pearls are an important tool for combat as they can be used to teleport away from danger when fighting in a tough battle. They are somewhat hard to store as they can only be stacked to 16. It may be tedious to remember to grab a full stack before heading out on an adventure.

This is where the quick and simple Ender Pearl Station comes into play. At a simple touch of a button, it fires out a full stack of Ender Pearls ready for the player to use. It uses a simple Redstone system which fires out a signal that pushes out the item when the button is pressed. Asif Gaming talks through this build on YouTube.

3

Cooked Chicken Farm

An Easy Food Source

• Difficulty Level: 2/5
• Blocks Required: Lava, Building Blocks, Fence, Chest, Hopper

One thing that every player needs in Minecraft is food and finding a reliable source can be difficult. Building a Chicken Cooker is an easy way to overcome this issue.

The idea is that the chicken is trapped and bred. When the babies grow up, they are burned by the lava and automatically turned into cooked chicken. It may be a little gruesome, but gamers must remember they aren’t real chickens! To build this requires no work at all. Simply place an enclosed block of lava over a fence block, giving some space below for the baby chickens to be bred. There are a lot of tutorials for this on YouTube, but Triloms’ is a great one.

4

Raid Farm

A Superb Way To Get Lots Of Emeralds

• Difficulty Level: 3/5
• Blocks Required: Bed, Lava, Fence Gates, Building Blocks, Glass, Villager, Job Block, Hoppers, Chests

Raids are a great way to get items like Totems of Undying, Enchanted Books, and Emeralds. There is some really valuable loot available. However, they can be tricky to complete with strong enemy mobs and the risk of causing serious damage to a village.

The simple raid farm takes away the need for this battle. The mobs are spawned in a mock village and instantly burn to death using a water and lava system with the drops falling below into a hopper and chest system. This does not give XP or reward the player with the Hero of the Village status effect, which grants cheaper trade from Villagers. The Raid Farm is simply for the loot. There are some advanced versions of this build, but wattles has a simple one on YouTube.

5

Item Sorter

It’s Important To Keep Organized

• Difficulty Level: 3/5
• Blocks Required: Chests, Items, Building Blocks, Hoppers, Redstone, Repeaters

When players get to a certain point in a Minecraft world, they deal with a lot of different items. A big problem with this is spending hours sorting through the items to prevent losing any important items.

An Item Sorting system can be of great benefit, and it isn’t too difficult to work through on a small scale. It is when this is done for every item in the game that the real difficulty lies. The idea is that the items are put into one chest and then filtered down to chests that already have one of those items inside of them. It involves a lot of hoppers and Redstone, but worth it for saving time for the serious Minecraft player. Voltrox talks through this build over on YouTube.

6

Villager Breeder

A Compact Way To Gather Lots Of Villagers And Transport Them To Where They Need To Be

• Difficulty Level: 2/5
• Blocks Required: Building blocks, Dirt, Crops, Composters, Minecarts, Rails, Button, Beds

Villagers are very useful in Minecraft. They can be traded with to acquire items and emeralds (the currency in Minecraft). So a handy thing to do is to create a Villager Breeder. There are several different variations of this contraption, but the most common one works on a farm. Farmer Villagers harvest crops, and when they have too many, they will breed automatically and produce a child.

The child is then whisked off to be used elsewhere in the Minecraft world, which is where Redstone comes in. This is a rail system that can be designed for easy transportation. BlazeDude on YouTube has a handy tutorial on making a simple Villager Breeder.

7

Block Swapper

A Way To Change Blocks To Save Space

• Difficulty Level: 1/5
• Blocks Required: Building blocks, Pistons, Redstone, Redstone Torch, Redstone Repeaters, Switches

A Block Swapper does what it says on the tin: it swaps blocks out for other ones. A use for this could be in a base, to save space. If players have a small starting base, then they can use a Block Swapper to change from a Crafting Table to a Furnace to an Anvil as needed.

It is not necessary, but it is a fun little way to use the various workstations in the game and a great starting point for gamers looking to get into Redstone. enbentz games on YouTube have a simple, but effective, tutorial for creating a Block Swapper in Minecraft.

8

Cocoa Bean Farm

Semi-Automatic Way To Gain Lots Of Cocoa Beans

• Difficulty Level: 1/5
• Blocks Required: Building Blocks, Jungle Wood, Dirt, Observer, Droppers, Piston, Redstone, Cocoa Beans, Switch

Cocoa Beans are a useful material in Minecraft. They can be used to create cookies, but are also used as a brown dye. They can be farmed easily, and grown on jungle wood, but it may become tedious to constantly farm the beans manually.

There is a way to make a semi-automatic farm that shakes the beans off when they are grown, they can then be collected manually. That, or gamers could create a rail system, using a Hopper Minecart to collect the Cocoa Beans. There are a few different designs out there, Triloms on YouTube has a simple design which is a method of instantly growing the beans with Bonemeal and pushing them out automatically using a Piston and Observer method.

9

Iron Golem Farm

Handy Way to Create An Iron Golem Army

• Difficulty Level: 1/5
• Blocks Required: Building Blocks, Iron Blocks, Pumpkins, Piston, Switch

Not to be mistaken for an Iron Farm, this is an Iron Golem Farm, which instantly creates Iron Golems. These metal creatures act as soldiers and security guards for players destroying enemy mobs.

This farm instantly creates multiple Golems, which could be handy when the player’s base is raided by mobs or enemies in a PvP world. Gamers will need to create the Iron Block shell and then create a Redstone system that will push Pumpkins onto the blocks with the flick of a switch. It’s a quick way to make an instant army.

10

Automatic Wool Farm

Harvests Wool Automatically, No Shearing Sheep Here

• Difficulty Level: 1/5
• Blocks Required: Chests, Observer, Hopper, Dispenser, Shears, Glass, Rail, Minecart, Redstone, Trapdoor

Wool is a useful material in the blocky world. It can be used as a decoration and building block to easily add a pop of color to a build. Getting a lot of wool can be tedious, though. It will require the player to go around and shear each sheep individually. Depending on how many sheep the player has, it could take some time.

This is where the Automatic Wool Farm comes into play. It works by firing shears at the sheep to drop its wool and then collecting it in a chest. It knows to dispense the shears when the sheep eats the grass block underneath it, the change of Grass block to Dirt block activates the Observer, which gives off a Redstone signal. Triloms has a simple tutorial on YouTube for this.

11

Bubble Elevator

A Way To Transport The Player And Items Upwards Quickly

• Difficulty Level: 2/5
• Blocks Required: Building Blocks, Water, Kelp, Soul Sand (or Magma Blocks for a downwards one)

Bubble Elevators have been around properly since the 1.13 update for Minecraft. They’re fantastic constructions for players who create tall builds and prefer to get from one location to another quickly. They’re a nice space-saving alternative for minecart tracks, too.

There are now Redstone versions of these bubble elevators as well, which makes them a bit more automatic. One of the best and easiest Minecraft machines, available to build in the game. There’s one design by TBOGGs that’s great for any Bedrock Edition player. Another design is made by Shulkercraf and is Java Edition friendly.

12

Kelp Farm

An Easy Way To Harvest Kelp

• Difficulty Level: 2/5
• Blocks Required: Building blocks, Glass, Kelp, Water, Dirt, Observers, Piston, Redstone

Some players might wonder what the point of farming kelp is, and the answer is simple: fuel. Kelp is incredibly useful in Minecraft and has since its introduction in 1.13 been a fantastic alternative fuel to coal and coal blocks. The best part is that it’s renewable and easy to grow, in the form of an automatic farm.

This Kelp Farm is one of the many examples of Minecraft redstone contraptions that gamers can build in the game. The design was created by Sirius Bluu and still works well in the 1.19 Java edition. For Bedrock players, JC Playz has an even simpler zero-tick design that’s nice and compact if space is an issue.

13

X-Ray Machine

A Way To Look Through The Floor

• Difficulty Level: 1/5
• Blocks Required: Building blocks, Piston, Lever, Redstone Torch, Composter, Trapdoor, Lever, Sticky Piston

X-ray is a controversial thing in Minecraft, and anyone playing on a multiplayer survival server shouldn’t try to use it to cheat. However, players just having fun with friends can use this simple trick to build an X-ray Machine that only requires very minimal Redstone.

A few designs are floating out there, but the most notable ones are from docm77 and Shulkercraft. The idea behind these Minecraft machines is usually roughly the same, where the player gets pushed by a piston inside a composter, which allows them to see through the ground.

14

Armor Wardrobe

A Quick Way To Add Some Armor

• Difficulty Level: 1/5
• Blocks Required: Dispenser, Armor, Repeaters, Redstone, Building Blocks, Pressure Plate

Equipping armor is such a bore in Minecraft, isn’t it? It might only take a few moments, but saving time and being efficient is everything, especially in endgame Minecraft gameplay. And so, a lot of builders have come up with ways to create a sort of armor wardrobe that automatically equips gear to the player when they step into it. A useful Minecraft Redstone idea.

This design usually involves a bunch of dispensers, which can be a little bit expensive to make. A notable one was created by cubfan135, and although the design is almost a decade old, it still holds up as long as players add in a repeater. A more modern design was made by Shulkercraft.

15

Micro-Crop Farm

A Speedy Way To Gain Lots Of One Crop

• Difficulty Level: 2/5
• Blocks Required: Dirt, Dispensers, Observers, Sticky Piston, Redstone, Water, Glass

Bigger isn’t always better, and that is true for a lot of things players can make in Minecraft. Crop farms especially don’t need to be massive to work well or to yield a lot of produce. A Micro-Crop Farm is all that most players will need on a solo survival adventure.

The downside with these microfarms that use observers is that they rely on players having a ton of Bonemeal on hand. It helps if the player’s Nether spawn is a Soul Sand valley, where they can mine a bunch of bone blocks. For a fantastic design on this concept, check out T2 Studio’s tutorial.

16

Vending Machine

A Way To Sell Items On A Multiplayer Server

• Difficulty Level: 4/5
• Blocks Required: Building Blocks, Redstone, Hoppers, Repeaters, Glass, Switches, Redstone Torches, Dispensers, Items To Vend

Although this Minecraft Redstone contraption is perhaps not a necessity in survival mode, building an entire Vending Machine on a server where players are often expected to open up stores and other businesses might be a great idea to rake in some extra diamonds or emeralds. It’s a little standalone shop, which automatically dispenses the wanted item.

There’s a variety of designs out there, from very complex ones that involve writing a number down on a piece of paper to simpler ones that simply ask the player to rotate an arrow. For the vending machine pictured above, check out this showcase by CR3WProductionz, and for an easy tutorial check out Twiistz video.

17

Trash Bin

A Simple Way To Get Rid Of Useless Items

• Difficulty Level: 2/5
• Blocks Required: Dispensers, Lava, Hoppers, Chests, Repeaters, Redstone, Comparators, Building Blocks

Not only is storage important for a smooth survival experience but as the chests start to get fuller and fuller, it’s usually a sign that something needs to be tossed. While just finding a puddle of lava is simple enough to dump everything in one’s inventory, there are fancier and more convenient ways.

Many of the more sophisticated Redstone Trash Cans actually involve placing the items into a chest which acts as the bin, from which the items then move through hoppers, into a dispenser, and finally into a safe block of lava either underground or behind a block. The good thing about these designs is that safety comes first, meaning lava won’t cause any issues by burning down half a house or the player. Adult Only Minecraft has a nice and simple design for this Minecraft Redstone machine in particular.

18

Elytra Launcher

A Jumping Point To Get Players Into The Air

• Difficulty Level: 2/5
• Blocks Required: Slime Blocks, Pistons, Pressure, Plates, Redstone

Once the player has their hands on that highly coveted Elytra, there’s no other way to travel around than by flying at high speed. It’s simply the best way to move in the game, but the firework-launching option isn’t always super reliable and can be potentially dangerous.

That’s why many players have come up with designs for a launcher pad of sorts, which uses either TNT or other game mechanics to launch the player forward with this redstone contraption. For a super-safe design that’s guaranteed to work, check out Fox Team’s launcher which uses boats as the primary launch tool.

19

Bedtime Alarm

An Alert To Let Players Know It Is Time For Bed

• Difficulty Level: 1/5
• Blocks Required: Daylight Sensor, Redstone, Comparators, Redstone Lamp, Dropper, Redstone

Everyone has done this at least once in their Minecraft career: stood in front of their bed with the sun setting in the background, hopelessly spamming until their character hops into the bed. Thankfully, this time spent spamming the bed interaction can be spent better with an alarm in use to indicate the time of the day.

It might seem like a useless Minecraft contraption, but it will save players a few minutes of extra time around sunset to do their final routines in their base. Mumbo Jumbo showcases this super easy and basic bedtime alarm in his video and even shows how to build it.

20

XP Bank

A Simple Way To Gain Lots Of XP Using Furnaces

• Difficulty Level: 3/5
• Blocks Required: Building Blocks, Glowstone, Redstone, Bamboo, Slabs, Sand, Observers, Hopper Minecart, Glass Panes, Powered Rails, Chests, Hoppers, Furnace, Redstone Torch, Levers, Water, Glass, Dirt, Rails

With the introduction of bamboo, players have finally been able to come up with a way to farm XP that’s ridiculously easy. It doesn’t involve fighting mobs or building complicated mob grinders. Instead, all one needs is bamboo and cacti to make this XP Bank work.

This contraption might take some time to build, but it will serve the player for a long time and be self-sufficient thanks to the Observer blocks which will tell the pistons to harvest the cacti and bamboo when they grow, which are then smelted in the ovens and stored in chests. The XP from these ovens is stored within them, and there’s no maximum cap to this, which means everything that goes through a single oven stays there until something is taken out of it. A must-build Minecraft Redstone machine. Check out Avomance’s tutorial on this to never have issues farming XP ever again.