Tutorial: Bedrock Beginner Farms

Tutorial Difficulty: 4/10

No one likes to do things manually. It's why we have factories that make things like bread and cars, so we don't have to learn how to do those things ourselves. It's the same in Minecraft, of course, and figuring out how to get yourself set up with farms is one of the main tasks you should be doing in your first few hours of a new world. (Unless you really want to do things old-school-style – I promise I won't judge you from my diamond throne.)

OinkOink is a Minecraft YouTuber from the Netherlands, and his channel is full of excellent tutorials focused on building in Bedrock Edition – you can check out his "simple" iron farm if you hate iron golems and want to see them suffer, but I'm quite taken with his "Top Three Early Game Farms" tutorial, which will teach you how to make an endless potion generator, a compact fish farm, and everyone's favorite, a villager trading hall.

A fish farm is an easy win for early-game Minecrafters, as it'll give you a source of fish (obviously) as well as the potential for rare crafting materials like the Nautilus Shell, enchanted items, and even rare enchantment books – who knew the sea was full of books? And yes, you can get all of these things by fishing manually, but it's much simpler when you use clever Minecraft magic to automate it a little bit. Save those tired clicking fingers for two-hour mining sessions!

The villager trading hall is a must-have for anyone who's hoping to get decent armor and plenty of rare enchantment books, like Mending and Silk Touch. It works by trapping a bunch of villagers (don't worry, they're programmed not to mind) and confining them to a single workstation. You can re-roll their trades by deleting the workstation and putting it back down again until you get the trade you want – and you can build the "trading hall" as simple or elaborate as you want on the outside.

A potion generator is an exciting new farm made possible by Caves & Cliffs' dripstone blocks. If you partway fill a cauldron with the potion you want lots of – like Instant Health, Night Vision, or Strength – and place a dripping pointed dripstone above it, then the slow drip of water will gradually refill the cauldron. Free potions for life!

What I like most about OinkOink's tutorials is how basic they are. There's no fancy redstone in here, so they're hard to mess up (although maybe I'm just bad at redstone), and they're easy enough to accomplish in Survival as well as Creative mode. What's more, the blocks used are pretty simple to get in the first few hours of the game – you'll need some sand for the glass, some iron for the cauldron, rails, buckets, a minecart, and some lava for the fish farm (don't ask). Plus, the villager and potion farms are easy to expand to whatever size you like!