Summary
When it comes down to it,Minecraftis 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 inMinecraftfeels 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 ofhow 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 July 01, 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.
1Minecart Loading Station
A Quick Way To Get Down Into The Mines
Building a mine is a given inMinecraft.It’s important to dig deepto 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.MumboJumbohas a simple version of this build over on YouTube.
2Ender Pearl Station
An Easy Method Of Equipping Throwable Items
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.
3Cooked Chicken Farm
An Easy Food Source
One thing that every player needs inMinecraftis food andfinding 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.
4Raid Farm
A Superb Way To Get Lots Of Emeralds
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.
5Item Sorter
It’s Important To Keep Organized
When players get to a certain point in aMinecraftworld, they deal with a lot of different items. A big problem with this is spending hours sorting through the items toprevent 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.
6Villager Breeder
A Compact Way To Gather Lots Of Villagers And Transport Them To Where They Need To Be
Villagers are very useful inMinecraft.They can be traded with to acquire items and emeralds(the currency inMinecraft). So a handy thing to do is to create aVillager 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 theMinecraftworld, which is where Redstone comes in. This is a rail system that can be designed for easy transportation.BlazeDude on YouTubehas a handy tutorial on making a simple Villager Breeder.
7Block Swapper
A Way To Change Blocks To Save Space
ABlock Swapperdoes 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 YouTubehave a simple, but effective, tutorial for creating a Block Swapper inMinecraft.
8Cocoa Bean Farm
Semi-Automatic Way To Gain Lots Of Cocoa Beans
Cocoa Beansare a useful material inMinecraft. 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 YouTubehas 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.
9Iron Golem Farm
Handy Way to Create An Iron Golem Army
Not to be mistaken for an Iron Farm, this is anIron 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.
10Automatic Wool Farm
Harvests Wool Automatically, No Shearing Sheep Here
Woolis 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 onhow many sheep the player has, it could take some time.
This is where theAutomatic Wool Farmcomes 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.
