Gunpowder is a potent and powerful material in Minecraft, responsible for TNT,  fireworks, and Splash Potions. It's also a rather inconvenient material to collect, with creepers being the only reliable way to get a lot of it.

Instead of trekking out every night with a sword, damaging your armor as you fight your way through every nighttime mob in the hopes of finding creepers, we offer you a way to simplify the process by building a creeper farm! Here’s everything you need to know, as well as a few addons that might make getting gunpowder a little more fun.

Building Your First Automated Gunpowder Farm

At its most simple, a creeper farm is just a regular mob farm that’s been modified to only allow creepers to spawn. The catch is that making such a modification can be time-consuming, since it involves the careful placement of a ton of buttons, traps, and doors.

Before we get to that, though, you need to set up a basic funnel pool and drop zone. And here are the exact steps to do so:

1. At ground level, place down a chest, with a hopper above it.
2. Above that, place another hopper pointing down to the first one, then place a ring of hoppers around the upper one to create a 3x3 area.
3. Build walls on all sides of the hoppers going up at least 25 blocks tall.
4. Once at that height, build a platform out as wide as you desire. This will be your funnel pool.
5. Place down a row of blocks around the outer edge.
6. Place down water in each four corners, elevating the funnel level every 7 blocks to ensure water flow.

You now have the basis for your mob farm. Next, it's time to upgrade it into a dedicated creeper farm.

Building the Creeper Spawn Floor

Now, it’s time to build the important part: the creeper spawn floor. By taking advantage of creepers’ unique height and width, we can create an area that only creepers are able to spawn in. This means other mobs won’t hog the spawn rates and spiders won’t clog the system.

The buttons make the overall area too short for skeletons and zombies, while the trapdoors make it too narrow for spiders. You can use the image above as a reference, but here are detailed instructions for building it yourself:

1. Surround the outer edge with either blocks or a slab.
2. Outline the block/slab wall with blocks for the floor.
3. Place down a solid row of blocks every other space, from one side to the other.
4. In the open rows, place down a block every other space. By this point, you should have a grid pattern of straight lines.
5. Go to one corner and place down a trap door. This should be diagonal to a hole. Following that diagonal line, place down a trap door at every block, skipping over each hole.
6. Two blocks over from that, place down a wooden button, and follow the same diagonal line as the trap doors.
7. Repeat this, alternating between buttons and trap doors until the area is full. By the time you’re done, you should have an even pattern where the corners of every hole are two buttons and two trap doors.
8. Place down a ceiling, allowing for exactly 2 blocks of space between it and the spawn floor.
9. For every space where there isn’t a hole, trap door, or button, place a button on the ceiling above you.

What to Do Next

The good news is that you’ve now completed the most tedious part of the build. The bad news is that it’s actually repeatable. 

To make your life easier, you can build the same exact layout directly above it, using the ceiling of one as the floor of the other. This creates more space for creepers to spawn and increases spawn rates accordingly. Many creeper farms will also have multiple spawn floors to maximize effectiveness.

Regardless, once you’ve built your last spawn floor, make sure to extend the ceiling layer at least 15 blocks out from the edge of the spawn floors. This will help prevent sunshine from getting into the spawn floors. Additionally, either line the top of the ceiling with slabs or light it up with torches to prevent mobs from spawning above the creeper farm.

Congrats, You Did It!

Congratulations! You’ve now built a basic creeper farm! Stand on the ground near the chest. Creepers will spawn up above, fall through the holes, and be funneled into the tower pit. The fall damage will kill them, and the hoppers will automatically collect the gunpowder and place it in the chest.

How to Increase Drop Rates with a Trident Killer

Want even more gunpowder? There’s a popular trick you can do using what’s called a Trident Killer. Instead of using fall damage to kill creepers, this system, which will replace the hoppers at the base of the tower, uses a trident.

Why does that matter? The trident is considered a player weapon, which is subject to any special enchantments the player is actively holding. By throwing the trident and then holding a sword enchanted with Looting, you gain all the benefits of Looting for free. Here’s how to build one:

1. Remove the hoppers at the base of your creeper farm.
2. Place down four hay bales to eliminate fall damage.
3. Place down four pistons above the hay bales, each on one side of the area, facing in.
4. Place down four observers next to each piston. Be sure the arrow on top is pointing at the piston.
5. Place a redstone torch on the open side of each piston.
6. On the front side (whichever side you want that to be), place a lever on the back of one of the pistons.
7. Underneath the hay bales, place a chest down exactly 3 blocks down.
8. Set a hopper above the chest.
9. Place a minecart rail on the hopper.
10. Place a hopper minecart on that rail.
11. Throw a trident into the face of any piston.

Important: Trident Killers only support a 2x2 area, instead of the 3x3 tunnel described above. Be sure to adjust your tower and water funnel accordingly.

The lever activates and deactivates the Trident Killer. When active, the four pistons will push the trident around in a circle. Since it's considered moving, it will deal damage to any mobs it encounters, including the creepers that fall down into the pit. The minecart hopper below is just tall enough to grab items through the blocks, and the pistons will push gunpowder into the corner the hopper is in.

Tip: To make the most of this system, you need to be ideally holding a sword with Looting III on it. You don’t need to be nearby, just within simulation distance (the boundary where the game stops rendering and computing the game engine). Don’t worry about the trident de-spawning, either.

Addons That Are Perfect for Farming Creepers

The creeper’s tendency to explode when threatened makes it one of the most dangerous mobs to try and wrangle. One careless move and its containment zone will be blown wide open. 

If you’re interested in finding ways to help offset that risk, addons are a great place to start. These addons in particular are our favorites when creeper farming comes to mind.

How to Install Minecraft Addons

You can install Bedrock addons automatically from the official Minecraft Marketplace or manually by downloading them from a trusted source like the CurseForge website. For each of the addons above, open the linked project page and download its associated “.mcaddon” file. Opening the downloaded file should launch Minecraft and begin the import.

After the import finishes, edit the world and check both "Behavior Packs" → "Available" and "Resource Packs" → "Available". If all went well, activating the packs included with the addon should add its features to that world. If the project lists an experiment under "Requirements", you should enable it as well before loading the world.

For a complete walkthrough, check out our guide on how to install Minecraft Bedrock addons.

Common Issues and Quick Fixes

Other mobs are getting in my creeper farm

This is most likely because you placed a button or trap door in the wrong spot somewhere. It can be very easy to make that mistake, given the repetitive nature of the build. We therefore recommend double-checking that everything is where it should be.

If you have a glow squid problem specifically, this is because you built the creeper farm below a world height of 30. The best way to solve this problem is to line the floor of the water funnel with lit, fully oxidized copper bulb blocks once every 3 spaces. This is bright enough to prevent mob spawns in the water funnel, but weak enough to not bleed into the spawn floors.

Water is flooding into my tower pit

If the water over-extends into your tower pit, make sure to place down signs in and over the pit. This will stop water from entering while still allowing creepers to pass through. Remember that you can place signs on, above, and in front of, other signs by crouch-placing them. 

Everything is built correctly, but creepers still won’t spawn

This is usually because the rest of the naturally generated world is also spawning mobs, and those mobs are preventing more from spawning. This can be best avoided by building the creeper farm far into an ocean biome or high in the sky. 

You might also be too close to the mob spawn floor. Mobs will not spawn within 24 blocks of the player. Since 25 blocks is needed for the creepers to die from fall damage, this shouldn’t be a problem, assuming you stay at ground level. But avoid watching or otherwise idling too closely.