DonutSMP Iron Farm Guide: Best Designs and Rates

Iron is the spine of DonutSMP's economy, beacons, anvils, hoppers, rails and most of the redstone you'll ever build all start with iron. A good farm pays for itself in a single play session. This guide compares the three iron farm schematics on the library and tells you which one fits your situation.

How DonutSMP iron farms work

On Java 1.21, iron farms exploit the village mechanic: at least three villagers and a claimed bed cause a zombie to spawn nearby once per in-game day, which scares the villagers, which spawns an iron golem you then kill. Stack the trigger and you get a steady stream of golems.

1. Compact 200 IPH

• Footprint: 9×9, full height
• Rate: ~200 iron/hour
• Materials: ~12 stacks of slabs, 2 villagers + 1 zombie, water buckets, hoppers
• Best for: early game, single player chunk

2. Double-Cell 600 IPH

• Footprint: 16×16 floor, ~30 high
• Rate: ~600 iron/hour
• Materials: more slabs, two trigger villagers, redstone clock for kill timing
• Best for: a mid-game shared farm with friends

3. Sky-Stacked 1.6k IPH

• Footprint: small ground print, ~50 blocks high
• Rate: ~1,600 iron/hour with three stacked cells
• Materials: ~12 double chests of slabs, more villagers, hopper-minecart kill chamber
• Best for: endgame, shop sellers, beacon mass production

Common mistakes

• Building too close to a real village, golems spawn in the wrong place.
• Forgetting to light up the area; hostile mobs eat your trigger zombie.
• Not isolating villagers from each other vertically, they panic at the wrong cell.

Sell or stockpile?

On DonutSMP the live Auction House price for iron blocks fluctuates a lot. The schematic pages show the current price next to every block in the build, so you can do the math before you even start. Most farmers run a sky-stacked design and split output between beacons for themselves and shop sales.

Grab all three designs from the Farms category.

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