Tridents are the rarest weapon in Minecraft — dropped by Drowned, nearly impossible to find naturally, and extremely powerful when enchanted with Channeling or Loyalty. Before this build, the only reliable way to get tridents was either drowning your items in a flooded fortress or spending hours hunting drowned in oceans. This farm changes everything.\n\nThe Drowned Trident Farm automates the entire process. It spawns drowned in an underwater chamber, guides them upward through bubble columns to a kill zone, and collects the tridents they drop automatically. You AFK above it and come back to a pile of channeling tridents.\n\nThe key to this design is the bubble column mechanics introduced in Java 1.13. Soul sand on the floor generates upward-flowing water that carries drowned toward the kill ceiling. Combined with the iron bar suffocation damage and cactus finish, the farm handles the entire death-and-loot cycle without any player intervention.
This is an Advanced build. It demands solid familiarity with at least one of Minecraft’s complex systems — redstone timing, mob AI behavior, or intricate 3D spatial layout. Gather every material before placing the first block, and expect to debug. The payoff in automation, efficiency, or aesthetics is well worth the effort.
| Material | Quantity |
|---|---|
| 30 | |
| 20 | |
| 120 | |
| 40 | |
| 16 | |
| 24 | |
| 8 | |
| 64 | |
| 12 | |
| 16 |
Total distinct materials: 10. Gather everything listed above before you start — mid-build supply runs break your momentum.
Excavate a 16×16 area underground at least 20 blocks below the surface. Line the floor with soul sand — this generates the bubble columns that push drowned upward. Fill two opposite corners with soul sand, leaving the other two corners empty.
Pour water from the surface into the soul sand corners. The water flows down, generating upward bubble columns in the center of the chamber.
Create a 3-block-high killing zone at the top of the bubble column. Place iron bars as the killing ceiling, with a cactus floor. Drowned swim up the bubbles, hit the iron bars, and take suffocation damage.
Place hoppers in a row beneath the kill chamber, feeding into a single line of collection chests. Cover the hopper row with a trapdoor floor so tridents fall through and get collected.
Wire an observer block facing the kill zone. When a drowned dies and drops a trident, the observer pulse triggers collection routing.
Install magma blocks for dim light and a player AFK platform 25+ blocks above the spawn chamber. At this height, hostile mobs spawn below you, maximizing spawn rates while you stay safe.
The bubble column works because soul sand creates a water source that constantly flows upward. Drowned and other hostile mobs cannot resist the current — they get pulled all the way to the surface of the water column. At the surface, they hit the iron bar ceiling and begin taking suffocation damage.\n\nThe iron bar kill method is preferred over drowning in water because drowned in water can pick up tridents from the ground, re-equip them, and attack players. Iron bars prevent the drowned from standing on a solid block and picking up equipment. They die on the bars, and all their held and equipped items drop.\n\nThe collection system uses gravity — tridents are items that fall through trapdoor floors into hoppers. No complicated redstone routing needed; the tridents just drop and collect naturally.
Once you’ve completed the base build, try one of these modifications to make it your own:
A variant built inside a nether fortress where the naturally higher spawn rate of drowned accelerates trident acquisition. Requires fortress proximity.
Uses a flooded dark biome surface rather than a nether environment. Less efficient spawn rates but no nether travel needed. Better for early-game players.
Adds two stacked spawn chambers with a central channel between them, doubling the effective spawn area while keeping a single AFK platform. Doubles trident output at the cost of 2× the materials.
These are the issues players most often run into with this build:
If the chamber is less than 20 blocks deep, hostile mobs will also spawn at the AFK platform height, attacking you while you wait. Go deep or go home — the deeper the chamber, the better.
Using solid blocks for the kill ceiling means drowned can stand on them, pick up tridents from the ground, and equip them as weapons. Iron bars prevent this — drowned die on the bars without recovery.
Bubble columns only generate directly above soul sand. If water flows from the side, no upward column forms. Use debug sticks or careful water placement to ensure columns are directly above soul sand.
Drowned can enter boats and become inaccessible to the kill zone. If you see boats in your spawn chamber, break them immediately. The drowned inside will pop out and re-enter the water column.
Standing within 24 blocks of the spawn chamber reduces the spawn rate significantly due to the player mob spawning cap. Stay at least 25-30 blocks above the chamber for maximum efficiency.
If you enjoyed this guide, these builds complement it well: