What Is The Best Way To Get XP In Minecraft?

Experience points are the glowing green orbs in Minecraft that fill up the green meter above your hot bar. Gaining XP means you can use it to enchant your items, such as your armor, tools, and weapons. This is a crucial part of the game since it makes you stronger as the game progresses.

Usually, you can get it when mining or killing mobs. But there are numerous other ways to gather XP. You can also build farms that help you collect XP and other resources. Let’s take a look at some of the best ways you can gather XP in Minecraft.

Best Ways to get XP in Minecraft

Mining Resources

You can dig underneath your shelter and look for items like coal, Redstone, and Diamond to mine. Mining ores give you a good deal of XP. Below is a list of things you can mine along with the XP they give.

• Coal – 0-2 XP
• Redstone – 1-5 XP
• Nether Quartz, Lapis Lazuli – 2-5 XP
• Diamond Ore, Emerald Ore – 3-7 XP
• Monster Spawner with monsters in it – 15-43 XP points

Mining these items with at least an iron pickaxe gives you the XP mentioned above. You can increase the chances of getting more XP by using fortune enchants on your pickaxe.

Killing Mobs

You can kill the creatures in the game to gain XP as well. However, the hostile mobs give you the most XP. But if you have a huge cow or a sheep farm, you can kill them in order to gain XP along with the items they drop.

Similarly, the boss mobs give you a much higher XP. When you kill the Ender Dragon for the first time, it gives you an explosion of 12,000 experience points. Having said that, you only get 500 XP when you respawn the dragon later on.

The Wither, another boss in the game, only gives you 50 XP when you kill it. The XP drop is quite low as compared to the Ender Dragon.

Smelting Items

An interesting feature in the game is that it generates XP whenever you smelt items or cook food in the furnace. Whether it’s cobblestone or iron ore that you smelt, it gives you some XP. Different things yield different amounts of experience points, such as:

• All food items give 0.35 XP (Kelp is an exception and gives 0.1 XP).
• Raw Copper and Iron give 0.7 XP.
• Raw gold and Nether gold ore give you 2 XP.
• Ancient Debris gives you 2 XP.
• If you mine Diamond and emerald ore with silk touch, you get 1 XP when smelting them.
• Smelting all kinds of stone blocks gives you 0.1 XP. However, smelting clay balls and clay give you 0.3 and 0.35 XP, respectively.
• Smelting Cactus gives you 1 XP.
• Burning logs or wet sponges provide 0.15 XP.

An important thing to note is that when you smelt an item, the furnace stores XP, and you automatically get them when you take the product from the furnace’s GUI. If you break the furnace without gathering the products, you will automatically gain the XP.

Animal Farming

Animal farming gives you plenty of experience points. You can get XP by breeding the animals or by killing them. You can also hunt skeletons to help you farm XP. The bones that skeletons drop make the bone meal, which helps your crops grow faster. Crops, in turn, help you breed animals like cows, sheep, and pigs.

You can try the following steps to make an animal farm:

1. Find wheat from a village or grow it (You can use seeds from grass to grow wheat).
2. Hold it in your hand and go near a cow or a sheep (You need seeds to attract chickens and potatoes for pigs). The animals come to you when they see the food.
3. Keep luring them to a fenced area (you can use wood to make fences).
4. Once they are in, close off the farm. You will need at least two of each animal.
5. Use the same food for the animals that you lured them with.
6. Once fed, you’ll see heart animations above them. When you feed two of the same animals, the animals come together and have a baby. 
7. It is advisable to wait until the babies are fully grown to breed them again. The more you breed, the more XP you get.
8. You can then kill the animals once you have enough to gain XP and gather other resources.

It is best to keep in mind that you cannot breed animals when they are young. If you feed the babies, the green stars come out and grow them instead.

Making an XP Farm

XP farms are easy to make and let you collect a ton of XP. One of the easiest and best XP farms you can make, even at the beginning of the game, is the classic mob XP farm. You can follow this easy step by step guide to building yourself an XP farm:

1. Firstly, dig a 2×2 hole in the ground. 
2. Add four chests in the hole, making two 2×1 chests.
3. Place four hoppers on top of the chests.
4. Then, place four slabs right above the hoppers. You can use stone slabs for the best results.
5. Place cobblestone blocks around the slabs and add another layer of cobblestone on top of it.
6. Break the bottom cobblestone blocks. Your product should look like the picture below.
7. Build up the cobblestone wall for up to 22 blocks high.
8. Now, make 2×2 bridges on each side. The bridge should be eight blocks long.
9. Wall up around the edges of the bridges. The wall should be at the height of 2 blocks.
10. Make a platform that starts from the second layer of the bridge’s wall to connect all the bridges.
11. Then create another wall that is two blocks high around the platform.
12. Make a roof over the platform using cobblestone.
13. It is best to light up the roof so that mobs cannot spawn on the top.
14. Light up the inner platform temporarily so that nothing spawns while you work inside.
15. Place two buckets of water on each of the blocks at the far side of the bridges. The water should reach the center hole but should not fall in it.
16. Now, place trapdoors above all the “bridges” we made between the platforms, as shown in the picture below.
17. Remove all the torches inside the platform and get out. Make sure to close any opening you made as mobs can escape through it or light shines in, and the mobs will not spawn.
18. Go back to the platform’s top and use scaffolding in the middle to make an AFK station with glass. You can build the station as high as eighty blocks.
19. AFK for about 5-10 minutes and climb down to the bottom. You can leave the scaffoldings for easier access to the top.
20. At the bottom, where the slabs are, you can see mobs falling and hitting the ground. Kill all the mobs that keep coming down to gather the XP they drop. The chests below store most of the items they drop. You can access them by digging a hole next to the chests.

Trading with Villagers

Trading is another great way to earn XP in Minecraft. This way, you can skip the hassle of mining for resources or gathering animals. We believe that trading with a Fletcher is the easiest as you can use sticks to trade for various items.

Additionally, sticks are fairly easy to get as you can always find trees to cut and craft them into sticks.

1. Find a village in the game.
2. If the village does not have a Fletcher, you can craft a fletching table and place it next to an unemployed villager like the picture below.
3. Right-click on the Fletcher, and it will open the trading GUI.
4. Find the items you can trade with the Fletcher and trade them for the resources you need.
5. You will gain XP once you complete the trade.

You can also dig a hole beneath the traders and trap them so you can get back to it without losing track when you go to regather the resources to trade.

If you cannot trade certain items with the traders, exit the GUI and wait for a while. Once the trader restocks on the things, you can deal with them the same way. The traders restock on the same item twice per day.

Bottle o’ Enchanting

Bottle o’ Enchanting is a great way to gain XP in a short amount of time. These bottles have experience points in them that you can gather after breaking the bottles.

There are various ways you can find the Bottle o’ Enchanting in the chests located at the pillager outposts and shipwrecks. Furthermore, you can also trade with a Cleric in villages to get a Bottle o’ Enchanting.

You can find the Clerics in the village Churches. Churches are usually taller buildings made out of cobblestone. If you cannot find a Church or a Cleric, craft a brewing stand and place it next to an unemployed villager. They will turn into a Cleric. 

Moreover, if you cannot find the Bottle o’ Enchanting in the list of items with the Cleric, keep trading with them to increase the level, and the item should be available.

It is best to remember that if a Cleric does not have Bottle o’ Enchanting even after they are maximum level, you can choose another unemployed villager and make them a Cleric. You can then start trading with them until you find the item you need.

Disenchanting an Item

While enchanting items cost you precious experience points, disenchanting an item rewards you with some. You can use the Grindstone to disenchant your item and turn them into normal tools, and, in return, get some XP.

So if you have some enchanted items you found in the chests, or if you have an enchanted item you do not need anymore, use the Grindstone and disenchant them to gather some extra XP.

Achieving Advancements

There are different challenges in the game that, when you complete, give you some experience points. It starts simple, such as the advancement, “Stone Age,” which you complete once you mine stone with a pickaxe. 

The more you progress, the challenges become equally harder. For instance, one achievement, called “How Did We Get Here?” requires you to have all the 26 status effects active at the same time.

How to Use XP in Minecraft?

The experience points are used to enchant items in the game. You can open the enchanting table and try to enchant an item. While enchanting, you can see the XP level needed to perform the task. If you do not have enough XP, you can go back, collect some more and come back to enchant your item.

The enchantment cost (XP level) depends upon the item and the type of enchantment you are going to add to it. The same enchant may vary in price when adding it to different materials. So, we recommend stocking up on XP beforehand.

Furthermore, using an anvil also needs XP levels. If you were repairing or adding enchantment on an item, the GUI shows the cost required to do so at the bottom.