Dripstone farming is the renewable way to farm pointed dripstone and dripstone blocks. Dripstone is used to farm lava, and can also be used as fall damage traps for mob farms or for pranking, as it quadruples the amount of fall damage you take.
A few key points[]
- Pointed dripstone on its own takes 5 in game days to grow, so it is almost unable to farm on its own. If you place water above the block which the pointed dripstone is growing on, it will grow slightly faster. However, it is still almost unable to farm in that way, but if you make the block it is growing on a dripstone block, it will speed up to about 100 minutes per stage of growth, and it will also produce stalagmites on the floor.
- You have a 1/4 chance to be able to buy 4 dripstone blocks for one emerald from a stone mason in Bedrock Edition, and in Java Edition the chance is 2/7.
Manual farming[]
To be able to manually farm dripstone, all you will need is some dripstone blocks, an equal amount of pointed dripstone and 2 water buckets. First you will need to place the amount of dripstone blocks you want dripstones to grow from, and water sources a layer above that. Now plant pointed dripstones on the dripstone blocks, and the farm is done. To harvest it, every 20 minutes or Minecraft day, check on the dripstone and harvest the second parts of the ones that are 2+ high and also the stalagmites on the floor.
Automatic farming[]
Automating the farming process of dripstone is necessary for any large scale project including them, like a shop or trap in an SMP, or a big-scale lava farm. The following designs below automate the process and allow you to get more dripstone and have more free time on your hands.
JC Playz's design[]
JC Playz's design uses the same design the manual farm used, however there are observers and pistons to detect the dripstone as it grows. There is also a collection mechanism which funnels the dripstone into a chest for you. The farm itself is very resource friendly and produces a decent amount, however it is not very compact, since if you want to farm a massive scale of it you will need to build it in several strips.
Flying machine design[]
The flying machine design is self-explanatory. You have a normal dripstone farm but with more blocks of air gaps to fit a flying machine which will harvest the second stalactite dripstones and higher. There also needs to be a shifting floor or another flying machine to harvest the stalagmites on the floor, and a collection system to pick up the dripstone on the floor. That all sounds complicated to most minecraft players, so here are 2 tutorial videos to help you.
Silentwhisperer's design[]
This is designed on Bedrock Edition, but most of the mechanics work on Java too.
Mysticat's design[]
This design is designed on Java Edition, but it also works on Bedrock. However, bear in mind that the stalagmite dripstones won't be harvested because of the water flow, and that will reduce the efficiency.