Magma Cube Farm (Magma Cream & Froglights)
Intermediate Java + Bedrock
Produces: Magma cream for fire resistance potions, and froglights in three colors when frogs eat the small cubes
Quick answer: Magma cubes spawn at any light in basalt deltas, nether wastes and from bastion treasure-room spawners. Build a kill floor over spawnable ground - or bring frogs and let them convert small cubes into froglights.
How it works
- Spawning: at any light level, in a space clear of solid blocks and liquids. A large magma cube is 2.08 blocks tall, so platforms need that clearance.
- Large magma cubes split on death down to small ones; magma cream drops from the larger sizes.
- Drops: magma cream from the bigger cubes (never the tiny ones), +0-1 per Looting level.
- Froglight trick: a frog that eats a SMALL magma cube drops a froglight - verdant from cold frogs, ochre from temperate, pearlescent from warm. Frog kills give no magma cream.
- Bastion treasure rooms contain magma cube spawners over the gold stash - a ready-made farm core.
- Basalt deltas are the densest biome but spawn-proofing the jagged terrain is brutal - flat nether wastes or a bastion spawner are easier starts.
Materials
- A basalt deltas clearing, nether wastes platform, or a looted bastion treasure spawner
- Building blocks and hoppers for the kill floor
- For froglights: 3+ frogs (cold, temperate, warm variants) walked through a Nether portal
- Looting III sword for magma cream runs
- Fire resistance potions - this is the Nether's most flammable workplace
Build steps
- Pick your site: bastion spawner for automation, basalt deltas for density, wastes for easy terrain.
- Build spawning platforms with a ceiling high enough for the large size (2.08 blocks).
- Channel cubes to a kill floor: they hop toward you happily, so a simple pit with hoppers works.
- Magma cream mode: finish the bigger cubes with Looting III and leave the tiny ones to despawn.
- Froglight mode: pen your frogs at the kill floor and let them snap up the small cubes - each gulp is a froglight in that frog's color.
- Spawn-proof the surroundings or the deltas' terrain will steal half your spawns.
Rates
A bastion-spawner rig produces magma cream by the stack; a three-frog froglight floor converts a play session into chests of all three light blocks.
Tips
- Fire resistance potion = magma cream + awkward potion - this farm makes lava swimming a lifestyle.
- Frogs are the only mobs that drop froglights, and the color is the frog's, not the cube's - breed variants in the Overworld first.
- Magma cubes are fireproof and can spawn on magma blocks.
- With Looting III magma cream averages 1.75 per large cube (0-4) on Java.
- Source: minecraft.wiki Magma Cube.