Glow berries are one of the most unique renewable resources in all of Minecraft. Not only can they be eaten, but along with lava, they are one of the few infinitely renewable sources of light in the game. Glow berries are found naturally in lush caves, where players can nab them to start farming at their home base.

RELATED: Minecraft: How To Farm Mushrooms

Glow berries are very easily identified in lush caves, as they grow from illuminant vines that dangle down from the ceiling. They give off light levels of 14, equivalent to that of a torch. They are farmed very similarly to vines, in that they grow downwards, and the bottoms of the vines can be harvested indefinitely, but unlike vines, this process can be totally automated.

How To Find Glow Berries In Minecraft

Minecraft-Lush-Cave-1

Step one, of course, is for players to find their first glow berry. Only one is needed to get a farm growing, but players will likely stumble across loads of them when they find a lush cave. Lush caves are found in high-humidity biomes, at any height underground. These biomes include dark forests, wooded badlands, jungles, and old growth taigas, where they are most common, but they do not include biomes such as plains, regular forests, or savanna. They may also generate under deserts or oceans, but that is less likely.

Locations of lush caves can be identified by azalea treas, which generate overtop of lush caves at the surface. If a player stumbles across an azalea tree, they can confidently dig down to find a lush cave, and some glow berries. To collect the glow berries, players need to simply break the vines that they hang from. By destroying the base of the vine, the entirety of the vine will break and players can more efficiently collect glow berries.

RELATED: Minecraft: How To Build An Automatic Wool Farm

How To Manually Farm Glow Berries

Minecraft-Manual-Glow-Berry-Farm-1

Once players have gotten themselves some glow berries, they can start farming, and it is a very straightforward process. Players need to simply place the glow berries on the underside of a block, and the vine stem will appear. Then, the vine will begin to grow downward over time. For each vine block that grows, there is a 1 in 9 chance that the vine bears glow berries.

Vines can grow to be up to 26 blocks in length, so if players are farming manually, they are going to want to give loads of room for the vines to grow beneath the root. If players have a mob farm set up, and are producing loads of bones, bone meal can be applied to berry-less vine blocks to produce glow berries. Players can then destroy the second vine block from the top to instantly harvest all the glow berries beneath it.

RELATED: Minecraft: How To Farm Bees

How To Automatically Farm Glow Berries

Minecraft-Automatic-Glow-Berry-Farm-1

Automatic glow berry farms have very simple redstone wiring, very similar to an automatic sugar cane farm. Observers will detect once a second vine block has grown, and a piston will push the vine to destroy it. The item will then be picked up by a hopper and get deposited into a chest. Optionally, players can also add a bone meal dispenser, which guarantees a yield of glow berries with every harvest.

Players will need the following resources:

  • One hopper
  • One chest
  • One piston
  • One observer
  • One piece of redstone dust
  • One glow berry
  • Eight blocks

If players want to add bone meal dispensers, they will additionally need:

  • Two more redstone dust
  • Two dispensers
  • Two redstone torches
  • Three more blocks
  • Lots of bone meal

To begin, the dispenser-less version is shown below. Players should begin with the chest, as that is the collection point, then place a hopper leading into it. The glow berry vine will grow down directly above this hopper. An observer should be placed, looking at the air space above the hopper, with a piston directly above it. The observer will power a block with redstone dust on top of it, which will trigger the piston. Finally, the glow berry should be planted directly above the hopper, one block higher than the piston.

Minecraft-Glow-Berry-Farm-1

With this design, the observer will be triggered whenever the vine becomes three blocks long, and the piston will harvest the bottom two. To avoid losing any drops, players will want to encase the vine column in blocks. Be sure that the block directly above the chest is glass, such that it can still be opened. The other blocks can be any block the player chooses, but we've chosen to use glass.

Minecraft-Glow-Berry-Farm-Glass-1

Now, if players want to maximize efficiency, they're going to need to add bone meal dispensers. These will be triggered to spawn in glow berries right before the piston harvests them. These dispensers should be filled as much as possible, but will occasionally need to be restocked as they use up the bone meal. The updated redstone is shown below.

Minecraft-Glow-Berry-Farm-With-Dispensers-1

Basically, two of the glass blocks are replaced with dispensers that face the vines. The observer triggers redstone dust that powers these dispensers, then two ticks later, via the redstone torch ladder, the piston gets triggered. This makes it so that the vines get harvested only after the vines get hit with the bone meal.

NEXT: Minecraft: Redstone Logic Gates Explained