If you're into Minecraft archaeology or simply need a stable income of pitcher pods and torchflower seeds for decorating your base, you're going to want an automated farm that puts all the items that your sniffers find into one convenient storage. In this guide, we're going to show you how to build an easy yet efficient and scalable automatic sniffer farm and which tools and blocks you're going to need to make it happen. Let's take a look at how to breed sniffers!
How to Start a Sniffer Farm in Minecraft
Ever since they've won the mob vote at Minecraft Live 2022 and added in 1.20, sniffers have been the cool new part of Minecraft ancient lore and the only source of seeds that grow two new types of flowers.
Where Do You Find Sniffer Eggs
First of all, in order to make a farm, we're going to need the mobs themselves: Sniffers. They don't naturally spawn in any layer of the world, but their eggs can be found in specific places in the Overworld.
You're going to want to find a warm ocean biome, easy to recognize by the distinctly lighter water surface and some Ocean Ruins within. You'll know you're in the right place when you find this Sandstone type of ruin pictured below.
This type of Ruins will contain blocks of Suspicious Sand at random locations, which sport a variant of the sand texture with some crackles to it. You will need to excavate Suspicious Sand with the Brush tool. This item can be made by simply arranging a feather, a copper ingot and a stick in a vertical pattern, all of which are normally easily accessible close to the surface and in regular biomes which may spawn chicken.
How to Get The Sniffer Egg
And now for the hard part: actually finding the Sniffer egg in Minecraft. It will take 4.8 seconds for this block to drop its item, after which its texture will revert to that of a regular sand block. Untouched Suspicious Sand blocks have a dismal 6.7% drop rate for the Sniffer eggs. Since it can normally take many, many dives to even find the Warm Ocean Ruins, let alone explore all the blocks while handling the Drowned, we recommend employing the benefits of potions.
If you are at a later stage in the game and have access to Nether, brewing and supplies, potions of Underwater Breathing and Night Vision will make sniffing out a Sniffer egg infinitely easier. Just the Underwater Breathing potion will already help you out a lot. Keep at it until you obtain at least one Sniffer egg. Depending on your desired pace of drops and the amount of seeds and pods you need, one pet Sniffer may already be enough for you to get your hands on Torchflowers and Pitcher plants. However, without two eggs it won't be possible for you to expand the populace of your farm.
How to Make a Sniffer Farm - Breeding Tips
As mentioned above, you will need at least two Sniffer eggs to breed and start yourself a Sniffer farm in Minecraft. Once you've obtained those, keep reading below for our farming and breeding tips.
Minimum Sniffer Farm Size
We're going to start with simple farm for your Sniffers based on how they work. Once a Sniffer puts their snoot down to the dirt, they are searching within a 6x6 block area, so this is the minimum space we must secure for a farm to work. One Sniffer memorizes up to 20 blocks in which it found an item, which is not a problem with the 36 block they will have at their disposal in this setup. Make sure that the floor level to this farm consists of one of the following blocks:
- Grass Block
- Dirt
- Coarse Dirt
- Podzol
- Rooted Dirt
- Mud
- Muddy Mangrove Roots
- Moss Block
The last on the list, Moss Block, is a handy thing to have in your farm in any case, even if it's only one block. This is because Sniffer eggs hatch twice as fast when placed on a Moss Block. The egg you find is an item that needs to be placed on the ground to hatch, and normally takes around 20 real time minutes to do so. So, while Moss Block isn't necessary, it can help you propagate your farm quickly in the beginning.
How to Breed Sniffers
When your farm starts winding up and you have at least two adult Sniffers, you can breed them by feeding them Torchflower seeds, one of the two items they can dig out of the ground. However, unlike most other Minecraft mobs, they will not produce a live young, but the Egg item, which as we mentioned above, you must put down on the ground yourself just like you did with the first batch of eggs. The Egg will crack over time and eventually release a Snifflet into your enclosure.
You can speed up the Snifflet's growth with its food (Torchflower seeds) just like you would with any other baby mob in the game. Without being fed, a Snifflet will grow on its own in 2 in-game days, which translates to 40 minutes in real time.
How to Secure Your Sniffer Farm
Once you lay down the dirt or diggable block of choice, make sure to raise the 2 block tall protective barrier around the farm. This isn't so much for protecting the Sniffers themselves as hostile mobs won't come for them specifically, but for your items, to make sure they all stay reachable for the collection system you're going to build below. It's best to use full blocks for this purpose, as to not allow any items to fall on the free space that narrow blocks such as fence or glass pane leave around them.
If you're more concerned with the aesthetics of your base, and less about your farm being an absolute zero-loss setup, you can still opt for narrow block walls as most items will end up in storage. Once you're done with placement, let's take a look at how to build an automated Sniffer farm!
How to Make an Automated Sniffer Farm - Construction Supplies
The fact that Sniffers drop items they dig out onto the ground allows us to create a situation in which you set the farm up to deliver all the dropped items to your location of choice, and practically forget about it from that point on. The simplest way to do so is to install an infinitely looping railway hopper system right below your farm. The list of materials you're going to need access to is as such:
- Iron - for rail, minecart and hopper
- Gold - for powered rail
- Redstone - for powered rail and torches
- Wood - for chest, rail and lever
- Cobblestone - for lever and miscellaneous
How many blocks of each of these is determined by the desired size of your farm. We're now going to free up the space right below the dirt blocks and setup the single chest and hopper, which is the bare minimum.
- Make sure you connect the hopper properly by clicking onto the chest's lid or front while crouching and placing it!
- Then, we are going to place down the bare minimum of rails to get the automated storage going. For this setup, we used a total of 32 rail and 4 powered rail to ensure a constant movement of the hopper minecart and consistent speed.
With this setup, the absolute minimum of ores and other items to craft everything for the automated system is going to be:
- 207x Iron Ingots
- 24x Gold Ingots
- 4x Redstone Dust, or 8, if you use Redstone Torches to power the rail instead of Levers
- 36x Sticks, or 40, if you use Levers to power the rail instead of Redstone Torches
- 8x Planks
Since the cave update, the ores usually found deeper such as Gold and Redstone are more easily accessible, so the biggest hassle here is likely going to be the 3+ stacks of Iron you will have to mine.
Troubleshooting Your Automated Farm
An important thing to note when making a farm of this type is that in order for the automation to work properly, you must ensure no extra air blocks exist between the layer in which the minecart moves, and the dirt layer. This is to allow the minecart hopper to actually pick up the items on top of the dirt block above.
Additionally, make sure to close off your automation mechanism to prevent smaller or crawling mobs like Spiders from entering the system and stopping your cart, as digging everything up to fix a damaged spot can be very tedious. Another issue that could occur is that you have too many Sniffers in too small of an enclosure. If you plan to have more than two to three Sniffers, it's advisable to expand your farm. Sniffers are mobs that take up several blocks and are generally slow, so if it's too crowded, they will slow each other down even further and lower the efficiency of your farm.
How to Optimize and Expande your Automated Sniffer Farm in Minecraft
If you need many Torchflower seeds and Pitcher pods for decorating your base lavishly, you're probably already thinking about expanding this minimalistic farm to a tycoon level. Here are a few points to keep in mind when scaling a Sniffer Farm.
- There is a 50/50 chance that a Sniffer will find either item when they dig, a Torchflower seed or a Pitcher pod, and only one of them (Torchflower seed) is used for breeding. It's a good idea to stock up on the seeds first instead of planting them, so that you can scale your farm further if you're unsatisfied with the speed of these items dropping into your chests.
- If you have access to Moss Blocks, you should definitely use them to speed up the expansion of your Sniffer herd. A Sniffer can breed every 5 real-time minutes, so keeping a few of these blocks in the corner of your farm can help a lot. Even if the blocks are not in use by eggs, adult Sniffers can still dig in Moss as they would in regular dirt.
- In Bedrock Edition, Sniffers must be at full health in order to breed, so keep them safe.
- Though it's an unlikely occurrence, if you only have two eggs or two Sniffers, it might be wise to keep their enclosure covered from thunderstorms to save yourself from a chance headache.
- A larger dirt surface for Sniffers will require much more resources in terms of rails and ores needed. No matter how much you expand, a compact shape such as square will allow more Sniffers to fit into smaller spaces to make sure they don't collide too much and get the most out of their 8 minute digging cooldown.
- Multiple hoppers and multiple chests can be easily added into the access row of the rail pattern for large scale farms. For convenience, the supplies can be funneled away further with an extra hopper system into your base or material warehouse.
- In order to function, the farm must be loaded in at all times. It can be tricky with multiple bigger farms, so make sure to keep them close to your base of operations so that they can run smoothly.
Minecraft Sniffer Farm & Breeding FAQ
A: This mob doesn't naturally spawn in the world, but is hatched from a Sniffer Egg item the player places on the ground.
A: Sniffer Egg can only be found in the Warm Ocean Ruins by dusting Suspicious Sand Blocks with a Brush.
A: To be able perform a digging action, a Sniffer must have at least 6x6 blocks of Dirt, Mud or Moss in their farm or living space. Two to three Sniffers can comfortably share a space this big.
A: Once it digs, a Sniffer enters an 8 minute long cooldown period.
A: To create the 6x6 automated Sniffer farm, you're going to need at least:
- 207x Iron ore
- 24x Gold ore
- 4x Redstone ore
- A few planks of wood.
A: Make sure your hopper is properly connected to the chest, and also make sure there are no extra air layers between the minecart and the single dirt block layer where your Sniffers are digging! Also make sure that your Sniffers are sniffing on Dirt, Mud or Moss.
While the items tied to them mostly serve a decorative purpose, Sniffers certainly added a fun spin into Minecraft's exploration. They also add this super difficult new element into the Two by Two achievement. Whether you're looking to make a Sniffer farm for their cute aesthetics only or seek to expedite the ancient flower gathering process, we hope this Automated farm guide will help you in your game! For more Minecraft tips and tricks, check out Easy Minecraft Netherite Farming Seeds and other Minecraft guides on Pro Game Guides.
An avid enjoyer of everything Cyberpunk and a very slightly addicted gacha enthusiast. A sucker for good RPGs, quality turn-based games, non-linear adventures and everything that offers both good time AND long time. If the story is good, they'll always come running. Certified established gamer since year 2000.