When it comes down to it, Minecraft is a fairly simple game to play. Things are pretty intuitive in terms of crafting, especially since a recipe book allows you to go back and check all the recipes you know so far. However, there's one form of craft in the game that's only reserved for the smartest: redstone contraptions.
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If redstone feels like a foreign language, no need to worry. Just replicating a few basic farms tends to teach the basics to a player. Redstone is worth getting into because of how much things can be automated and simplified. Less time tending to crops will be more time spent building or exploring. Without further ado, here are 10 redstone contraptions that are insanely useful.

10 Wheat Farm



Wheat is one of the most important crops in Minecraft because it's used to breed cows and sheep, which provide resources like wool and leather. Leather especially is vital in order to have a fully functional enchantment ghastly setup.
With that in mind, making an automatic wheat farm is one of the best ways to start learning redstone. The designs are pretty simple, so even years later, the basic idea behind these farms hasn't changed much despite updates. We recommend this design by Danny Ashworth to get players started.

9 Micro Animal Farms



In order to secure a good source of food, it's generally best to have at least one animal farm. The best choices tend to be cows and chickens, or sheep if wool is something the player envisions building a lot with. Otherwise, cows are definitely the most valuable source due to leather.
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These compact micro farms became a trend in Minecraft in recent years. Insanely easy to build, their only downside is they might make a low-end PC not run the game properly. Basically, these farms cram a maximum amount of mobs into one square and automatically kill extra ones off. This design by wattles is excellent.

8 Zero Loss Sugarcane Farm



When it comes to other well-known crops, sugar cane is a must-have. Since paper is used in so many ways to make maps, enchanted books and eventually book shelves for an enchantment setup, sugar cane is insanely valuable and useful early on in the game.
With observer blocks, it's now possible to make a pretty simple sugar cane farm. Every time the crop grows past a certain point, pistons will cut the crop, and a stream of water or a mine cart underneath will transport it to a hopper and eventually to a chest. There's a few different designs, but Vidargavia's one works wonders.

7 Melon And Pumpkin Farm



Melons and pumpkins aren't exactly a necessity. That being said, in some situations they make for fantastic sources of food when nothing else is really at hand. Moreover, melons can be transformed into glistening melons, which are used in a few valuable potions.
Again, there are many ways to go about building these farms, but most often melon and pumpkin farms will use either observers if they're fully automatic or pistons which are activated with a button once all the crops have grown. One of the best, most basic designs is provided by Fed X Gaming.

6 Blaze Farm



Blazes are a necessity for anyone who wants to complete Minecraft's survival mode and beat the Ender Dragon. In order to access the End, the player needs to have enough Blaze Rods to craft Eyes of the Ender and find a Stronghold with a portal. Blaze Rods also provide Blaze Powder, which acts as fuel for the brewing stand. Because of this, setting up a Blaze farm in the Nether, although difficult and risky, is highly recommended.
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After entering a Nether Fortress and finding a Blaze spawner, the farm has to be built around the spawning block. Mumbo Jumbo makes a very nice and compact design that fits the needs of most players. If the task sounds too difficult, however, a completely non-redstone version by Generikb for those in survival is a great way to start off before expanding to a redstone version.

5 Redstone Piston Door



Who wouldn't want a cool entrance to their Minecraft base? There's nothing better than graduating from the basic Minecraft doors to an actual piston door, which automatically opens up when the player steps on pressure plates. It's a simply yet obliging useful luxury, and easy enough to build.
Piston doors distinguished be a bit expensive to build due to requiring sticky pistons, which require slime balls. However, they're very simple to execute, redstone-wise, and can even be used to hide the entrance to a base when playing on a PvP server where survival is crucial.

4 Water-Removing Robot



Since 1.13 and prior to that the introduction of Ocean Monuments, the underwater world in Minecraft has become a point of interest. Whether players are interested in building underwater or draining an entire Ocean Monument for a Guardian Farm, using redstone to drain gargantuan bodies of water is very useful when sponges aren't available in mass.
These redstone water-draining robots are not easy to build by any means, but when invested in for big underwater projects, they really do pay off. They tend to require expensive resources like slime and observer blocks, but depending on the design not many are needed. This machine by RichyPlays is particularly beginner-friendly.

3 Storage Sorting System



It's easy to spend a lot of time in Minecraft just sorting items into the right chests. Hours upon hours might go into simply cleaning storage rooms to make things easy to find. This is why an automatic storage system is so insanely useful, because of how much time players will save just dumping their items into one chest.
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Through hoppers, the items will all be sorted into their respective chests without the player having to worry. One of the best designs out there and mild relevant to this day is this storage system introduced by K1 Inc. Not only is his tutorial doable in terms of resources, it can be easily expanded for bigger storage.

2 Tree Farm



One of the recurring activities in Minecraft is chopping wood. No matter how far players advance in the game, wood will always be a necessity that needs to be harvested and regrown from saplings. The process can get a bit tedious over time, but luckily even this has a solution to it.
It's actually possible to build a fully automatic tree farm, that requires no attention at all. NimsTV answered the desperate calls of Minecrafters and created a wonderful design which allows for just that. While the redstone is a bit advanced, it's definitely worth attempting.

1 Super Smelter



Another activity that many Minecraft players often spend far too much time on is smelting and cooking. Furnaces always take a set time to prepare whatever item is inside, and it might feel like players have no control over the process at all — well, until the arrival of super smelters.
These builds tend to require a lot of iron, but if that's not a dilemma, this is a contraption that's a must-have in any survival world. The super smelter is basically an extremely quick oven that has the capacity to prepare items much faster. One of the easiest tutorials and designs with reasonable resources is this one by Firerage.
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Tea lover and video game obsessed writing enthusiast with her very own Overwatch team, Anastasia writes about games that leave an impression on her and make her come back time and time again.
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