1 - What it spawns
Zombie2 - How fast and how many
Every 10 s to 40 s, up to 4 mobs while a player is within 16 blocks, until 6 of the same mob are inside its range.
3 - Light rules
4 - Mob options
Spawn area from above
Run it from chat or a command block. The spawner appears with all settings at once.
Place it in Creative with operator permission (cheats on). Anyone else places an empty spawner, because the game only applies spawner data for operators.
A spawner wakes up when a player comes within 16 blocks, waits its delay, then tries to place four mobs within four blocks of itself. It keeps going until six of that mob are nearby, and every setting in that sentence can be changed with block data.
Each mob lands at the spawner's centre plus a random offset of up to SpawnRange blocks on each axis, and one block below to one above it. The offset is the difference of two random numbers, so mobs land near the middle far more often than at the edges. A spawn only happens where the mob fits and its spawn rules pass, which is why a spawner in a small lit room can sit there doing nothing.
The nearby limit counts mobs of the same kind inside a box that reaches SpawnRange blocks out from the spawner in every direction. A farm that kills mobs quickly keeps that count low, which is the whole trick behind spawner XP farms.
| Field | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| SpawnData | none | The next mob, and the one shown spinning in the cage |
| SpawnPotentials | empty | Weighted list of mobs to pick from after each spawn |
| Delay | 20 | Ticks until the next spawn attempt |
| MinSpawnDelay | 200 | Shortest wait after a spawn, in ticks |
| MaxSpawnDelay | 800 | Longest wait after a spawn, in ticks |
| SpawnCount | 4 | Mobs it tries to place per spawn |
| MaxNearbyEntities | 6 | Pauses while this many of the mob are nearby |
| RequiredPlayerRange | 16 | How close a player must be, in blocks |
| SpawnRange | 4 | How far from the spawner mobs appear |
| custom_spawn_rules | none | Block and sky light ranges that replace the mob's spawn rules |
Pick the mob above, set the timing, and run the /setblock command where you want the spawner, or use /give to get it as an item. Spawners can't be mined and kept in survival, even with Silk Touch, so commands are the only way to get one with your own settings.
The game only applies spawner data when an operator in Creative mode places the block. Anyone else gets an empty spawner, and an empty spawner spawns nothing until you use a spawn egg on it. Turn on cheats or get operator permission, switch to Creative, then place it. The /setblock command doesn't have this limit.
Turn on the light rules and set the block and sky light limits to 15. A spawner normally runs each mob's own spawn rules, which in the Overworld stop zombies and skeletons wherever block light is above 0. With custom limits it skips those rules and only checks the light ranges you set. Hostile mobs still won't spawn on Peaceful.
Delay is the wait before the first spawn. After each spawn the spawner waits a random time between MinSpawnDelay and MaxSpawnDelay (200 to 800 ticks, 10 to 40 seconds, by default). SpawnCount is how many mobs it tries to place each time (4), MaxNearbyEntities pauses it when that many of the same mob are nearby (6), RequiredPlayerRange is how close a player must be (16 blocks) and SpawnRange is how far from the spawner mobs can appear (4 blocks).
Yes. Turn on Mix several mobs and give each one a weight. The spawner writes them into SpawnPotentials, and after every spawn it picks the next mob from that list by weight, so a zombie with weight 3 next to a skeleton with weight 1 comes up three times as often.
No. Bedrock's /setblock and /give don't take block data, so a Bedrock spawner can't get custom delays or counts from a command. In Bedrock you place a spawner in Creative and use a spawn egg on it to choose the mob.
Building a farm around it?
