Minecraft’s Deep Dark sculk brings a new way to farm XP

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Minecraft‘s Deep Dark has been delayed out of 1.18 to arrive with the 1.19 release date with The Wild, and the devs at Mojang showed off some new features for the new biome at Minecraft Live over the weekend. We got a good look at the sculk as part of the reveal, and it looks like this set of blocks will bring us a whole new way to farm XP.

Sculk catalysts will generate in the Deep Dark, and will generate sculk blocks wherever an enemy dies. The number of blocks generated is based on the amount of XP that mob generally drops, and those mobs don’t have to be killed by players in order to create sculk. Mined sculk blocks will then drop experience points.

You can imagine the farming possibilities, and as gameplay designer Brandon Pearce explains, that’s by design. “Usually when a mob dies, it doesn’t drop XP unless you, the player, actually kills it. So with this you might be able to create some sort of XP farm. There’s lots of opportunities.”

You can see sculk generation in action in the video below, starting at the 4:45 mark.