Tutorial:Defeating a monster room

Monster rooms are features that generate underground connected to caves or generated structures. They contain up to 2 loot chests and a monster spawner that spawns zombies, skeletons, or spiders. The spawner can be farmed for experience and mob drops and the chests can contain useful and valuable items as well, so they are good to find.

An isometric view of a monster room

Monster rooms are sometimes referred to as 'dungeons' by the player base.

Preparation

• Torches or other light sources to disable the spawner, as many as possible
• A stone sword or better, enchanted if possible with Sweeping Edge‌^{[Java Edition only]} and Sharpness or Smite(Knockback and Fire Aspect are optional)
• A full set of iron or better armor, enchanted if possible (although if you are experienced enough, you may not need armor).
• A pickaxe, iron or better.
• An axe, iron or better, for heavier blows.‌^{[JE only]}
• Nutritious food like bread or steak
• Plenty of cheap building blocks, such as dirt or cobblestone
• A golden apple (optional)
• A shield (optional)
• Potions (optional)
• A lava bucket (optional)
• A water bucket (Always recommended for mining trips)
• Tamed wolves (optional)

Crafting
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A player prepared to take on a monster room

Finding a monster room

Monster rooms generate at any altitude provided they are next to a cave, even if "Generate Structures" is turned off, as it is considered a feature by the game's code. If you stumble along naturally generated cobblestone when mining or exploring underground, that's a good sign you might have found a monster room; however, water and lava mixing also generates cobblestone, so be careful when investigating, as what may appear to be a monster room might be a lava fall. Mossy cobblestone generates a lot in the floor, and there are only five naturally occurring sources of mossy cobblestone: monster rooms, jungle temples, pillager outposts, villages, ocean ruins, and mossy cobblestone boulders. So, if you're not in a jungle biome and not aboveground, you've definitely found a monster room.

Monster rooms also generate next to caves. Turning sound on can be significantly helpful and subtitles‌^{[JE only]} will also help. If you hear a lot of mobs of the same type in one direction, chances are there's a monster spawner nearby. The spawner has a chance to be a zombie (50% chance), skeleton (25% chance), or spider (25% chance). Unlike most generated structures, monster rooms cannot be located with /locate as they are a structure-like feature, not an actual structure. However, if you have access to the seed of your world, you can enter the seed and your edition into this map or into a website like Chunkbase.

Defeating the monster room

Once you've located your monster room, turn on subtitles or sound to determine what type of monster room it is and how to prepare.

• If it's a zombie monster room, take care to note what difficulty you are on. If you are on Hard difficulty, additional zombies can spawn as you're dealing with the zombies in the spawner, attacking you from behind. Smite will be the most effective sword enchantment here, as well as a shield and good armor. Try to take out any baby zombies with a ranged weapon as those ankle biters are difficult to deal with at close range.
• If it's a spider monster room, know that spiders can climb walls and are 1 block tall but can't fit in a one wide gap. Spiders are affected by Bane of Arthropods, but Sharpness also works well too, and Bane of Arthropods isn't that useful anyway.
• Skeleton monster rooms are the most dangerous type to defeat. Projectile Protection armor will be helpful, and a shield is absolutely essential. Note that skeletons are the same size as zombies but can still shoot through gaps. Like zombies, they are affected by Smite.

If you've found a zombie or spider monster room, immediately block up the entrance with building blocks, and make a 1×1 hole in the monster room's wall. If you can reach the spawner from the hole, place a torch or another light source on or near the spawner as soon as possible, so that fewer mobs will spawn in. Use your sword to fight the zombies and spiders as they come. New groups of 1-4 zombies or spiders will spawn every 10-40 seconds if the light level is insufficient, so when you've defeated all the current mobs in there, quickly break in and scatter torches everywhere to deter mob spawning. Don't look in the chests unless you're absolutely sure no mobs will spawn, as being ambushed while looking at a chest can be deadly. Remember that all monster rooms generate an entrance, so you could be attacked by other mobs from outside if you haven't prepared well.

The spawner in the center of the room is the key prize. You can destroy it if you like (it gives a modest amount of experience when broken with a pickaxe) but that is strongly discouraged unless you never, ever, ever want to farm the spawner. Once you're done, look in the chests. The loot normally contains a lot of things, but the best prizes are golden apples, horse armor, name tags, and enchanted books.

If you've discovered a skeleton spawner, follow the advice above except always have your shield at the ready. Skeletons will fire at you from afar, so have a bunch of arrows and know how to shoot as soon as the bow is fully charged. If you have enchantments on the bow, relatively high levels of Power can kill a skeleton in one shot.

Aftermath

Spawners can make very useful experience and mob drop farms.

• Zombie farms usually offer tons of rotten flesh, but could also give the occasional carrot, potato, or iron ingot. Random armor, iron swords, or shovels might drop if the mob spawned with it, and may be enchanted.
  • If converted to a drowned farm, it gives rotten flesh and copper ingots.
• Skeleton farms produce bones (useful for bone meal or bone blocks), arrows, and occasionally armor or bows, which are sometimes enchanted.
  • If converted into stray farm (using powder snow), it gives arrows of slowness.
• Spider farms drop spider eyes and string.

All of these mobs will also drop experience upon death.

Advice on how to make farms of these mobs can be found on the spawner traps page.