If you’re looking for an infinite source of experience or want to build a dungeon, a spawner is the best way to do it.
While the blocks can only be made in Creative mode, you can find a spawner in various locations throughout the game world of Survival mode.
How to Find a Spawner in Minecraft
A monster spawner in Minecraft will look like a cage of black bars with a flame inside that illuminates a creature.
Whatever creature you see in the cage is the one that will be spawned. But they’ll only do so in low light conditions.
Usually, you’ll know you’re getting close to one when more of a certain enemy type starts appearing, with the most common being the zombies.
Also, spawners won’t be found above ground, thus the best way to look for them is going down.
Dungeons and mineshafts are the best places to check when you first start, especially rooms with a lot of cobwebs inside.
These places tend to house a spawner or two, and the same for mansions in the wooded areas of the world.
Unfortunately, this is where your luck ends until you go through a nether portal. Nether fortresses and strongholds on the other side of the end portal have at least one spawner inside, although they can be tough.
The former might have a Blaze spawner, which is useful if you’re harvesting blaze rods. Enemies normally will start spawning when you’re within 16 blocks of the spawner, hence when you get ambushed in the dark, start looking around for one.
If nothing else, the seed you use to create your game world can affect the layout. So you might want to look up seeds that have more dungeons, or any of the other areas prone to spawners.
How to Make a Spawner in Minecraft
The only way to make a spawner in the game is via the crafting menu in Creative mode, regardless if you’re on console or PC. Simply open up the inventory once you start a Creative game and locate the spawner block.
Depending on your game source, you can place it with the right-click or left trigger. Next, you should see a flame with a pig.
This is the base version of the spawner which will let out pigs. Good news is you can change it unless you want to spawn animals in a village.
To do this, you have two options: Make a spawn egg or fight enemies until they drop the one you want.
For the first choice, which is much faster, stay in the Creative menu. You just need to navigate it until you see rows of spawn eggs.
Pick the egg you want and right-click it on the spawner, which will change the creature you see. For example, if you place a zombie egg onto a pig spawner, you will then see a zombie replacing the pig.
If you want to go on the more difficult route, go to the area on your map where the desired creature is located.
Fight them until they drop a rare spawn egg. If you’re in Creative mode, make sure you have the difficulty set so that enemies appear.
Just remember that if you switch from a Creative game to Survival mode, your achievements will be disabled.
How to Pick Up a Spawner in Minecraft
The spawner is one of the only blocks in Minecraft that you can’t mine and place elsewhere regardless of the pick you use.
The only way to place it is in Creative mode. Trying to mine it in Survival will destroy it and give off a lot of experience.
Even though you can’t move it, you can still use it to your advantage. As mentioned earlier, the lighting affects whether monsters will spawn or not.
If you’re not ready for a fight or want to leave it alone for the time-being, just place torches around the room to keep it quiet.
Use that time to clear out rooms in the dungeon until you can contain the spawner.
One effective way is to make a wall of cobblestone around it, with enough space to spawn, which is around 5 blocks. Remove torches as you go and leave a hole in the cobblestone.
This is a great way to let it spawn infinite enemies, with infinite experience, without unleashing them around you.
Set your spawn point nearby, with it as close as you can to place or pick up a spawner in Survival mode.
Can You Craft a Spawner?
Technically yes, but this can only be done in Creative mode. You need to go to your creative inventory to craft it.
As for the spawn eggs to change what it will spawn, it is all in your crafting menu.
Bear in mind that once you switch to Survival mode, you’ll no longer be able to craft a monster spawner. To know where to find monster spawner, you can refer to the above sections.