Overview
A trial spawner is the combat block at the centre of every room in a trial chamber, and it is deliberately built so that it cannot be farmed. When a player comes within range it activates, spawns a fixed wave of mobs scaled to how many players are nearby, and waits. Kill the wave and it ejects its reward — experience and a loot roll of items appropriate to the chamber — then enters a cooldown of 30 minutes before it can be used again. That cooldown is the design: unlike an ordinary spawner, you cannot build a grinder around it, and unlike a chest, it does not run dry, so a trial chamber remains a repeatable source of loot without ever becoming an XP farm. It cannot be moved. Silk Touch does not work on it, and mining it destroys it. Drink an ominous bottle first and the spawner becomes ominous: the waves are longer and harder, mobs may spawn with equipment, and the reward is an ominous trial key rather than an ordinary one, which is what opens the ominous vaults that hold the heavy core.
Repeatable combat loot and experience without a farm — trial keys, emeralds, enchanted gear, and, under Trial Omen, ominous trial keys that unlock the vaults containing heavy cores and the mace recipe.
Minecraft classifies Trial Spawner as a functional block. At hardness 50 this is one of the tougher blocks in the game. It is not used in any crafting recipe.
How to get it
Trial spawners cannot be crafted or collected. They generate only in trial chambers, which appear in the Overworld between roughly Y -40 and Y 0, most commonly under deepslate-layer terrain.
Tips
- Bring more players and the waves get bigger but so does the reward; solo runs are slower but perfectly survivable.
- The 30-minute cooldown is per spawner, so work through a chamber room by room rather than waiting at one.
- Drink an ominous bottle before activating if you want an ominous trial key — you cannot upgrade a wave already running.
- See trial chambers, the mace and the heavy core for the full route to a mace.
Version notes
Trial spawners, trial chambers, ominous bottles and Trial Omen all arrived in 1.21 (Tricky Trials). 1.21.1 corrected several trial spawner and vault behaviours; nothing changed in 1.21.4.
Properties
Trial Spawner resists blasts at 50, which usually is not enough when something explodes nearby. Light passes through it, and it emits none of its own. One inventory slot holds 64, the normal full stack. It is not renewable: every one in the world is finite.
- Transparent
- Yes
- Required tool
- Any
- Renewable
- No
Guides and tools that cover this
Frequently asked questions
How do you get Trial Spawner in Minecraft?
Trial Spawner generates naturally in the world and does not drop anything without Silk Touch.
What tool do you need to break Trial Spawner?
No specific tool is required — Trial Spawner can be broken by hand.
Is Trial Spawner blast resistant?
Trial Spawner has a blast resistance of 50, so an explosion nearby will destroy it.
How many Trial Spawner fit in one stack?
Trial Spawner stacks to 64, so a single double chest holds 3,456 of them.
Is Trial Spawner renewable?
It is not. There is no way to make more Trial Spawner, so treat what you have as finite.
