Overview
Nobody visits a swamp hut for its contents, because it has none — no chest, no ore, nothing but a cauldron, a crafting table and a potted mushroom. What the hut actually is is a spawner you cannot see. Its footprint carries a permanent witch spawning bias, so witches keep appearing there long after you have killed the original resident, and that makes the hut the easiest fully automatic potion-ingredient farm in the game. The build is unglamorous: seal the hut so nothing can wander out, cut a one-block gap for the witches to fall through, drop them 24 blocks onto a killing platform, and light or slab over every other spawnable surface within 128 blocks so the swamp itself cannot compete for the spawn cap. What comes back up the hopper line is Redstone Dust, glowstone dust, sugar, Gunpowder, glass bottles and sticks in quantities no other farm matches, and the glowstone in particular is otherwise a Nether errand. Do the demolition before you build: kill the resident witch first, because a Poison potion thrown at you while you are standing on a scaffolding tower over swamp water is a fall, a drowning and a poisoning at once.
A permanent witch spawning point, which converted into a farm yields redstone, glowstone dust, sugar, gunpowder, sticks and glass bottles automatically. The hut also supplies a free cauldron and marks a swamp, where slimes spawn on full moons and mud and mangrove wood are close by.
A small stilted shack of spruce planks standing over swamp water, registered internally as the swamp hut and known to everyone as the witch hut. It contains a cauldron, a crafting table, a potted red mushroom, and one witch who generates with it, plus a black cat. Its real value is that the hut applies a permanent witch spawning bias to the area, so an enclosed, lit-out platform above it becomes a self-sustaining witch farm producing redstone, glowstone dust, sugar and gunpowder. There is no loot chest of any kind.
It is uncommon in the Overworld, restricted to Swamp and Mangrove Swamp, and it generates on the surface.
How to get it
Swamp huts generate on stilts over the water in swamp and mangrove swamp biomes, usually 1 per few hundred blocks of swamp. They are visible from a long way off as a dark spruce silhouette standing above flat green water — mangrove swamps hide them better under the roots.
Tips
- Kill the resident witch from range before you build anything; her Poison and Weakness splashes are the only real danger at the site.
- Slab, light or water-cover every spawnable block within 128 blocks of the hut, or the swamp will eat most of your spawn attempts.
- A 24-block drop leaves witches at one hit from any sword, which keeps the experience and the drops without needing a redstone killer.
- Witches drink their own healing potions, so build the drop tall enough to hurt them rather than relying on damage over time.
Version notes
Added in 1.4.2 with witches themselves. Mangrove swamps, added in 1.19, generate huts too, which gave the structure a second biome for the first time in ten years.
Properties
It generates in the Overworld, which is the only dimension with a day-night cycle and weather, and the one every distance in the game is measured against. In a world with cheats on, /locate structure minecraft:swamp_hut gives the coordinates of the nearest one. Without cheats, an explorer map from a cartographer villager is the reliable route for the structures that have one; everything else is exploration.
- Biomes it generates in
- 2
- Notable loot items
- 1
Where it generates
Swamp Hut (Witch Hut) generates in 2 biomes: Swamp and Mangrove Swamp. Outside those it will not generate at all, however far you travel.
Notable loot
Its loot includes Cauldron. These are the notable entries rather than the full loot table — the common filler (bread, coal, iron nuggets) is omitted, and in some structures the best of it comes from a vault or a spawner rather than a chest.
Mobs found here
Witch, Cat, and Slime generate here. Several of them spawn nowhere else, which is usually the reason to make the trip.
What to watch out for
3 things to prepare for before you go in:
- The resident witch throws Poison and Weakness potions
- Slimes spawn across swamps at night
- Shallow water and no solid ground to retreat to
Guides and tools that cover this
Frequently asked questions
Does a swamp hut contain any loot?
No. There is no chest anywhere in the structure. Everything you get from a swamp hut comes from witch drops, the cauldron, and the spruce planks you can dismantle.
Do witches keep spawning after you kill the first one?
Yes. The hut applies a witch spawning bias to its own footprint that never expires, which is precisely what makes it farmable.
Why is it called a witch hut if the game calls it a swamp hut?
The registry name is minecraft:swamp_hut, but the structure has been known as the witch hut since it was added in 1.4.2 and the community name stuck.
How do I find Swamp Hut (Witch Hut)?
Swamp Hut (Witch Hut) generates in the Overworld, only in Swamp and Mangrove Swamp, and is uncommon. /locate structure minecraft:swamp_hut finds the nearest one instantly with cheats on.
What loot is in Swamp Hut (Witch Hut)?
The notable entries are Cauldron.
When was Swamp Hut (Witch Hut) added?
Swamp Hut (Witch Hut) was added in Java Edition 1.4.2.
Related pages
Structures that share Swamp Hut (Witch Hut)'s loot, its mobs or its biomes — not simply the next few in the list.
