How to make and use the Crafter in Minecraft 1.21 update

Are you tired of making the same recipes over and over again? Then you need to make a Crafter, which was added as part of the Minecraft 1.21 update. Here’s how to make one, and how to get it crafting automatically.

I couldn’t count how many hours of my life I’ve spent making the same recipes over and over again, from pickaxes and swords to torches and bread. Finally, Microsoft and Mojang have created a block that can take over some of that mind-numbing repetition, and I’ve been putting it to good use.

If this sounds like your cup of tea, then let me walk you through making the Crafter and setting it up in Minecraft.

How to make a Crafter in Minecraft: Recipe and ingredients

First thing first, to make a crafter, you’re going to need the right ingredients. Thankfully, this recipe isn’t too resource-heavy, and you should be able to pick most of these up pretty early on in your save.

• 2x Redstone Dust
• 5x Iron Ingot
• 1x Dropper
• 1x Crafting Table

Redstone Dust can be made by smelting Redstone Ore, which can be found underground and in caves. Iron Ingots are smelted pieces of Iron Ore, while a Droper is crafted by putting seven pieces of Cobblestone with a piece of Redstone Dust. Finally, the Crafting Table is one of the first things you make in the game by placing four wood planks in a square.

Once you have these, go to a Crafting Table, and place your five Iron Ingots in the shape of a helmet, with three across the top row, and one on either side of the middle. Then, place your Crafting Table in the middle slot, and the Dropper directly underneath it. Finally, place Redstone Dust in the bottom corners.

How to use a Crafter in Minecraft

Now that you’ve made your Crafter, it’s time to put it to work. First, place it down where you would like it, and right-click it. That will take you to the Crafter interface, which unsurprisingly looks like exactly like a regular Crafting Table.

For ease of use, the first thing you should do is place a Chest in front of the Crafter. Every time it works, it will spit out the item from the front, so putting something there to catch everything that comes out is a good idea.

If you want to set it up to craft a specific item every time you press a button, simply put the recipe of the item you want into the crafting area at the left, and place a button or a lever beside it. With this setup, you’ll be able to pump out as many of the items you want, all at the click of your mouse.

If you want to create an automatic Crafter that pumps things out continually, then things get a little more tricky. In all honesty, I’m not a Redstone savant, so I’m going to keep this pretty simple, but it works nicely and I recommend trying it out for yourself.

Because it’s complicated, I’ve put the steps I took in a numbered list below. I’ve put these in a specific order because this was the order I got it to work in, but experiment and see if you can improve my system.

1. Place your Crafter in the desired location, and place a Chest in front of it.
2. Move five blocks left of the Crafter, dig up the block, and place a full block of Redstone down in that space.
3. Go back to the crafter, and place two pieces of Redstone Dust in a line to the left. Then place another piece of Redstone Dust directly above the second piece.
4. Place two Redstone Repeaters in front of the two pieces of Redstone Dust, facing towards the Redstone Block.
5. Place two more pieces of Redstone Dust beside the Repeaters, connecting to the Redstone Block.

The Repeaters will keep the signal ticking back and forth, knocking your Crafter on and spitting out the recipe. All you have to do is keep it stocked up with ingredients, which could also be automated by using Chests and Hoppers to feed items into it.

For more on Minecraft 1.21, learn how to get Heavy Core, what the new Breach enchantment does, or how to find Trial Chambers.