Mojang heard our demands, and Allay is now in Minecraft ahead of its official release later this year. The Allay is cute, small, and extremely useful in helping you collect items. The community has waited a long time to get a companion mob, and Allay checks all the right boxes for the job. But before you go ahead and meet Allay in Minecraft, let’s address the elephant in the room. In this article, we will be talking about the role of Allay in Minecraft farms. Is Allay better than hoppers, can they improve Redstone, and should you even use Allay to build your own automatic Minecraft farm? We are here to answer all of that and more. But before we do that, make sure you read everything about the Allay. With that said, it’s time to make the most out of the Minecraft 1.19 update by learning how to use Allay in Minecraft farms.
We have divided our Minecraft farm guide into several sections for your ease. You can explore each of them at your convenience using the table below.
Allay vs HoppersAllay vs WaterAllay and Not stackable Items
Apple and Sapling FarmsSugar Cane FarmsMob Drop Farms
Use Allay to Find OresMazes and PathsPortable Storage
How Does Allay Work in Minecraft
In simple terms, Allay is a non-hostile Minecraft mob that takes an item from the player and looks for the same around the loaded chunks of your world. You can give it any in-game item or block. Then, once the Allay finds a copy of that item, it will bring it back to you. But you can also assign it a particular note block to gather items around it (more on this below and how it fits into the automation of our farm).
If you play a note block around an Allay, it becomes its favorite note block for 30 seconds. Then, instead of looking for a player, Allay keeps dropping items around that note block. It can carry a full stack of items at a time. However, as for non-stackable items, the Allay drops the original item and then looks for its copies in your Minecraft world.
How to Connect Allay with Note Block
As you might expect, note blocks play a vital role to make Allay useful in Minecraft farms. So, let’s learn how to make a note block and use it to lure Allay before moving forward.
Then, you need to give Allay the item you want them to find. To do so, select the item in your inventory and right-click, or you can use the secondary action key in Minecraft.
Finally, you need to play the note block to lure an Allay and assign it to them. You can do so using the secondary action key. Then, the Allay will automatically collect copies of the assigned item and bring them to the note block.
Automate Note Blocks
The best way to automate note blocks in Minecraft is by creating a Redstone circuit or a clock. It is a simple arrangement of Redstone blocks that makes the note block play music every few seconds.
To automate a note block and use Allay in Minecraft farms, we need the following items:
Once you have gathered the required items, place the Redstone repeaters and the Redstone dust in the following format. Make sure that moving parts in each row are facing the same side. But they must be facing the opposite direction of the parallel row.
Then, connect the circuit to the note block by placing Redstone dust on top of the note block while crouching. At the same time, also attach a lever to that note block.
Finally, use the lever to activate the circuit. But break it immediately. You will notice that the circuit will get stuck in an infinite loop to play the note block.
Q. What is the range of Note Blocks for Allay?
We don’t have an official number yet, but Allay can hear a note block from at least 16 blocks of distance, as per our testing. So, if you want to use Allay in large Minecraft farms, you must add more than one note block to the system.
How to Use Allay in Automatic Minecraft Farms
Now that you know the basics of Allay’s functionality in Minecraft, let’s explore its use case in farms in-depth and compare how it stacks up against Hoppers in the game.
Ever since their first announcement, Allays have been compared with hoppers. Unlike mobs, Hoppers are existing blocks in Minecraft that collect dropped items and can place them in chests. Let’s see how they compare to the Allay.
Feature/TaskAllayHopperPlacing Items in ChestN/AOnly if they are directly connected to the chestTargetting ItemCan target and look for specifically assigned itemsN/ASpeedCan take a few secondsInstant collection and placementRangeUp to 16 blocks in all directions (estimated)Has to be placed next to the drop location or connected via water flowAvailabilityRare and non-breedable/ craftableEasier to craftCollectionA single Allay can collect all items for a particular farmEach drop location of the farm needs a separate hopper or a water flow system
Now that we know an Allay can become a transporter for hoppers, its next competition is the already popular water flow system. Most of the existing Minecraft farms depend on water to take dropped items from farms to hoppers for sorting. But there are some problems with this system.
Even though water offers a useful transportation facility in Minecraft, Allay can replace it in Nether farms and slower non-interactive farms like apple and tree saplings.
Allay and Not stackable Items
Lastly, the most unique feature of Allays is their ability to sort items that are not stackable. In Minecraft, a stack refers to the ability to place the same items on top of each other in the inventory. Most stacks consist of 64 items, but some can have 16 or just 1 item (not stackable). If you have been playing Minecraft for a long time, you would know that it enables players to use fully filled hoppers to stack items and sort them by overflowing them.
But this trick doesn’t work with items that can’t stack. Dozens of items such as beds, tools, weapons, and various mob loots don’t get sorted in existing farms. That’s where the Allay comes in. If you hand the Allay an item that is not stackable, it will drop the original item and then goes around in search of its copies around the world.
From a practical viewpoint, you can use Allay in any automatic Minecraft farm if you are creative enough. But to get the ball rolling, we are sharing some of the simplest examples in this guide.
One of the simplest farms to make with Allays is tree-based farms. Here, you first need to plant a bunch of trees in a closed area. Then, you have to use the above-mentioned note block mechanism to assign two Allays to the farm. One is there to collect apples and the other for saplings. If you are unaware of how to grow seeds and plants in Minecraft, follow our in-depth guide linked here for more information.
Finally, you need to sit around and wait for trees to drop apples and saplings. Once they do, the Allay will automatically pick them up and drop them on top of their respective note blocks. If you place a chest and a minecart-hopper beneath the note block, it can automatically collect and sort the items.
Sugar Cane Farms
Sugarcane farms follow a simple Redstone farming system in the game. You set up a regular sugarcane farm in a closed space and then add observers that use pistons to break them. The pistons only move when the sugarcanes reach a certain height.
Finally, to collect the broken sugar canes, you need to add an Allay to pick them up and drop them on top of a note block with a minecart-hopper attached to it. If you are just starting out with Minecraft farms, it is the easiest one to use with an Allay. Do make sure to leave extra space for Allay to be pushed with the pistons.
For our final example, we are focusing on fall-damage-based mob farms. In these, you can use a mechanic such as mob spawners, to spawn specific mobs at a high block height. Then, they fall to their deaths in an enclosed chamber leaving behind some loot. Usually, a Minecraft farm like this faces a common problem of collecting every item a mob drops even if it’s useless. But not with Allay.
For our farm, we are using a spider spawner in a glass chamber. The spider spawns and falls to its death, leaving behind either a string or spider eye. But there is only one Allay in the chamber, which solely collects the spider eye for us. Then, it drops the spider eye on top of an automatic note block placed upon a mine-cart hopper.
Now that you have some idea about implementing Allay in Minecraft farms, it’s time to challenge it. Yeah, Allays are fun and cooler than Hoppers in existing farms. But are they worth the effort? The following reasons point against their usage:
- Allays are rare. Unless Minecraft introduces a mating system, they are a hefty investment for simple farms.They are slower than traditional systems of water streams, minecarts, and indirect hoppers. But they do reduce manual labor.Allays are dependent on note blocks. So, every Allay-based farm involves an additional task of making a Redstone clock.Due to the constant presence of note blocks, all your farms are going to be noisy. The noise won’t be as harsh as pistons, but it’s still not the best trade-off.You need multiple Allays in the same farm if it’s larger than 16 blocks. Not to forget, they move slowly within open areas.
Now, if you can live with these circumstantial issues, Allay is ready to serve your farm with the next update. But if you don’t want them as farmworkers, they can still be reliable allies.
Stepping away from farms for a while, let’s explore alternate ways to use an Allay in Minecraft.
You can find diamonds in Minecraft with some regular mining. But if you are using Redstone machines, mining bores, or TNT to mine the ore, things can get pretty messy. Unless you are specifically looking for, collecting, and sorting ores, it’s easy to lose track of them. That’s where Allays come into the picture.
After an area is strip-mined or exploded, Allay can look for diamonds (or any item) and collect them for you. It will eliminate the need to search for and sort items in a mined area. Not to forget, Allay is better than you when it comes to locating items.
We are still in the unexplored territory here, but Allay seems to have a great sense of direction. So, it is easy to implement and use in some of the best Minecraft adventure maps. Moreover, you can also use this cute mob to find certain areas in bigger Minecraft houses or even to find your house in Minecraft.
To do that, you have to assign an Allay and a note block to an area near your house. Then, whenever you give Allay its assigned item, it will lead you right to the note block. Do keep in mind that such a system needs more than one Allay because of its 16 blocks range.
Many players see Allay as a drone in Minecraft. So, why not use it as one? If you give an item to the Allay, it follows you indefinitely. Yes, it keeps looking for its copies, but it never goes too far away from the player. Then, when you want to, you can right-click empty-handedly on Allay to get that item back.
So, you just need to hand Allay a chest to make it a portable storage device. This mechanic works best with Ender Chests as players won’t lose their items even if the Allay runs away. Though, using regular chests is much cheaper. But who knows, Minecraft might even introduce alternate storage items like a pouch with the release of the Minecraft 1.19 The Wild update.
As mentioned earlier, there is no way to sort not stackable items in Minecraft. Only an Allay can target items even if you can’t stack them. So, with that in mind, you need to place a group of Allays towards the end of a sorting chain. You can use water or minecarts to send items to the Allay workshop.
Here, each Allay has a dedicated note block with a hopper beneath it. So, if an Allay receives an item associated with it, Allay will pick it up and throw it on the assigned note block. This system works on all Minecraft blocks. You do need a whole bunch of Redstone dust and Allays to run it, though.
