How to Make Hoppers Go Up in Minecraft

Aaron Donald March 2, 2024

Hoppers are frequently used items in Minecraft. They have multiple uses, but hoppers are primarily used to transfer items around the Minecraft world. For example, moving things from one place to another (to a chest or a barrel) can be done with hoppers. However, moving objects in the upward direction can be tricky with hoppers, as they weren’t intended to transfer items up.

Read on to learn how to make the hoppers transfer upwards and the resources needed to achieve this action.

How to Place Items Up Into a Chest in Minecraft

Dropping items down into a hopper connected to a chest will transfer those items with little problem. However, difficulties arise when players want to move items upward. You need more objects apart from a hopper and a chest to make a hopper go up.

Droppers are essential tools in making the items fall into a container, like a chest or a barrel. Even though their name suggests they drop items, in reality, they raise them. Additionally, you’ll need to make sure you have enough redstone materials for the dropper to work correctly. This is how you can make hoppers go up with these resources:

Place the Dropper on the ground facing up.
Put the Chest on top of the Dropper.
Place the Hopper on the side.
Put items into the Hopper to move them to the chest.
Connect the Redstone Dust to the dropper.

This is the simplest way to make items thrown into the hopper transfer upwards. Note that one redstone pulse will only move one item, so you will need to set up a repeating circuit to move all of the items.

In some situations, you may need to move the items even higher, so you will have to stack two or more droppers on top of each other. However, simply placing a Redstone Pulse without a comparator and a torch isn’t enough for the structure to work in this scenario. For that, you will need to build a more elaborate Item Elevator.

How to Build an Elevator With Hoppers and Droppers in Minecraft

Another possible solution, although slightly more complicated, is to create a dropper elevator. This can be done by using various items. For this specific build, you need to use the following:

Two chests
Droppers (the number depends on how high you want the elevator to be)
Observers (the number depends on how high you want the elevator to be)
One hopper
Six pieces of Redstone Dust
One Redstone Comparator
Two Redstone Repeaters

Once you have all the necessary items for creating a dropper elevator, this is how you build it:

Place a Dropper facing up with a Hopper pointing into it.
Place a Chest on top of the Hopper.
Stack Droppers on top of the bottom Dropper until you reach your desired height. (Note: they should all be facing up)
Place a Restone Comparator facing away from the bottom Dropper.
Place a Redstone Repeater after the Restone Comparator.
Place the 6 Redstone Dust in the same arrangement found in the image below.
Place a Redstone Repeater leading from the last Redstone Dust into the bottom Dropper.
Now stack Observers above the last Redstone Dust until it is level with the highest Dropper. Do note they should all be facing down with the arrow pointing up.
Place another Observer facing the stack of Observers, so the arrow will be pointing toward the droppers.
Stack more Observers in the middle. Make sure they are all facing the same direction as indicated in Step 9.
Finally, place a Chest on top of the highest Dropper.

The Comparator and Repeater blinking and producing loud noise is a sign that the elevator works and transfers items from the hopper to the top chest. Items will be moved from the bottom chest to the top chest through a repeating series of pulses from the Comparator and the Observers.

How to Make Hoppers

Hoppers are a type of block used as a funnel, including five empty slots. They are an excellent alternative to Redstone machines when you’re out of Redstone. To craft the hopper, you need one chest and five Iron Ingots. To craft the chest:

Open the Crafting Table.
Put eight Wooden Planks on the table, leaving the middle box empty.

You need to craft the hopper and the Iron Ingot to create the other ingredient. First, you need to gather the Iron and smelt it:

Go to Y Level 64 to find Iron.
Use A Stone Pickaxe (iron, diamond, and netherite are also acceptable) to mine the Raw Iron.
You will also need to mine some Coal.
Open the furnace and add the Raw Iron to the top slot and the Coal to the bottom slot.
Once the iron has smelted, you can take it out of the side slot.

You can craft the hopper after you’ve crafted the chest and smelted the Iron to create Iron Ingots.

Open the Crafting Table.
Put the Chest in the middle of the 3×3 grid (or the second box in the second row).
Place two Iron Ingots in the left and right boxes in the first row.
Put the other two Iron Ingots on each side of the chest.
Set the remaining Iron under the chest or in the second box of the third row.
Craft the hopper.

Be Creative With Hoppers

Even though hoppers have multiple uses, transferring items from one place to another is one of the most important. Although they aren’t designed to do so, hoppers can make items go upwards with help from Redstone items and a dropper. This can be done in various ways, and a couple of them are described in this article. However, Minecraft allows its players to experiment and be creative, so you may be able to find other ways to make hoppers transfer items upwards.

If you enjoy building fun redstone creations, try building a working car in Minecraft.

FAQs

Can Hoppers pick up stacks?

Hoppers can pick up stacks at a time, but they can only pick up one stack of one kind of item at a time. Additionally, Hoppers can only move one item at a time, so while they can pick things up quickly, the transfer of items from container to container is pretty slow.

Are Droppers more efficient than Hoppers?

Droppers in a line work much faster than hoppers, and they are a good option for moving items over long distances. However, Droppers require redstone power to work. One advantage of this is that using Droppers causes less lag.

On the other hand, Hoppers are able to pick things up off the ground and can transfer items without redstone power. As water canals are one of the most efficient methods for moving items, Hoppers are generally preferred.

How to know when a Hopper is full

Hoppers don’t show any redstone signal when they’re full or empty. However, there is a way of knowing when your Hopper has reached its store limit. A Redstone Comparator attached to a Hopper can show the output the Hopper emits. If the signal strength is 0, the Hopper is empty, but if it’s 15, it is full.