Minecraft wiki entry for Amethyst_farming, associated text: Manual farming amethyst is much more efficient than automatic, unlike with most farmable items. However, just going to each bud and mining it is fairly tedious, so here are a few methods that will help you in your Minecraft world. Please note that for all these methods you will need to dig out all the blocks within a certain radius of the geode that is not a budding amethyst block, including calcite, smooth basalt and stone, as well as blocking off all caves. You can use a nether portal system to enter and exit the area.