Where do you farm them? I need a bunch for a hallway and it's taking forever.
Took me several hours to get 3 with a Looting 3 sword. I had 3-4 long hallways I patrolled on hard mode and still took that long!
Baby zombies are finally giving out XP after the update too!
I found a fort like 400 blocks north of where my portal is in the nether, which is near someones blaze farm north of the 1.8 settlement nether portal area. It's over a lava lake so that cuts down on spawn locations outside the fort and it's big enough that once you clear skellies from one area and run to the other side, non-skelly mobs can despawn. It has lots of non covered crossroads too which are some of the best wither skelly spawn locations and I haven't even increased their size or added new levels to them.
However, good spawn rates doesn't really explain the crazy drop rates I've seen. I have just seemed to be lucky unless someone has increased the drop rate somehow. Of those 9, 3 of them dropped off the first pack of 5 skellies that I killed right as I got there. It's crazy.
Anyone is free to come farm if they are willing make the trip, I only ask that you don't place any torches in the fort since that prevents wither skellies from spawning. I've also left 2 beacons at the fort that give speed 2 and regen/resist to make things a little safer. I fell in lava right under the beacon but the regen mixed with my fire protection 4 saved me.
My base is around -1450, -6969 in the over world (I can't remember how to get there through the nether off the top of my head) and my portal is on the lighthouse island. From the portal in the nether I have added ice paths for fast travel so bring some food. I don't have them marked but one leads to my wither quick kill area, one leads to a ladder down to the other person's tunnel and blaze farm, and the other leads to the fort I farm at. I'll be playing at lunch so I'll add some basic signs with directions and will try and make a proper tunnel connected to the other main nether tunnels soon.