Village



Villages, also known as NPC villages, are groups of buildings inhabited by non-player characters (NPCs)—Villager mobs that spawn naturally in the world. They only occur in the plains or desert biomes. Village buildings in plains biomes will be made out of Oak Wood, Oak Wood Planks, Cobblestone, Stone Stairs and Glass Panes. Village buildings in desert biomes are made out of Sandstone, Smooth Sandstone, Sandstone Slabs, Sandstone Stairs and Glass Panes instead of wooden or cobblestone features. Also, the plains biome villages have Gravel roads while the desert biome villages have Sandstone roads.

Finding villages
One method is to find the possible places that villages can spawn by using a superflat world, where a lack of terrain makes villages spawn more often. This method will not always work: The above does not always work because villages only spawn in flat biomes (plains and desert), so the above produces many false positives where the location in the original map is not suitable. One possibility is to retry the steps above but for step 2 select default world type (as opposed to superflat). This makes it harder to see villages, but each village found is much more likely to exist in the original world. There are also programs like AMIDST (by Skidoodle) to map worlds that will display all villages of the world/seed.
 * 1) Find your seed number. This can be done by pressing "/" and typing "seed".
 * 2) Create a creative, superflat world, using that seed.
 * 3) If the computer being used is sufficiently powerful, set the render distance to "far".
 * 4) Fly around and search for a village.
 * 5) When you find one, press F3 and find the coordinates.
 * 6) Go to these coordinates on your other (first) world.
 * 7) A village (not the same design but still a village) may spawn there (if the conditions are right).

Villages are much more common in worlds generated with large biomes than in default worlds; multiple villages can often be found on one desert or plains.

Defending and rescuing villages
If a player stays in or near a Village overnight, they are likely to encounter a Zombie siege. Zombies will spawn within the village, regardless of light level, and attack the villagers. If no villagers are outdoors (likely), they will bang on the doors of occupied houses. While the villagers will attempt to hide in their houses, some may not make it to safety from any given siege. If playing on Hard difficulty, the zombies will also break down the village doors, which can kill off the village within a couple of nights. Sufficiently large villages may have Iron Golems to help defend them, but even so, without aid from the player, the village is likely to be depopulated within a few sieges. (If there are fewer than two villagers remaining at any time, they will be unable to respawn, and even if they can respawn, this process will be too slow to recover from the zombie attacks.) There is also the matter that Villager AI is woefully insufficient for their survival -- even without zombies, they are prone to falling into nearby caves or pits, dancing on cactus, and otherwise committing suicide.

Accordingly, player assistance will be needed to help the village survive, consisting of the following steps:


 * 1) Until the village is secured (see below), players should not spend the night within 128 blocks (their mob despawning radius) of the village borders.
 * 2)  As quickly as possible, they should secure the village against nighttime monsters.  While this will not protect against the siege itself, it will prevent other monsters (especially creepers) from spawning or entering during the night, which they will do if a player is nearby.  Left to themselves, mobs besides zombies will not attack villagers... but they will attack the player, and creepers coming after players will blow up parts of the village.
 * 3) * Light the entire area -- outside, inside buildings, and even flat (parts of) roofs. While you're lighting the well's roof, you might stick a ladder on the inside edge.
 * 4) * Build a fence completely enclosing the village, with gates for your convenience. As usual, make sure that nearby blocks do not allow mobs to jump over the fence from outside.  Tree farming (especially a "jungle giant") can provide enough wood for the fences.
 * 5) * As an interim measure, you can wait until the villagers have gone indoors for the night, and then place a block or fence gate in front of every door in the village that is holding villagers. The villagers won't be able to wander, and the zombies won't be able to attack them. Tough luck if a zombie spawns indoors.
 * 6) * Re-hang doors to face outwards, and remove steps from in front of doorways or lower paths to ensure that wherever possible every door has a 1m drop in front of it. Even in Hard mode, Zombies cannot smash a door down if they have to jump to reach it, and yet they will still try, revealing their presence.
 * 7) The player should always try to sleep immediately when it gets dark, and then go out the moment they wake up to finish off any burning zombies still within the town. Trying to fight zombies at night is inadvisable because more may spawn or wander in while you are fighting the ones already present. Daylight greatly helps to break this vicious circle.
 * 8) When morning comes, the player should replace any doors that have been broken.  Do not try replacing the doors with iron doors -- the zombies can't break them, but neither will the villagers recognize an iron door as a "village door", for spawning purposes.
 * 9) As of version 1.4, zombies will not merely kill villagers, but might convert them to Zombie Villagers on Normal (50% chance) and Hard (100% chance).  Also, natural zombie spawns have a small chance of being Zombie Villagers.  If a player has been to a Nether Fortress, they may be able to cure these unfortunates as follows:
 * 10) * Splash them with a Potion of Weakness
 * 11) * Feed them a Golden Apple (nugget version)
 * 12) * Wait. The cure takes quite a long time (several minutes), so you'll want to trap them under cover from sunlight, so they don't burn before they recover.  A covered corral will work, but it may be easier to prepare a house for them:  Make sure there's at least two doors, and lock the villagers out by putting gates in front of those.  Then you can lead the weakened zombie in there and escape.  (A potion of Slowing might help.)  On Hard mode, you may need to add shade outside the exits, lest your patient break down the door and expose themselves to sunlight.
 * 13) Curing spawned Zombie Villagers can repopulate a desolate village.  (Once you have two Villagers in the village, they will usually start reproducing.)  You can also build up the population or even create new villages this way (see below).

Village behavior
A village is composed of at least one acceptable house and one villager. Upon creation, a village center is defined as the barycenter of the active doors' location. From this center extend the boundaries of the village, through which no villager nor iron golem may leave the village. The radius of the boundary is independent from the number of villagers, and is rather defined by the most distant active door (house) from the village center.

As the villagers move around, area near them is occasionally checked for new valid doors (houses). Thus, the random movement of villagers may also slowly change the center and radius of the village they live in, even if no houses are changed. If a found new valid door (house) is more than 32 blocks outside of any existing village's border radius, a new village is created (with its own center and radius; if less than that, the door is added to an existing village (though not necessarily the nearest one).

Any contact between villages' boundaries will cause the centers of each village to travel towards the center of the other. The minimum population of a village is 0.35 times the number of valid doors (see below). If the population drops below that point (due to death or kidnappings), but there are at least two villagers left who can reach each other, the villagers will mate and breed until the adult population is above the minimum. (Since child villagers take time to grow up, this will produce a population somewhat above the minimum.)

Villagers can be traded with by right-clicking on them.

Popularity
A player's popularity starts at zero, and ranges between -30 and 10, and the following can alter a player's popularity: A player's popularity does not reset on death, and players cannot alter other players' popularity. In addition, the popularity is stored per village; a player may be popular in one and notorious in another. When a player's acts directly on a villager, particles around that villager will indicate the change in popularity.

Presently, popularity has one effect: if a player has -15 popularity or less, iron golems of that village will become aggressive to that player. If an iron golem is idle, it may become aggressive to the nearest player with -15 or lower popularity. The only limit to this aggression is a distance of approximately 13 quinquagintillion (10^153) blocks, which is many times larger than the size of the Minecraft world: therefore, if an iron golem is in a loaded chunk, it may become aggressive to a player at any possible distance in-game.

Another feature further encourages players to protect villagers: if a villager dies to a non-mob, non-player source while a player is within 16 blocks, or if a monster kills a villager, then no villager in the village will mate for approximately 3 minutes.

Structures
"Natural" villages contain a variety of structures. In Plains villages, these will be made primarily of oak wood (both logs and planks) and cobblestone, while in Desert villages they will be made of sandstone. Regardless of material, the form of the buildings and other structures will be similar. Enclosed buildings will have glass windows. "Tables" are composed of a pressure plate on a fencepost. Note that the building interiors are often not well-lit to prevent monster spawning, let alone the outdoor areas.

Well: Wells are 2x2 pools filled with water, surrounded by cobblestone/sandstone walls, and have small roofs of cobblestone supported by fences. The wells are normally 10 blocks deep, but are only 4 blocks deep in Classic Flat worlds due to the low elevation. There is only one well in each village. Wells usually spawn near the center of the village with roads leading out from all sides.

Road: Roads join all structures in the village. They are made of gravel in Plains villages, or sandstone in Desert villages.

Lamp post: Lamp Posts can be found throughout villages. They are made of stacked fences topped with black wool, to which four torches are affixed, with one on each side.

Hut: Huts have a rounded roof, dirt floor, and windows, and sometimes a table. They may or may not be inhabited upon the village spawning, and if there are villagers present in these huts, there is only one.

Small house: Small Houses are similar in size to huts, but have a cobblestone or sandstone floor. Their roof is flat, and may have a fenced off balcony with access provided by ladders. As with huts, they generate with no more than one villager. Unlike most other buildings, small houses have no door. Accordingly, they do not count as homes for villagers.

Large house: Large Houses are composed of the same materials as small houses, though they do have doors. However, they are much larger in size and are L-shaped. Two farmers always spawn in these houses.

Butcher's shop: Butcher's Shops have small seating areas made of two wooden stairs and a table between them. Nearby is a double stone slab counter, presumably for cutting up meat. A fenced off backyard is located behind the building and is accessed through a door. The yard is also presumably for the butcher to raise animals, but the spawn of animals is not increased for the yard. A butcher will spawn in the shop, and a farmer (customer) may also spawn here

Library: Libraries are longer and narrower than other buildings. They are furnished with a row of wooden or sandstone stairs as a bench, in front of two tables, with a row of bookshelves above. They also have larger windows than any other kind of buildings. A crafting table is located in the corner. One librarian and a farmer spawn in each library.

Blacksmith: A smithy is a fairly complex building, with stone/sandstone slabs lining the roof. On the front of the building is a small porch with an awning supported by fences. Three cobblestone/sandstone stairs lead up to the porch from the road. On the porch is a small pool of lava, surrounded on one side by iron bars. There are also two furnaces and a work table made of one double stone slab. An opening leads to a small back room with a chest containing a random selection of items (listed below). Smithies do not have a door. One blacksmith villager spawns near each Blacksmith but often wanders off.

Farm: Farms can come in small and large varieties. All consist of plots separated by rows of water, surrounded by wood logs or sandstone. The small farms contain two 7&times;2 plots of crops (wheat, potatoes or carrots), separated by a row of water. Larger farms are essentially two small farms combined side-by-side, with a walkway down the middle in lieu of a third water row.

Church: Churches are tall buildings, with stairs used to shape an interior "altar". Plains churches will be entirely cobblestone. They have a small 3 floor tower equipped with ladders and glass panes, with a balcony on the top. One priest villager with a purple robe always spawns in each church. A farmer also spawns sometimes.

Frequency of village structures
The number of buildings composing a village can vary, and not every village is composed of all buildings at once. Apart from the well, which is unique and systematic, the number of buildings of each type is randomly generated, and increased in superflat worlds. Structures are picked from a weighted probability list (libraries are more common than butcher shops). There may be fewer buildings of a given type than the maximum allowed. The number of lamp posts has no restriction, as they are generated where no other buildings can be placed. Gravel roads are found between the buildings of the village and often extend beyond them.

Blacksmith chest loot chart
One or more slots in the chest that spawns in a Blacksmith Shop may be populated with items from the following list. There may be more than one slot containing the same type of item, but the numbers per slot do not exceed these limits:

Expanding and creating villages


The player can add more doors to a village to cause more villagers to spawn there. For every valid door in the village it will produce 0.35 of a villager. The requirements for a valid village door are that more spaces must be "outside" on one side of the door than the other. A space is considered "outside" if the sun hits it directly during the day, i.e., there is nothing above it except for transparent blocks like glass. Any space that is not transparent, or is shaded from above, is considered "inside". It will look at the 5 blocks in a straight line on each side of the door, and count the number of "outside" spaces. If the number of "outside" spaces on one side of the door is different than the number of outside spaces on the other side, it will be a valid door.


 * Buildings may be constructed out of most kinds of blocks provided that they are not transparent.
 * To properly register each door, a villager must be within a radius of 16 blocks horizontally and 3 to 4 blocks vertically of it. Doors may unregister if there are no villagers within range for a period of time.
 * Each door successfully registered as a house counts as 0.35 of a villager, meaning that every 3 registered doors produces a villager and every 20 registered doors is an additional 7 villagers.

Perhaps the easiest way to increase villager population is to make a kind of building some players call "love shacks." These shacks are simply a building three blocks tall with large dimensions that for walls simply have alternating column and door. These are extremely efficient and easy to make.

For a slightly more natural way to make expanding easier, given the choice, villagers prefer areas where numerous doors back onto an area - like a communal square; this is almost always occupied as the chance of there being an active door within 16 blocks or so of the square is very high relatively speaking.

The player can also found an entirely new village, by "transplanting" villagers from an existing village, as long as the following conditions are met:


 * Must be at least 32 blocks away from the "center" of the existing village, or else villagers will simply return to the village.
 * There must be homes at the new village, or else the villagers will simply wander.

As a villager cannot be manually pushed far past the boundary of the village, a common method for transplanting villagers from an older town to a newer one is placing tracks, and pushing the villagers into minecarts - they will simply sit in the minecart and not react to the village border as they pass it, until they are removed from the cart. Villagers may disappear when traveling in minecarts only to reappear when the minecart is broken. It is often helpful, but not required, to place the doors of the homes after the arrival of the villagers to speed detection. You can also simply destroy all the doors in the villages which will remove the boundary.

With the addition of Zombie Villagers and the ability to cure them into villagers, it is feasible to create a village anywhere a house can be made and zombies can be spawned, given the materials to cure the zombie villager. If the player has access to a zombie spawner (found in naturally-occuring dungeons), a "village" can easily be created by curing the zombie villagers spawned from it and corralling them (like cows or pigs) into nearby enclosed area. However, they will continue to attempt to wander and will not multiply unless a legitimate village is created following the villager housing criteria. On the other hand, if there is no legitimate village, there will also be no zombie sieges.

Criteria for an acceptable house
Villagers will enter an acceptable structure at night, or during rain or snow. Even in a desert, they will usually enter when a thunderstorm would be happening elsewhere.


 * Valid door, as above. It can be set facing in or out, and even a block or more outside the doorway.
 * Lighting and floor surface are irrelevant.
 * Floor does not have to be at door level (inside floor can have a 1 block drop immediately after door without stairs, or 1 block up as long as door frame accommodates head space)
 * Acceptable structure does not require a roof cover (top can be completely open to rain and villager will still seek shelter inside the open structure)
 * Villagers cannot directly find a house unless there are no more than 15 blocks between them and the door only, regardless of any of the structure (also without random wandering in the right direction)
 * Villagers will attempt to squeeze as many of themselves as possible into 1 structure if it is the nearest house. (fixed in upcoming snapshots)
 * A lone door will not be seen as a structure to a newly spawned villager, although destroying all of the structural blocks will not cause previous residents to forget about the house, and they will often congregate within 3 blocks of the "inside" of the door where the structure used to be
 * Note that regardless of structure size, villagers will stay within 3 blocks of the door while "actively" occupying the house
 * An acceptable "house" can be as minimal as a door, and then any single building block at the same height and within 30 blocks.

History

 * Notch originally worked on Villages by himself, but eventually gave the task to Jeb, so that he could work on other things.
 * A picture of villages was released by Notch before 1.8 was released. In the early screenshots, villages were partly made of Moss Stone.
 * Villages were shown to the public during the PAX 2011 demo, including the interiors.
 * Jeb has said that during early tests of villages, the lava in a smithy often set the village on fire.
 * An early interview with Notch discussed his plans for the village.

Trivia

 * Villages are optional as part of the setting for generated structures.
 * If gravel paths go through a tall grass area, upon generation tall grass will be removed and it may drop seeds.
 * Farms in the villages avoid overhanging by filling in the area below them with dirt. When the farm overhangs a ravine, this can cause a very tall rectangular dirt structure that at first glance almost looks like a chunk error.
 * Occasionally, surface ravines will be generated through villages, causing missing pathways or even entire buildings sunken into the ravine. This also applies to cave entrances and other surface oddities.
 * The well acts as the "center" of the village in reference to Minecraft's code. For example, in 12w21a and above, if a well generates in a desert, all buildings and paths will be made of sandstone, even if all other buildings are in an adjacent plains biome. The well also appears to be the point where village-locating tools will point to. This explains why there is always exactly one well in each village.
 * The wells in villages do not work as infinite water sources, as they are more than one block deep. (Note:They do become infinite water sources once drained to their lowest level, or if the bottom is filled in with sand/gravel.) (Also Note: The wells, filled to normal height, will become infinite with the implementation of snapshot 13w03a in the next release.)
 * Sometimes buildings can generate so that their entrances are buried. You have to uncover the entrance, or dig in through the walls.
 * Alternatively to the above, entire villages can be rarely found 2 or more blocks higher than the gravel path with no stairways going up to the houses.
 * Zombies may spawn in houses on hardcore mode, even if lit - This was once thought to be a bug, but is actually a feature of Zombie Sieges.
 * It is possible for the foundations of structures built by NPCs to continue down into a ravine, if spawned on/next to one. Technically not a bug, but a way of dealing with uneven terrain.
 * Since valid doors require "outside" (read: sunlit) space within 5 blocks of one side, cavern cities are impractical without 1x1 sunlight shafts within the 5-block line straight out from the door.