Minecraft Monday: Everything You Need to Know About Villagers in Minecraft!

Welcome back to Ganiming, it’s time for another Minecraft Monday! It is a series released every Monday, where we talk about Minecraft! We’ve talked about a lot of things so far. Most recently we learned about some of the best Minecraft mods that make your life easier. They include some of the features we still can’t believe Mojang has not included in the vanilla game.

We’ve talked a lot about villagers so far in this series, notably how some very important farm builds can not function without them. I think it’s time we finally take a deeper dive into the world of villagers in Minecraft and learn more about how they function in the game.

Quick note: everything I will show you today is from the world played by me and 2 of my friends. We were using the Minecraft Realms feature which does not allow mods, so everything is vanilla. Everything on this server was built just before the cave update, which means version 1.17. We recently started playing on this Realm again, and we are currently in the process of updating the world to patch 1.20 with all the recent additions. Even though the world is quite old, all the mechanics regarding villagers in Minecraft still work to this day.

What are Villagers in Minecraft?

If you played Minecraft at least once in your life, you have probably already run into some villagers. They are passive mobs in Minecraft, which can be found in villages. Villages spawn randomly in several biomes, such as plains, deserts, taiga, snowy plains, savannas, and snowy taigas, but can also cross over into other biomes.

Villagers that spawn in the village are unemployed and only get a profession when they use a specific workstation, but we will talk more about that later. The number of villages is dependent on the number of buildings in said village.

Villagers can breed and interact with each other, and they can also trade with the player. Their outfits are dependent on the biome they spawn in and the profession they acquire. If they are killed, they drop no loot, but they do drop some experience.

How to Breed Villagers in Minecraft?

Yes, it’s true, you can breed villagers in Minecraft just like many other passive mobs. Breeding requires some conditions to be met beforehand. Adult villagers only breed during a specific time of day, they need to be willing to spawn a baby villager, and they also require beds with at least 2 empty blocks of space above them. Remember, the maximum number of villagers that can spawn in your breeding area is the same as the number of beds you set in there.

In the Java edition of the game, two villagers who are close to one another periodically enter mating mode if they have enough food and are not on cooldown from already spawning a baby. To ensure they have enough food, just drop a bunch of crops or bread on them and they will pick it up themselves and share it with each other. The appearance of the baby villager is dependent on the biome they spawn in, and they are always unemployed.

Behaviour of Villagers in Minecraft

Villagers’ behavior is very peculiar. Unemployed villagers usually leave their homes during the day and wander around the village exploring. They can be found inside or outside of houses making mumbling sounds. From time to time, they engage in socializing with other villagers, where they stare at each other for a couple of seconds, then move on. They tend to not travel too far away from their beds in a large village unless the job site or the gossip site is far from their bed.

Villagers run inside at night or during rain, while also closing doors behind them. If they have a bed available, they will sleep through the night, if not they will just wait out the night indoors.

Villagers flee from most of the hostile mobs that are in the range of 12 blocks. Exceptions to those mobs are skeletons and both spider varieties, as they are passive towards villagers.

Gossiping

They can actually store some information about the players in the form of gossip, which gets spread to other villagers in Minecraft when they socialize. There are 5 types of gossip, which depend on the player’s actions. Gossips generate value, which multiplies the player’s reputation inside the village. The higher reputation you have, the better prices you get when trading, and the less hostile iron golems are.

Keep in mind that trading or curing a villager increases reputation only for that one specific villager. But if you hit or even kill a villager, it generates major negative gossip in every villager within 16 blocks that witnessed your crime.

Every time a villager shares gossip, it is received by a lower amount than the original villager has it. Gossip also decays every 20 minutes, so if you made some enemies in the village, you could just wait it out.

Your reputation will be calculated by using the appropriate multiplier for each of your actions and putting those numbers together.  The higher your reputation the better! Also, keep in mind, iron golems will automatically target you if your reputation is below -100.

Villager Professions

Each villager can have a profession, except a nitwit. You can easily spot them by their unique clothing and by their title on top of the trading interface. These are the most useless villagers in the game, and I usually remove them from my builds.

Other villagers can choose a profession by claiming a specific workstation. Each workstation can be claimed by one villager, so the number of workers you will have depends on the workstations you build. A villager will lose his profession if you break his workstation unless you already traded with him. Now let’s take a look at every profession a villager can claim and how to get the workstations!

Every professional specialist offers you different trades. For each experience level, the villager will only trade you some of the trades listed below. In the Java edition, each villager can only have a maximum of 10 different trades, chosen randomly from the tables below.

The price that is listed for every trade can vary, as it is influenced by a couple of factors. The first is your reputation which we already covered. The second is if you protect the village from an Illager raid and earn yourself a Hero of the Village title. And lastly, you can cure a zombie villager back to a regular villager, with will grant you huge discounts only with that one villager.

Armorer

A villager can become an armorer by working a blast furnace. This is the best source of diamond gear you can find in the game, as he trades you enchanted diamond armor at the Expert and Master levels.

Butcher

A villager can become a butcher by working a smoker. You can trade in some meat you collected while farming for emeralds.

Cartographer

A villager can become a cartographer by working a cartography table. I usually use these guys to make incredible amounts of emeralds, by trading them paper and glass panes. They can also trade you the ocean explorer map and the woodland explorer map.

Cleric

A villager can become a cleric by working a brewing stand. If you are too afraid of fighting Ender men, you can trade your emeralds for Ender pearls with him!

Farmer

A villager can become a farmer by working a composter. This is the villager who usually brings me the most money while playing Minecraft. You can trade him crops that grow on your farms for huge profits.

Fisherman

A villager can become a fisherman by working a barrel. Here you can collect some emeralds by trading him the fish you found in the wilderness.

Fletcher

A villager can become a fletcher by working a fletching table. He can become an awesome source of enchanted bows, crossbows, and tipped arrows.

Leatherworker

A villager can become a leatherworker by working a cauldron. He can be a nice source of emeralds if you have extra leather lying around, but I usually use him to get saddles for my horses!

Librarian

A villager can become a librarian by working a lectern. This is the single most important villager you could have in your survival world. He can trade you enchanted books, which can boost your armor and gear!

Mason

A villager can become a mason by working a stonecutter. You can sell him your extra blocks of different stone types, such as granite and andesite.

Shepherd

A villager can become a shepherd by working a loom. If you have a huge sheep farm, this is the best way to turn all of that wool into infinite emeralds!

Toolsmith

A villager can become a toolsmith by working a smithing table. You’ll always want to have one of these in your survival world, as he will sell you enchanted pickaxes and other gear!

Weaponsmith

A villager can become a weaponsmith by working a grindstone. Another one of those villagers that you absolutely need, as he will sell you enchanted diamond axes and swords!

How to Cure a Zombie Villager?

To cure a zombie villager, you must splash it with a splash potion or with an arrow of weakness, and then immediately feed it a golden apple.

How to Transport Villagers in Minecraft?

You can easily transport villagers in Minecraft by using boats or railroads. Sometimes it can be a bit tricky to get them in, but it gets easier once you get the hang of it!

If you’re still here after a longer post than usual, then congratulations! You now know more about villagers in Minecraft than 95% of all Minecraft players. It’s a lot to keep in mind if you’re just starting, but knowing all of this will make your survival experience way easier! I couldn’t imagine playing my survival world without trading with villagers, as some things are extremely tiresome to find.

I hope this information proves useful to you! Did you like the post? Do you have an idea for the next Minecraft Monday topic? Which is your favorite villager feature? Let us know in the comments below!