CHAPTER 2
VILLAGER BREEDER
BUILDING A VILLAGER BREEDER IS A WAY to get the best trades: trades for emeralds, and emeralds for the most powerful enchanted books and weapons. The goal is to breed villagers and take just those villagers with the trades you want to a safe location where it is easy for you to trade with them. This tutorial doesn’t cover what to do with any villagers you don’t want. I’ll suggest transporting them back to another village to live their days out happily!
This simple villager breeder will produce a villager about every 10 minutes. It is based on a few village mechanics, including villager willingness to breed, the size of the village, and how villagers locate their village and count villagers.
Step by Step
1. Build a 6 block long x 5 block wide rectangle of building blocks with 2 missing blocks in the front, as shown. This will be the base of the farm.
2. Add a second layer of blocks above this.
3. Add a row of glass blocks above and around the sides the base, as if the missing blocks weren’t missing.
4. Add a second row of glass blocks above this.
5. In the center of the enclosure, place 2 temporary blocks as shown.
6. On top of each of the 2 temporary blocks, place a fence. The villagers who will breed will stand on these.
7. Above each of the 2 fence posts, place 2 more temporary blocks, as shown. These placeholding blocks show where the villagers will go.
8. Place a row of 6 glass blocks around the bottom of the villager placeholding blocks.
9. Place another row above these.
10. Knock out the temporary blocks and add 1 more row of glass blocks to the villager enclosure.
11. On one side of the structure, dig a hole that is 6 blocks long and 3 deep, as shown. This is where the “village” will be placed.
12. At the bottom of this shaft, dig out a space beneath the farm that is 6 blocks long, 2 high, and 1 deep, as shown.
13. Place 6 doors to enclose the dugout you made in Step 12.
14. It is time to bring the villagers in. You can do this however you like. One way is to push the villagers into minecarts. Then you can transport them by rail to a temporary platform above the enclosure and push them in.
15. Right now, if you throw carrots to the villagers, the carrots will drop through the fences. To prevent this, we push glass blocks into the bottom halves of the villagers using pistons. The villagers won’t take any damage from this. First, on one side of the enclosure, place 2 glass blocks, as shown.
16. Use temporary blocks to place pistons (not sticky pistons) facing into the 2 glass blocks.
17. Add levers above the temporary blocks.
18. When the villagers are standing separately in 2 different block spaces, press the levers to extend the pistons and push the glass blocks in.
19. Remove the pistons, temporary blocks, and levers.
20. To finish the village below, push a third villager into the dugout.
21. Place lighting inside the dugout to prevent mobs spawning, and add glass blocks above the dugout to prevent mobs jumping in and to make sure the village doors are valid.
22. Place 2 rows of 6 blocks each, connecting to the hole in the farm’s base. This will later become a channel for removing baby villagers.
23. Inside the enclosure, place a sign over the hole in the base, as shown.
24. At the opposite corner, still inside the enclosure, place a bucket of water. The water flow will push villager babies to the hole in the base, and they will drop down.
25. On top of the enclosure, place 4 blocks to cover up the corner holes in the structure. (You will also want to figure out how you are going to climb up to and get down from the enclosure’s top—that is not shown here.)
26. Add lighting to the farm to stop mobs from spawning nearby. Add any protective measures to also prevent mobs from wandering in. Zombies can infect villagers through blocks that are joined diagonally, so make sure that they cannot get within a block of the villagers.
27. At the bottom of the hole in the base, beneath the sign, place a water block. The water will flow 8 blocks to the end of the channel.
28. It is up to you where you want to transport the baby villagers, but you will want them out of range of the existing village so that they don’t add to the villager count. You’ll also want to protect them with walls, ceilings, and light! Here’s a longer water channel. It drops a block every 8 blocks to keep the water flowing and lengthen the channel. At the end is a temporary holding chamber.
ZOMBIES CAN GET AT VILLAGERS THROUGH CORNERS (LEFT). MAKE SURE TO FULLY SURROUND YOUR VILLAGERS WHEN YOU ARE PROTECTING THEM (RIGHT)!
29. When you’ve finished your baby villager collection, transportation, and holding system, it’s time to get the villagers breeding. Drop stacks of bread, carrots, or potatoes into the enclosure. It may take 10 minutes or so, but they will start breeding. First, you may see them throwing food at each other. Some time later, hearts will float up from them. After a few rounds of hearts, a baby villager will drop into the stream below, drop into the channel, and away from the enclosure. Congratulations!
