How to Expand Your Minecraft Village? – Minecraft is a phenomenon that has endured now for over a decade and shows no signs of stopping. Microsoft releases new iterations of the prolific game regularly, the most recent of which is Minecraft Legends, set for release in early to mid-2023.
One reason for its longevity is its sandbox nature and the seemingly unending amount of things for players to do, whether playing cooperatively, exploring the world’s many secrets, taming animals, exploring the Nether dimension, or hunting the elusive Ender Dragon.
Creation and building are core game mechanics, and many players create designs of elaborate and astonishing complexity. Others are satisfied with creating simple houses or even building villages and populating them with NPCs. When playing cooperatively with friends, setting up a server with Minecraft hosting allows you to expand your villages collaboratively and infinitely.
When it comes to the latter, there are many ways to establish the foundation for a village and expand it as much as you desire.
How to Create a Village
If you want villagers, they will need a place to live and sleep. Your first objective should be to create suitable housing – the more houses you make, the larger your village can become, so this should be an ongoing process if you want to expand your township.
Do not get carried away right from the get-go, as acquiring the first few villagers can prove difficult and, depending on your method, may involve a certain quantity of luck. If your attempts prove unsuccessful, you may need to choose a better location, so you should begin with a few houses and increase production once you have citizens.
What Constitutes a Home?
Minecraft qualifies a house as an enclosed space with a door and a complete roof that blocks out the sky. To make that house a home, you must have a bed. You can create tiny houses for individual dwellers or expansive locales with multiple beds, facilitating faster population growth through breeding.
Populating Your New Village
The major hurdle for establishing your new society is recruiting your initial villagers. The closer you are to a pre-established town, the easier it will be for you, as you must essentially force a member of that population out of their current village and into yours. This process can be arduous.
A little prep work can ensure less frustration later on. After all, once you have your core inhabitants, they could wander off, forcing you to wrangle them back. Fortunately, they cannot climb fences, so it is a good idea to fence off your village before they arrive. Once inside, they will remain there as you proceed to later steps for expansion.
The most effective way to do this is via boat. If the populated village is near a body of water, this process will be considerably easier, as you can put the villager into the boat and sail toward your new site. Once the villager is in the boat, he will not attempt to escape unless the boat becomes broken, so protect it at all costs during transport.
You can still pilot a boat on land even if there isn’t a water source. You will likely have to steer into the villager to board them, but you can traverse the ground to reach your homestead. However, as this method is much slower, you may find yourself fending off increasing monster attacks, which is imperative because if the boat breaks or the villager dies, you may be back at square one.
Once your first new inhabitant is safely fenced in, get ready – you will need to repeat the process. Unless you prefer to choose a male and female specimen for breeding, for game purposes, gender is irrelevant – every animal and character is considered gender-neutral. In other words, if you properly prepare two adults for breeding, they will populate your village.
An Alternate Plan
There is a second method to acquire a villager; if you are fortunate, it can save you a lot of trouble. Zombie villagers can sometimes spawn near your village site, and if you afflict them with the “weakness” status element (such as with a potion), then give them a Golden Apple, you will cure them. Before you do so, lure them into your village area so that they will be in place once the healing transformation occurs.
Breeding Criteria
For the village population, you will need to set the right mood. First, you need to give your breeders a location where they can be alone for procreation, including beds. This is easy if you build medium-sized houses with multiple beds. Note that you will have to have more unclaimed beds than the inhabitants for this to work, as the baby will need one.
However, privacy alone is not enough – they must be both satiated and willing. Specifically, each villager needs to have 12 carrots, beetroots, and potatoes, as well as 3 pieces of bread in their inventory.
While you can create a garden so villagers will collect the food independently, they will only breed if you trade with them. This act raises your popularity with them and increases their willingness. Once you have traded with each villager, they have the prerequisite food requirements, additional unused beds, and appropriate proximity; the two will breed and create a baby, which will inhabit an unused bed.
This procreation clears willingness, so you must trade with them again to expand your town.
How to Expand Your Minecraft Village
Now that you have your first two breeders and a baby on board, you are on your way to village expansion. Building extensive gardens with the appropriate food items can automate the breeding process. As long as you actively engage your villagers with trade and ensure that there are additional houses and unused beds, they will continue producing new inhabitants.
You can also create profession blocks within houses so that your villagers can learn a trade; unemployed villagers will automatically seek unused trade blocks and take up that role, offering their services to you.
The Bottom Line
Populating your village involves finagling two villagers into your enclosure, whether from a neighboring town or by curing a zombie villager within proximity. Afterward, you must ensure additional houses, beds, and food items to set the parameters for breeding, then engage your prospects in trades to assure willingness. If you want to expand your village with friends, you should learn how to set up a Minecraft server so that you can create even more expansion opportunities.
Once complete, there are no limitations on how many villagers you can have, so continue to grow and expand your village as much as you wish!