Minecraft village features, loot, trades, and how to find them

Minecraft villages are among the most important structures in the game, and are surely one of first things most players go searching for when you load into a new world. There's good reason for that - they're full of loot and useful villager trades. And they always offer a warm and safe bed for the night. If you want to know how to find a village easily or where the best loot is hidden, I've got it all for you here, including the greatest villager trades in Minecraft, the top way of getting emeralds, and how to get rare swamp villagers.

How to find a Minecraft village

Minecraft villages are fairly common, but if you're unlucky, you may have to travel a few hundred blocks before you find one. Luckily, they're fairly easy to spot from a distance, especially at low light.

To find a village when exploring the overworld, the best thing to do is keep an eye out for lights when the sun starts to go down. Of course, this is also when dangerous mobs come out, so if you'd rather not be out and about at night in Minecraft, you can look out for the shapes of houses on the horizon during the day. To make things easier, consider temporarily increasing your render distance in the settings menu.

If you're still having trouble, there is another way to find villages easily, and that's by using online village finders. The most well-known and reliable is the Chunkbase seed map, but you'll need to know your seed number to look it up. Finally, you could use one of our favorite Minecraft village seeds.

Different types of Minecraft village

There are five different types of Minecraft village:

• Plains village
• Desert village
• Savanna village
• Taiga village
• Snowy taiga village

Each of these village types also has a 2% chance of spawning as an abandoned village. These villages have no living villagers present, and some building blocks are missing, while others may be replaces by cobwebs. Zombie villagers can also spawn in abandoned villages, and you could fully restore one to normal.

There are no other types of village, so you won't see any other designs, but due to the natural generation of Minecraft worlds, you can find these villages in other biomes if they spawn near the border.

Because of this, there is also a rare chance of finding naturally spawning Jungle or Swamp villagers. I'll explain this more below, as these two villager types can have their own unique trades.

How to make a Minecraft village

If you so wish, you could even build your own Minecraft village, or expand on an existing one, but you still need to find a natural one first. With that said, all you need to build your own Minecraft village is two villagers. From there, you can do pretty much what you wish. You see, the way Minecraft villages work is that two villagers will breed provided there are enough beds and food for them, so start building a village around them, and the population will keep growing as long as the village itself does.

Another key component to any village, of course, is a Minecraft Iron Golem, which also has a chance to spawn naturally if there is a villager and a bed.

Minecraft villager houses

Within every village, alongside the standard buildings, there is a chance for the following villager homes to spawn, though there is no guarantee.

• Armorer house
• Butcher shop
• Cartographer house
• Fisher's house
• Fletcher house
• Library
• Mason's house
• Shepherd house
• Tannery
• Temple
• Toolsmith
• Weaponsmith/Blacksmith

This isn't an exhaustive list, as there are also normal homes, farms, animal pens, and meeting areas, but these are the main villager homes that are particularly useful for items or loot. The most important ones to look out for are the blacksmith, the temple, and the library, but more on that below.

Minecraft village loot

The reason you want to find a Minecraft village as soon as possible is for the excellent survival loot that they offer. Not only can you pick up food, beds, and crafting tables at most villages, but some special loot can be found in certain villager houses.

The Blacksmith house is the most important to keep an eye out for as it is home to the most valuable village loot. In older versions, they could even include Minecraft diamonds, but they're now more likely to include weapons, armor, iron ingots, and more.

Next up, I'd recommend keeping your eyes peeled for a library, for two reasons. One is that a librarian is a very useful trader to have around. However, you can make a lectern to force a villager to take the librarian profession. The even better reason for finding a library in a village is the building itself, home to bookshelves and, therefore, books. Break every bookshelf you find to be able to craft an enchanting area at your base. You'll also need books to make a lectern, but you could always steal that from the village, too.

Finally, the cleric's temple is another great location to look out for, as it will be home to a free brewing stand. The reason this is particularly helpful is that crafting one requires killing a Blaze in the Nether. Of course, you can't use a brewing stand without entering the Nether Fortress and gathering some Nether Wart, but that's easier to obtain than a Blaze Rod.

Minecraft villager trades

Aside from just stealing the items from their homes, villagers have another great use: trading. While there are loads of trades, including weapons and food, I am just going to focus on the more important villagers to look for (or hire) first. They are:

• Fletcher - a great villager to use first to obtain emeralds
• Librarian - used for getting enchanted books
• Cartographer - sells mansion and ocean maps

The main thing to be aware of here is how villagers take on professions. You can give any villager (except Nitwits) a profession by placing a profession block near them. I'll list every profession block below. Once you trade with a villager, their trades stick. However, by breaking and replacing their profession block, you can choose their initial trade. Use this to be able to get the exact trades you want.

Also keep in mind that a villager won't change profession if their existing block is still placed. For example, you can't turn a farmer into a librarian without first breaking their composter. When you do trade with a villager, they will slowly level up their mastery in their field, offering increasingly valuable trades.

Here is every Minecraft village trader and their profession block:

• Armorer - Blast Furnace
• Butcher - Smoker
• Cartography Table - Cartographer
• Cleric - Brewing Stand
• Farmer - Composter
• Fisherman - Barrel
• Fletcher - Fletching Table
• Leatherworker - Cauldron
• Librarian - Lectern
• Mason - Stonecutter
• Shepherd - Loom
• Toolsmith - Smithing Table
• Weaponsmith - Grindstone

Minecraft fletcher trading

While the librarian is far and away the most important villager to trade with, you can't do so without emeralds, so we're focussing on that first, and the fletcher is the most obvious choice. You could also use the farmer if you have a wheat farm, a librarian (paper farm), or a fisherman (spider farm), but the fletcher is the easiest to do without building a farm first.

First off, you need to craft and place a fletching table using two flint and four wooden planks of any variety. Keep breaking and placing the fletching table until your fletcher offers the first trade of 32 sticks for an Emerald. The reason this is such a great way to obtain the currency is that you can spam place saplings, wait for the trees to grow, and then turn each single log into eight sticks. Don't forget that the trader will run out of stock, so you'll have to return each day for more - or have multiple fletchers at your disposal.

Minecraft Librarian trading

Now, onto the good stuff. The reason you want to get all those emeralds from a fletcher is to be able to buy enchanted books from a librarian. This is the best way to get rare enchantments, as enchanting tables are unpredictable. Remember what I told you above about replacing a profession block, and use that mechanic to find the perfect librarian trade. Your best bet it to block them into a room before you do so.

The main books we're looking for here are Mending, Unbreaking, and Fortune. In recent versions of Minecraft, you can get any of these books from any villager. However, if experimental trading (which may be a vanilla feature in the future) is turned on, only certain villagers give these enchantments. They are:

• Fortune - Taiga librarian
• Unbreaking - Jungle librarian
• Mending - Swamp librarian
• Efficiency - Desert librarian
• Protection - Plains librarian
• Sharpness - Savanna librarian
• Silk Touch - Snowy librarian

As I've mentioned above, Jungle and Swamp villages don't exist. Instead, you can only obtain these valuable trades by breeding villagers in these biomes. Since baby villagers take on the property of the biome they spawn in and not those of their parents, you can bring any villagers to a swamp or jungle biome, force them to breed, and then turn these villagers into librarians. I know it doesn't sound very humane.

Minecraft cartographer trading

The cartographer is another useful trader to consider, given their Woodland and Trial Explorer map trades. They also offer an Ocean Explorer map trade, but ocean temples are quite easy to find, while woodland mansions and Trial Chambers are much rarer.

As I've just given away, the Woodland Explorer map shows the location of the nearest Woodland Mansion (home to cute Minecraft Allays), while the Trial Explorer map shows the closest Trail Chamber. Open the map and hold it in your hand to see if you're heading in the right direction. If you want to explore everything your Minecraft world has to offer, these are two essential structures locate - though you can also do so with Minecraft console commands.

This isn't an exhaustive Minecraft village guide, as there is just so much to know. However, these are the most important things you need to know about villages and why you need them.

Since there's so much going on here, a village might even be a great place to consider building your next Minecraft house, especially since you can find a lot of the best Minecraft mobs around here, too.

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