Old Lady Makes a Village

(Above - Zombie Villager at Welcome Desk)

In my Minecraft world, the nearest naturally-spawned village is a good distance away.

I decided to make my own village.  I took materials from a deserted village and used them to make new buildings at a site closer to base. Then I enclosed the new village with a high wall.

I put a row of sweet berry bushes outside the wall. Sheep were being killed by brushing against the bushes so I put another fence around the bushes that were around the wall.

I lit the village with torches and Redstone lamps with daylight sensors.

I built gardens with beets, carrots, potatoes, and wheat. I also put in some melons, pumpkins, and sugar cane.

My Little Village

When I felt the village was ready I looked for villagers. The nearest populated village was an overnight trip away, so I decided kidnapping distant villagers to bring them to my village would not be practical.

I decided to get new villagers by luring zombie villagers to a safe place where they couldn't kill me and then cure them.  One problem was that zombie villagers were part of a  crowd of skeletons, creepers, spiders, and regular zombies and sometimes it was difficult to separate them.

I would run into my base with a zombie villager chasing me, put up a row of blocks between me and the zombie, close the doors behind him, and then douse him with weakness potion and feed him a golden apple. After he became a normal villager I would transport him to the village either using a rowboat or a mine car.

There were some mis-steps. One cured zombie got into my workroom and kept changing from one occupation to another -- Fisherman when he was near a barrel; Weapon Smith when he was near a grinder; and finally a Priest when he was near my enchanting table. The new Priest sat on top of my enchanting table for a while and wouldn't move.  He disappeared after a few days.  Another one went into my farming area while I went to get a boat, and when I came back he had become a farmer and harvested and replanted everything.

The first two successful converts became Weaponsmiths. I threw bread and vegetables at their feet until they got romantic and had their first child, who became a Librarian.

As new villagers arrived I tried to put up one of each profession block so that they would chose different trades, but that didn't always work due to glitches in the system.

Villagers tend to wander if you don't fence them in. At first I had doors in the wall around the village, but villagers would go outside and get lost so I changed the doors to gates. I had to do terraforming so there was no water in the village more than one block deeps they wouldn't drownd and no places with height changes of more than one block so that they wouldn't fall.

When I had about five villagers, stray cats started to show up. When I had ten villagers, an iron golem spawned.

The village became self-regulating after a while, with farmers sharing their harvests but my villagers tend to disappear.  I came back after a long mapping expedition and found half the village population gone. After making trades with most of them  I came back the next day and found five new children had been born.

The iron golem never came back, so I made one.

Right now I have about 19 beds and a variety of villagers. After three tries I finally have a Librarian who has Mending as a trade. A Fletcher has helped me add to my arrow supply.