I found a rare and wondrous thing in my current Minecraft world.

[cathyw]

Diamonds? Rarer.
Emerald ore in a mine? Rarer.
Enchanted golden apples? Rarer.

my friends, I found an NPC village. with a nice street layout. with the little NPC houses arranged along that street layout very neatly, not too crowded, not too sparse. with a population representing a large fraction of the available NPC professions, including a farmer and a shepherd. and... here's where it gets good...

the entire thing is flat as a pancake by Minecraft standards. I think the high point is like 3 blocks higher than the low point.

it's built on top of a cave (I think they all are somehow?) so there are zombie noises all the time but I will get down there and put in torches and it will all be good. in the meantime there are no villagers trapped in a building because their house is embedded in the side of a hill and the door is 16 blocks off the ground. there are no villagers trapped in a building because their house is embedded in the side of a hill and the door is completely buried. there are no houses half full of dirt because they are embedded in the side of a hill. there are no houses embedded in the side of a hill at all. there are no houses where halfway from the front to the back the ground level shifts downwards by 2 blocks leaving an odd discontinuity in the architecture (still don't get how that happened, there should have been 2 cobblestone blocks put under the house in the lower area? but there was a trapped villager of course.)

I was able to zombie-proof the village without needing to run a fence up the side of a cliff. the fence encloses an area that is not entirely unlike a rectangle and simultaneously excludes the entrance to the cave. there is still plenty of absolutely open area within the fence for future building - all the trees are just outside the fence.

I foresee great things happening in this village... as soon as I figure out what they're going to be.

Comments

[nellerie]

omg?? I don't think I ever saw this... I'm su jealous. Although I hate villages anyway (when I first started playing, like my first hour, I was trapped in a village without a bed in the rain and just watched all villagers getting slaughtered by zombies. it was scarring)

[cathyw]

I like villages - kind of, especially if there's a farmer to trade with? but it's gotten to a point where when I stumble upon a village at random I just take off running and hope I get far enough away by sundown, and come back later with a bed. I've had the same thing you did happen, but also in a different world ended up with a village just close enough to my base that it got wiped out before I found it. :(

[lizbobjones]

"Hello village, just ignore me, we haven't talked but I'm building a 3 block high defensive wall around you first."

[cathyw]

yes, yes I am shoving you back inside the perimeter of the wall before I seal it up, why do you ask?

look. outside there are zombies. inside there are torches. choose life, little villager. choose life.

also please choose to give me emeralds in exchange for the huge quantity of blank paper I have in my backpack.