Creating a Minecraft Village, Phase 3: Transportation

As mentioned previously, mine as much iron ore as you can. This can take a while. Once you've got a good supply of rail, build a rail line to your new village. Make it as direct as possible, and keep some spare rail on hand for when monsters (creepers, nethermen, &c.) destroy sections of your track. Hopefully that won't happen too often.

Rail Line in the Desert. A rail line to transport villagers to a new village.

You may also want to take the opportunity to improve your village with additional buildings. The more doors there are in your new village, the greater the total potential population will be. It may also be worthwhile to add whatever other necessities you need (i.e., food, trees) if you're going to be working the area for a while, so you can avoid frequent trips back and forth to the old village.

Additional Village Improvements. In addition to the buildings, a small farm and tree farm have been added for convenience.

Personally, I like the have a wide variety of buildings in my villages, but it doesn't matter what you build as long as there are plenty of doors.

View of the New Village. Having a variety of buildings gives your village character.

Once you're satisfied with the way your new village is set up, it's time to move the villagers in.

Back: Creating a Minecraft Village, Phase 2

Xydexx Squeakypony

Creating a Minecraft Village, Phase 2: Stabilization & Preparation

In Phase 2 of building a new Minecraft village, we focus on stabilization of the existing village and preparing the site for the new village.

As I mentioned previously, it's good practice to make improvements to your existing village and stabilize your villager population before attempting to move them elsewhere. This includes improving the lighting and adding doors to your buildings. I like to regrade and make proper cobblestone roads to avoid the awkward Mario-Brothers jumping to get around the village.

Construct a mine nearby (but not too close, or your villagers will wander down into it and it will be difficult to get them out). Dig out as much coal and iron ore as you can find. You'll be needing it later.

Minecraft Village Improvements. Adding roads, lighting, and a breeding hut will help your NPC village thrive.

You may want to construct a breeding hut for your villagers. I built a 5x5 square cobblestone building with 2 doors on each side (for a total of 8 doors), which will hopefully turn the population around as I was down to 2 villagers at this point. 

Villager breeding depends on how many doors the village has. Minecraft determines what a valid door is by examining 5 blocks in front and in back of the door and calculating how many blocks are hit by sunlight during the day. If the number of "outside" blocks is different than "inside" blocks, it is a valid door. At least that's my understanding of it.

The villager population will increase to a maximum of 0.35 villagers per door. After 21 doors and 10 villagers, an iron golem may appear.

Once you've stabilized your village, it's time to prepare the new village site. I've staked out a 41x41 plot of land for my village (20 blocks in every direction from the center) and clearcut all the trees within that area. You can measure out coordinates by toggling stats with the F3 key. I built another breeding hut in the center of my new village. This is where my imported vilagers will go.

Preparing the New NPC Village Site. The new village will extend 20 blocks in each direction from town center.

Once you've built the breeding hut in the new village, stock up on torches and smelt the iron ore you've collected into iron bars—you'll need it for building rail and a minecart to export villagers to their new home.

Back: Creating a Minecraft Village, Phase 1
Next: Creating a Minecraft Village, Phase 3

Xydexx Squeakypony

Creating a Minecraft Village, Phase 1: Project Assessment

The technical details:
Seed name: xydexx-squeakypony (466125152) w/large biomes option

The first phase of building a Minecraft village is assessing what you have to work with. Fortunately, there's a village a mere cat's throw away from spawn at 16, -144. It's a desert village, so a bit hard to see on the Minutor screenshot below, but it has 5 small houses, 2 large houses, a church, a well, 6 farms, and a lamp post. There are an adequate number of villagers wandering about. The roads in town (such as they are) are a mess. I'm probably going to improve the infrastructure and stabilize the town before proceeding. I've claimed the large house at the north end of the village as my base of operations for the moment.

Minecraft Village Assessment. Look at what you have to work with first.

Next, determine where you want your new village to be. I'll be building my new village in the swampland just north of the desert at 25, -400.

Minecraft Proposed Village Site. Just north of the desert village.

As a rule of thumb, I build the center of my villages at least 100 blocks away from the center of an existing village, and with the following guideline: No buildings more than 20 blocks in all directions from the center of the village. This is because villagers will wander up to 32 blocks from the center of the village (or perhaps from the last door they entered?¹) and I don't want to risk my village depopulating. That gives me plenty of buffer space to work with.

More updates once I get my desert village improved. It's generally good practice to improve the infrastructure of your village (i.e., remove hazards like cactus so villagers don't walk into them, fence off any ravines, ensure the buildings are well-lit outside and inside, &c.).

Actually, before I do any of that, I'm going to need to build a bed. Which means:
* Find iron ore
* Build a furnace to smelt the iron ore
* Make shears
* Shear sheep for wool (fortunately there's a flock nearby)
* Build a bed

Next: Creating a Minecraft Village, Phase 2

Xydexx Squeakypony

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¹ On the server, I've noticed unusual villager behavior in that the village center seemed to "shift" over time, with villagers swarming toward one side of the village and leaving the other side completely deserted.

Minecraft

Repurposing this for my Minecraft ramblings, now that I've got my Minecraft tools like Minutor and Amidst loaded on this machine.

Coming soon: Tutorial on how to export villagers to create an NPC village in Minecraft.

Xydexx Squeakypony