Some new villages spawn already occupied by an illager garrison you can liberate.
Free the captive villagers, beat the garrison, and get the spoils and Hero of the Village.
Versions: 1.20.1, 1.21.1, 1.21.8
Loader: Fabric, Forge (1.20.1); Fabric, NeoForge (1.21.1, 1.21.8)
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Requirements
- On Fabric you need Fabric API. On Forge or NeoForge you do not.
- Server-side: install it on the server (or in singleplayer). Players do not need it, and vanilla clients can join without it.
- Languages: English and German. German shows for players who have the mod installed (for example in singleplayer); vanilla clients without the mod see English.
What it does
- A share of villages generated in new chunks (existing villages are never changed) start occupied.
- Approaching an occupied village the first time bars the door of every house that holds a captive villager (other houses are untouched) and removes any iron golems the village summoned itself; golems you built stay put. The captive villagers do not trade, and illagers ignore them.
- MCA villagers, Easy Villagers and Guard Villagers work the same way here: a captive can't be traded, picked up or converted by those mods either.
- Occupying a village stores the contents of its still-unopened loot chests for the liberation reward; chests a player already emptied, player-placed containers and Lootr containers are left alone.
- A garrison of pillagers, vindicators and evokers, plus ravagers on Hard, guards the village, led by a captain carrying an ominous banner at the bell. Part of the garrison patrols the village edge.
- Spotting a player sounds a raid horn and the whole garrison attacks; losing about half the garrison brings one wave of reinforcements.
- A boss bar shows the occupation and the remaining defenders.
- Clearing the garrison liberates the village: fireworks at the bell, Hero of the Village for everyone who fought, the bars are removed, and the captain drops a chest with the village's original loot.
- Dying near the village heals the garrison back to full instead of undoing your progress.
Advancements
- Captain Down: kill the garrison's captain.
- Liberator: liberate a village.
Configuration
File: occupied_villages.json.
| Field | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
occupiedChance |
0.15 |
Chance a newly generated village starts occupied. |
garrisonMin / garrisonMax |
10 / 20 |
Size range of the garrison. |
activationRange |
96 |
Range at which an unvisited village is occupied. |
alarmCooldownSeconds |
30 |
Cooldown before the alarm horn can sound again. |
alarmRadius |
24 |
How far from the spotting defender the alarm reaches other garrison members. |
A config file with a syntax error is left untouched: the mod logs the problem and keeps the last working settings instead of overwriting the file with defaults.
Tags decide which mobs are used:
| Tag | Default | Extend it to |
|---|---|---|
occupied_villages:garrison |
pillager, vindicator, evoker | add more garrison mobs. |
occupied_villages:garrison_hard |
ravager | add mobs that only appear on Hard. |
occupied_villages:captives |
villager (optionally guardvillagers:guard and MCA villagers) |
make other mods' villager-like mobs captives too. |
Commands
| Command | Does |
|---|---|
/occupiedvillages occupy |
Occupies the village at your location right away. |
/occupiedvillages status |
Shows the occupation status of the village at your location. |
/occupiedvillages liberate |
Liberates the village at your location right away. |
All three commands need operator permission.
Good to know
- On 1.20.1 and 1.21.1 the reward is a chest instead of a bundle, because bundles are still experimental on those versions; on 1.21.8 the reward is a real bundle.
- If the village's loot chests were all empty, the liberation reward chest does not appear.
- Setting the difficulty to Peaceful pauses an active occupation instead of ending it.
Part of VanillaTales
Occupied Villages is part of VanillaTales, a collection of small, independent mods that add little stories to vanilla content. Each mod works on its own; install only the ones you want.
- Zombie Sieges: turns a vanilla zombie siege into a real event, with a ringing bell, a boss bar and two waves of zombies.
- Sherd Stories: gives every decorated pot a title and the story of where its sherds were found.
- Ghost Crews: gives every shipwreck a name and a crew of drowned that guard it until it is looted clean.
- Illager Scouts: a pillager scout watches your village and warns you two days before a patrol arrives.
- Bonded Pairs: binds two mobs from the same spawn group into a pair that avenges each other.
- Golem Patrol: gives iron golems a daily patrol, a night watch and an escort for villagers.
- Raid Aftermath: villagers repair the damage a raid or an explosion left in the village.
- Wayfarer's Landmarks: shows a title and helpful icons when you enter a structure.
More mods by LithiumPlus
- DataDrivenVillagers: create and change villager professions from JSON files or an in-game editor.
- VillagersPlus: new villager types, trades and beautiful workstations. Forge version: VillagersPlus (Forge).
- VillagerTradingPlus: add, replace or delete the trades of any villager, change the currency and gate trades behind conditions, all from a datapack.
- Nyctophobia: dark, foggy and unsettling biomes for the Overworld. Forge version: Nyctophobia (Forge).
- The Graveyard (Fabric) and The Graveyard (Forge/NeoForge): structures, mobs, bosses and blocks with a graveyard theme.



