Villager Retaliation!

Villager Retaliation! is a Vanilla+ NeoForge mod that makes villagers and wandering traders less helpless without turning villages into warzones.

Adult villagers can defend themselves, react to crimes they witness, use profession-based combat roles, and remember how each player treats them through a personal reputation system.

• Attack a villager and that villager can fight back
• Kill a villager in public and nearby villagers may rally
• Player-placed lava and fire can count as aggression for a short attribution window
• Build trust through trade and positive village defense
• Lose trust through attacks, witnessed crimes, and village harm
• Make villagers suspicious, hostile, despised, or feared if you push things too far
• Keep babies defenseless and nitwits cowardly as intended

Main Features

Retaliation

Villagers are neutral instead of purely passive.

By default, hitting a villager only angers that villager. Killing an adult villager can anger nearby adult villagers if they can witness it. Anger expires after a configurable duration, and creative/spectator players can be ignored.

Villagers and wandering traders can also block trading while hostile. Hostile villagers can be pacified with emeralds, unless your reputation has fallen too low.

Reputation

Reputation is tracked per villager and per player.

That means one villager can trust you while another despises you. Reputation can affect trade prices, pacification, anger duration, fleeing, despised attack-on-sight behavior, cleric support, and advancement progression.

Default tiers:

Tier	Default threshold
Royalty	750
Revered	400
Respected	250
Trusted	75
Neutral	0
Suspicious	-75
Hostile	-100
Despised	-250
Feared	-750

Reputation changes are configurable. By default, direct villager hits are punished more than witnessed hits, villager kills are punished heavily, and player-attributed lava/fire damage counts for half the normal reputation penalty.

Profession Combat

Villagers fight in ways that match their profession.

Profession	Behavior
Weaponsmith	Uses stronger melee behavior with swords
Armorer	Can fight defensively, gain resistance, and use shields in hard mode
Toolsmith	Uses tool-based melee
Mason	Uses mining-tool style melee
Butcher	Uses axe-based melee
Fletcher	Uses bows or crossbows
Farmer	Can defend themselves and heal with bread
Cleric	Uses potions for defense, attacks, and ally support
Librarian	Can fight with book-themed
Nitwit	Usually flees unless holding a usable weapon

Fletchers and other villagers holding ranged weapons can use bows, crossbows, and tridents. Crossbows use charge/hold/fire states, and tridents use a thrown attack.

Cleric Support

Clerics have the most advanced combat role.

They can drink defensive potions, throw harmful or slowing splash potions, avoid friendly splash damage where possible, heal injured villagers and wandering traders, and support trusted-or-better players.

Passive cleric healing has configurable range, health threshold, and line-of-sight rules.

Hazard Attribution

Player-placed hazards can count as aggression.

If a player places lava, uses flint and steel, or uses a fire charge, nearby lava/fire damage can be attributed to that player for a short window. This allows "accidental" environmental attacks to still matter for retaliation, reputation, and advancements.

The default attribution window is 2 real-time minutes. Natural lava, old hazards, worldgen hazards, and untracked hazards are not meant to count.

Reputation Behavior

Higher trust can reduce anger duration, improve trade pricing, and unlock helpful cleric support.

Lower trust can make villagers more dangerous or less willing to deal with you:

• Suspicious villagers apply negative trade pressure
• Hostile villagers can harass you with eggs or poisonous potatoes
• Despised villagers can attack on sight when enabled
• Feared villagers visibly react when you get close
• Despised or feared villagers may refuse emerald pacification
• Babies, nitwits, and non-combat villagers can flee from hated players

Loot

Villager Retaliation! adds configurable drops for villagers and wandering traders.

• Villagers can drop emeralds and bread
• Adult villagers can roll profession-themed loot
• Combat weapons can drop at configurable rates
• Baby villager loot is disabled by default
• Wandering traders can drop emeralds, invisibility potions, and safe copies of current trade results

Profession loot generally requires player kill credit by default.

Advancements

The mod includes a full reputation advancement tab.

All Advancements

Advancement	Type	Criteria	Hidden
Village Relations	Task (Tab Root)	Automatically granted when any Villager Retaliation advancement is awarded.	No
Commonfolk	Task	Interact with any villager, or enter a village.	No
I'm Sorry!	Task	Pacify a hostile villager with emeralds.	No
A Familiar Face	Task	Reach Trusted reputation with any villager.	No
Respect Is Earned	Task	Reach Respected reputation with any villager.	No
Friend of the Village	Goal	Reach Trusted with 5 villagers in one village area.	No
Local Legend	Challenge	Reach Revered reputation with any villager.	No
Crowned by the Village	Challenge	Reach Royalty reputation with any villager.	No
Second Chance	Goal	Cure a zombie villager that retains known reputation data for you.	No
The Village Remembers	Goal	Move from Suspicious or lower back to Neutral or higher.	No
Bad First Impression	Task	Reach Suspicious reputation with any villager.	No
Hands Off	Task	Damage a villager.	No
The Village Has Eyes	Goal	Harm or kill a villager while at least 3 adult villagers can witness it.	No
Marked	Challenge	Reach Feared reputation with any villager.	No
Village Enemy	Challenge	Have 5 or more villagers targeting you at the same time.	No
Mob Justice	Challenge	Have 8 or more villagers targeting you at the same time.	No
Regular Customer	Goal	Complete 10 trades with the same villager.	No
Community Support	Goal	Trade with 5 different villagers in one village area.	No
Price of Trust	Goal	Reach a positive trust tier with a villager after trading with them.	No
Refused Service	Task	Attempt to trade with a villager that blocks interaction due to low reputation.	No
Hero, Not Menace	Goal	While distrusted by nearby villagers, gain positive reputation by defending against hostiles.	No
An Unwise Decision	Goal	Damage an iron golem associated with a village.	No
Peace Offering	Challenge	After being Hostile or worse with a villager, return to Neutral or higher with that villager.	Yes
Accidentally, Of Course	Challenge	A villager dies from a player-attributed environmental hazard without direct player damage.	Yes

Commands

Requires operator.

/villagerretaliation setNearbyReputation <integer>

This sets nearby villagers' and wandering traders' reputation toward the executing player. It is mainly useful for testing tiers, trade pricing, despised behavior, feared behavior, pacification, and the debug overlay.

Example:

/villagerretaliation setNearbyReputation -150

Configuration

Main config file:

• Singleplayer/client: config/villagerretaliation-common.toml
• Dedicated server: <server root>/config/villagerretaliation-common.toml

Config categories include:

• general - master feature toggles
• balance - loot and drop rates
• retaliation - anger rules, aggro radius, duration, line-of-sight witnesses
• reputation - penalties, gains, thresholds, gossip, trade pricing
• combat - profession combat toggles, armorer shields, clerics, farmers
• debugOverlay - optional reputation display for testing
• wanderer - wandering trader drop behavior

Debug Overlay

There is an optional client-side debug overlay for testing reputation.

When enabled, it can show the villager's reputation tier and/or exact reputation value above their head. It can be limited by distance, sneaking, or advanced tooltips.

This is disabled by default and is mainly intended for testing and balancing.

Compatibility

Villager Retaliation! is designed to work with vanilla villager systems rather than replacing villager entities.

• Built for NeoForge 1.21.1
• Uses vanilla-style entity events and AI memory adjustments
• Uses vanilla gossip integration where enabled
• Uses NeoForge item tags for weapon detection where possible
• Does not replace the villager entity type

Compatibility may vary with mods that heavily replace villager AI, trading, combat, or entity classes.

Version and Loaders

• NeoForge 1.21.1 - active development
• Forge - not planned anytime soon, don't ask please :)
• Fabric - possible future port, not anytime soon
• Older Minecraft versions - not planned

Modpacks

You may use this mod in modpacks, videos, servers, and other projects. A link back to the Modrinth page is appreciated.

Credits

Created by me :D

License

This project is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0.

Feel free to use this mod in modpacks, videos, etc. Just provide a link back to this page if possible :)

Looking to port the mod to your favourite loader/version outside of my scope? Feel free to, and let me know so I can add a sub-section to direct users to it!

For any general queries/unlisted questions, DM me on Twitter (@prodbyjvn) / Discord (ijvn).