Villager Workers

Hireable workers to automate your village!

Workers

Workers is a Minecraft mod that turns idle NPCs into a productive workforce for your base, town, or faction. It is built directly on top of the Recruits mod and is fully compatible with every Recruits feature — grouping, naming, ownership transfer, factions, morale, sieges, payment and upkeep all carry over and apply to workers as well.

Unlike the previous generation of the mod, a Worker is now only the labour. What the work actually is gets defined by a Work Area that you place in the world. Assign a worker the matching job, place the matching Work Area, and the worker walks over and does the job.

Requires: Recruits. Workers are a content/feature extension of Recruits and will not run without it.

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Table of Contents

1. Core Concept
2. Quick Start
3. Work Areas
   • Storage Area
   • Crop Farm
   • Lumber Area
   • Fishing Area
   • Animal Farm
   • Mining Area
   • Building Area
   • Kitchen
   • Market
   • Worker Home
4. Worker Professions
5. Couriers
6. Merchants & Trading
7. The Building System
8. Core Mechanics
   • Needed Items
   • Upkeep & Provisioning
   • Ownership & Faction Access
   • Morale
   • Worker Homes & Sleep
   • Sieges
9. Configuration
10. Compatibility
11. FAQ

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Core Concept

A Worker on its own does nothing useful — it is workforce waiting for an assignment. The loop is always the same:

1. Hire/obtain a worker of the profession you need (workers are Recruits, so everything you know about hiring and commanding Recruits applies).
2. Place a Work Area of the matching type and configure it in its GUI.
3. The worker walks to the nearest suitable Work Area it has access to and starts working.
4. Workers pull the materials they need from nearby Storage Areas and drop their output back into storage.

Because workers are Recruits under the hood, they obey the same ownership, faction, morale, payment and upkeep rules — see Core Mechanics.

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Quick Start

1. Place a Storage Area and put a few chests inside its bounds. This is where workers stash and fetch items.
2. Place the Work Area for the job you want (e.g. a Crop Farm) and configure it.
3. Assign a worker of the matching profession and let it roam near the area.
4. Optionally give the worker a Home (bed + chest) to keep its morale and health up.

That's it — the worker will find the nearest area it is allowed to use and begin.

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Work Areas

Work Areas are placeable entities that mark where a job happens and hold its settings. Most areas scan for nearby chests/containers automatically and respect the access rules described under Ownership & Faction Access.

Storage Area

The foundation of any workforce. Define a storage first — nearby workers will deposit their output and fetch their needed materials here.

• Put chests (and other containers) inside the area's bounds; the area aggregates them.
• You can restrict which worker types may access a given storage, letting you build dedicated storages (e.g. a kitchen-only storage, a building-materials storage, etc.).
• Storages are also used by the Needed Items and Upkeep systems.

Crop Farm

Defines where crops are planted and harvested. The area is 9×9.

• In the UI you choose which seeds the workers should use.
• Place multiple Crop Farms to scale up production.
• A Farmer automatically walks to the nearest free tile and works it: tilling, planting, and harvesting.
• Farmers also use bone meal (if they have any) to speed up growth after planting; if they run out, bone meal is fetched opportunistically without blocking work.

Lumber Area

The tree-farming counterpart, worked by Lumberjacks. They plant and fell trees within the area. Configurable behaviour:

• Strip logs before chopping.
• Replant saplings after felling.
• Shear leaves with shears before chopping.
• Bone meal is applied to freshly planted saplings (when available) to speed regrowth.
• Dynamic Trees support: if the Dynamic Trees mod is loaded, Lumberjacks can fell, strip and plant dynamic trees by default.

Fishing Area

Used by Fishermen to define where they cast their lines.

• Deeper water makes them catch fish faster.
• Fishermen are far more skilled than the player, so their rods break much more slowly.

Animal Farm

A pen where selected animals are bred and managed.

• Set the maximum number of animals allowed in the pen. Surplus animals beyond the limit are slaughtered.
• Many species are supported, including rabbits, camels, horses, wolves/dogs, and goats.
• Species-specific options: shearing sheep, collecting eggs from chickens, milking cows, and more.
• Animal Farmers breed and grow animals much faster than a player can.

Mining Area

Defines a volume for Miners to excavate. Adjustable height, width and depth.

• Optionally fill the floor where holes exist or appear, to stop Miners from falling.
• Water and lava sources are plugged automatically.
• Ores exposed in the walls are mined.
• When it gets too dark, Miners place torches.
• Miners fetch the right tools (pickaxe, and a shovel for shovel-mineable blocks) from storage when needed.

Building Area

The most advanced feature in the mod, worked by the Builder.

• Build pre-saved or self-scanned structures. The Builder gathers the required blocks from nearby Storage Areas and constructs the building.
• You can scan your own structures and save them as NBT files. Maximum size is 32×32×32.
• Saved structures can include other Work Areas in the NBT, so a building can come pre-fitted with farms, storages, etc.
• A bundle of default vanilla buildings (some modified) ships as presets.
• Building availability is governed by the BuildMode setting.

Kitchen

The work area for the Chef (Cook). A Kitchen needs at least 1 Furnace and 1 Chest.

• Chefs produce food, smelting/cooking using the furnaces and the kitchen's containers.
• Cooked food can be given to villagers to boost breeding (see below).
• If configured in the kitchen, the Chef will hand out items that supply the saturation value villagers need.

Villager breeding change: breeding is now based on the nutrition (saturation) value of food items rather than only vanilla bread/carrots/etc. A villager combines the saturation of its food items until it reaches the threshold (default 15) and then breeds. This can be turned off in the config (VillagerBreedMixinEnabled), and the threshold is configurable (VillagerBreedSaturationThreshold).

Market

The work area for the Merchant. A Market needs chests. A nearby Merchant will move in, after which it can trade long-term using the market's stock and store its earnings there. See Merchants & Trading.

Worker Home

Not a job, but essential for upkeep of morale and health — see Worker Homes & Sleep.

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Worker Professions

Every profession is a Recruit specialised for one Work Area type.

Profession	Work Area	What it does
Farmer	Crop Farm	Tills, plants and harvests crops; uses bone meal
Lumberjack	Lumber Area	Plants, strips and fells trees (incl. dynamic trees); shears leaves
Fisherman	Fishing Area	Fishes from the defined water; durable rods
Animal Farmer	Animal Farm	Breeds, grows, shears, milks, collects eggs, culls surplus
Miner	Mining Area	Excavates a volume; plugs liquids, fills floors, places torches
Builder	Building Area	Constructs saved/scanned structures from stored blocks
Chef (Cook)	Kitchen	Cooks food; supports villager breeding
Merchant	Market	Trades with players and villagers
Courier	(Recruits route)	Moves items between waypoints (see below)

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Couriers

(New in this version.) Couriers deliver items to and from waypoints defined in a Recruits route. A dedicated GUI lets you edit the route with actions — each waypoint can hold up to 8 actions, executed in order.

Each action is a task plus a nearby location (and, where relevant, an item + amount). At a waypoint the courier searches roughly 8 blocks around the waypoint for a matching location.

Example — Take · Chest · 3× Apple: at that waypoint the courier looks for a nearby chest holding apples and takes 3 out.

Tasks

Task	Behaviour
Take	Take up to the defined amount of the selected item from the location
Put	Put up to the defined amount of the selected item from the courier's inventory into the location
Take Any	Take all of the selected item type from the location
Put Any	Put all of the selected item the courier carries into the location
Take All	Take everything from the location until the courier's inventory is full
Put All	Empty the courier's entire inventory into the location
Put Fill	Top the location/target up to the defined amount of the selected item (measured against what the target already holds)
Take Fill	Top the courier's own inventory up to the defined amount of the selected item (measured against what the courier already carries)
Wait	Wait at the waypoint for a defined number of seconds

Put Fill vs. Take Fill — the difference is what gets measured. Put Fill fills the target up to the amount; Take Fill fills the courier up to the amount. If the goal is already met, the action is skipped.

Locations

Location	Notes
Chest	Any nearby chests/containers at the waypoint
Storage	A nearby Storage Area (couriers count as a worker type with storage access)
Market	A nearby Market
Kitchen	A nearby Kitchen

Extras

• Vehicle inventory option: when mounted on a mule/donkey (and, in future, siege-weapon horse carts), the courier can be told to use only the vehicle's inventory.
• Chunk loading: Couriers load chunks along their route, so deliveries keep running even where no player is present.
• In-GUI tooltips: hovering an action or location in the dropdowns shows a short description of what it does — even while the dropdown is open.

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Merchants & Trading

Merchants can trade with both players and villagers. The owner creates the trades in the Merchant's GUI.

• A player trade has a currency item and a trade item.
• A villager trade has only a trade item — the currency is dictated by the villager.
• Trades can be limited, disabled, or deleted.

Long-term trading needs a Market. Place a Market (with chests); a nearby Merchant moves in. The Market holds the Merchant's stock and stores earnings.

Selling to Villagers (new)

You can define trades the Merchant will offer to nearby villagers. These trades are only visible to the owner and must be flagged as "Villager Trade." With a Market placed and the Merchant moved in, when a nearby villager has a matching want, the Merchant invites it over to trade.

Example: the Merchant sells clay. A nearby Mason buys 10× Clay → 1 Emerald. If the Merchant has 10× clay in the Market's containers, it invites the Mason; the villager walks over and trades until the stock runs out or the villager stops buying. The emeralds end up in the Market.

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The Building System

Saving structures

Scan your own builds and save them as NBT files (max 32×32×32). Other Work Areas placed inside the scanned region are saved into the NBT too.

BuildMode (new)

For servers it's often important to control which buildings players may place. Three modes:

Mode	Who can build what
Free	Each player uses their own set of buildings
Preset	Players can only use buildings available on the server (synced when selected in the GUI)
Faction-Preset	Like Preset, but filtered by a faction-id folder — each faction can only build what is in its own folder

Set the mode with the BuildMode config option. A set of default buildings (vanilla structures, some modified) is included as presets.

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Core Mechanics

Needed Items

While working, a worker tracks every item it needs. Each need is flagged as blocking or non-blocking:

• Blocking (most cases): the worker pauses and goes to fetch the missing item from the nearest Storage Area. If it isn't there, it checks the next storage, and the next — until all reachable storages have been searched.
• Non-blocking (e.g. bone meal): the worker grabs it opportunistically but never stops working for it.

If a blocking item can't be found anywhere, the owner gets a message.

Upkeep & Provisioning

Because workers are Recruits, they share the Recruits upkeep system (food, equipment/tools, payment). Workers integrate this with their storage system:

• A Storage Area can be assigned as a recruit's/worker's upkeep source.
• When upkeep is due, the worker walks the storage and only visits chests that actually contain something relevant — food, the payment currency, equippable gear (weapons/armor/tools), or ammunition for ranged units. Chests with nothing useful are skipped.
• It opens each relevant chest, takes what it needs, and moves on — the same items the Recruits upkeep system normally handles, gathered across multiple chests.

This lets a whole workforce feed and re-equip itself from a central storage instead of from a single container.

Ownership & Faction Access

All Recruits ownership features apply: create/name/edit groups, hand workers to other players, hand Work Areas to other players, and set faction access per Work Area.

Faction Access on Work Areas (new) controls whether faction workers (workers that don't belong to you) and faction players may interact with a given area. With access off, faction players and faction workers cannot use that storage, market, etc.

Morale

As in Recruits, morale matters. It does not slow workers down directly under normal conditions, but:

• Low-morale workers work less efficiently and take longer on tasks.
• Inside claims, low morale can trigger unwanted resignation.
• See Sieges for how morale decides a worker's behaviour under attack.

Keeping workers homed (and paid/fed) keeps morale healthy.

Worker Homes & Sleep

Workers need a home to restore health and morale by sleeping; without one, morale drifts down and efficiency suffers.

A worker home requires, at minimum, a bed and a chest, in an enclosed space (roughly 3×3, walled with a roof and a door). Once valid, a worker can move in. A worker without a home loses morale over time.

Sieges

When a siege starts (or the village bell is rung), workers head to their assigned homes and take cover. They stay until the siege is repelled or the player orders them to follow/wander. If a siege succeeds, Work Areas immediately shift ownership to the claim's new owner.

Worker behaviour under siege is morale-dependent:

• High/normal morale: the worker flees the claim and holds position until the player picks it up — fighting back only if attacked.
• Low morale (< 20): the worker disbands and switches to the claim's faction.

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Configuration

Server-side options (names as they appear in the config file):

Option	Purpose
FarmerCost, LumberjackCost, MinerCost, BuilderCost, MerchantCost, CourierCost, CookCost	Hire cost per profession
VillagerBreedMixinEnabled	Toggle the saturation-based villager breeding change (default on)
VillagerBreedSaturationThreshold	Total saturation a villager must gather to breed (default 15)
ShouldWorkAreaOnlyBeInFactionClaim	Restrict Work-Area placement to faction claims
ShouldOnlyPlacingBuildingsBePossible	Limit building to placement only
AnimalPenMaxAnimals	Default/maximum animals per Animal Farm
BuildMode	Free, Preset, or Faction-Preset (see BuildMode)
WorkersReplaceAllay	Whether workers replace Allay-based behaviour
MinerPickup, MinerIgnore	Miner pickup behaviour / ignored blocks
AnimalFarmerPickup, FarmerPickup, LumberjackPickup, FishermanPickup	Per-profession pickup behaviour

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Compatibility

• Recruits — required. Workers inherit and remain compatible with all Recruits features (groups, ownership, factions, morale, sieges, payment, upkeep).
• Dynamic Trees — optional. When present, Lumberjacks handle dynamic trees (fell, strip, plant) automatically.

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FAQ

My worker isn't doing anything. Check that (1) a matching Work Area is placed and within range, (2) the worker has access to it (ownership/faction settings), and (3) there is a Storage Area nearby with the materials it needs.

My worker keeps stopping and walking off. It is probably fetching a Needed Item from storage. If it can't find the item, you'll get an owner message — restock the storage.

Why is my worker slow? Low morale. Give it a home, keep it fed/paid, and morale will recover.

Can workers feed/re-equip themselves? Yes — assign a Storage Area as their upkeep source and they will restock food, tools and payment from the relevant chests.

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Coming Soon

• Smith Update
• Leveling Update

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Installation

1. Install Minecraft Forge
2. Install Villager Recruits Mod
3. Drop the mod into your mods/ folder
4. Launch the game and hire your first worker!

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Feedback & Issues

Join the community on Discord for support, bug reports, and suggestions.

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Hire your villagers. Automate your village. Dominate your economy.