Abandoned City Buildings Guide: Post-Apocalyptic Structures & Loot
Abandoned City Buildings adds eerie, post-apocalyptic structures to your Minecraft world. Ruined houses and mansions spawn naturally across Plains and Savanna biomes, each filled with Cobwebs and loot Chests containing food, materials, and salvage. It's a simple but atmospheric addition for survival explorers.
Overview
Abandoned City Buildings is a lightweight structure mod that scatters ruined, post-apocalyptic buildings across your Minecraft world. The mod adds four naturally generating structures to Plains and Savanna biomes: an Abandoned Brick House, a Red House, a Yellow House, and a Red Mansion. Each building is filled with Cobwebs and contains Chests with loot ranging from food scraps to Iron Ingots and Copper Ingots.
There are no new items, blocks, or crafting recipes to learn. The mod is purely about exploration and atmosphere. You'll stumble upon these crumbling structures while traveling through flat biomes, and the loot inside provides a small but welcome bonus for early-game survival players.
Getting Started
- 1
Head to Plains or Savanna Biomes
All four structures in this mod spawn exclusively in Plains, Sunflower Plains, Savanna, Savanna Plateau, and Windswept Savanna biomes. If you're in a Forest, Desert, or any other biome type, you won't find any of the abandoned buildings. Head to flat, open terrain to start your search.
- 2
Look for Ruined Buildings on the Horizon
The structures are surface buildings that sit on or partially embed into the terrain. The Abandoned Brick House is the most common, appearing roughly every 60 chunks with only 15 chunks of minimum separation. The larger Red Mansion is much rarer, with 140-chunk spacing. Keep your render distance up and scan the landscape as you travel.
- 3
Bring a Sword for the Cobwebs
Every structure is heavily filled with Cobwebs, which slow your movement and block access to rooms. A Sword or Shears will let you cut through them quickly. Without a cutting tool, navigating the interiors will be painfully slow.
- 4
Search for Loot Chests
Each structure contains Chests with one of three loot tables: food supplies (Rotten Flesh, Potatoes, Apples, Mushroom Stew), cobweb storage (Cobwebs, Iron Ingots, Leather, Copper Ingots), or trash (Cobwebs, Paper, Brown Mushrooms, String). Check every room and floor, as Chests can be hidden behind Cobweb clusters.
If you have cheats enabled, you can use /locate structure postapocalypse_structures:red_mansion (or redhouse, yellowhouse, abandoned_brick_house) to find the nearest structure of each type.
The Structures
The mod adds four distinct abandoned buildings, each with its own size, rarity, and visual style. All structures generate using Minecraft's Jigsaw system and adapt to the terrain they spawn on. Three of the four use "beard box" terrain adaptation, meaning the ground beneath them fills in to support the structure. The Yellow House uses "bury" adaptation, partially embedding itself into the landscape for a sunken, overgrown look.
Abandoned Brick House
The smallest and most common structure in the mod. With a spacing of only 60 chunks and a minimum separation of 15 chunks, you'll encounter these frequently while exploring Plains and Savanna biomes. It's a compact, ruined brick building, great for a quick stop and a chest check during travel.
Red House
A medium-sized residential structure with a distinctive red exterior. It has a spacing of 150 chunks and a minimum separation of 50 chunks, making it one of the rarer buildings. The Red House is larger than the Abandoned Brick House and typically contains more rooms to explore.
Yellow House
Another residential building, this one with a yellow color scheme. It spawns with 131-chunk spacing and 60-chunk minimum separation. Unlike the other structures, the Yellow House uses "bury" terrain adaptation, so it partially sinks into the ground. This gives it a uniquely weathered, half-buried appearance that looks especially atmospheric in Savanna Plateaus.
Red Mansion
The largest and most impressive structure in the mod. At 111KB of structure data (compared to 6KB for the Abandoned Brick House), this is a substantial multi-room building. It has a spacing of 140 chunks with a 70-chunk minimum separation. Finding a Red Mansion is the highlight of this mod, as it offers the most rooms to explore and the most Chests to loot.
Structure Comparison
| Abandoned Brick House | Yellow House | Red Mansion | Red House | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spacing (chunks) | 60 | 131 | 140 | 150 |
| Min Separation (chunks) | 15 | 60 | 70 | 50 |
| Terrain Adaptation | Beard Box | Bury | Beard Box | Beard Box |
| Relative Size | Small (6 KB) | Medium (32 KB) | Large (112 KB) | Medium (16 KB) |
| Rarity | Common | Uncommon | Rare | Rare |
Loot Tables
Chests inside the abandoned buildings draw from three different loot tables. Which table a given Chest uses depends on where it's placed within the structure. The loot is modest by design, fitting the theme of scavenging through ruins rather than finding treasure troves.
Food Supplies
These Chests roll 1 to 3 items. Rotten Flesh is the most common drop (weight 2) with 1 to 7 pieces per stack. You can also find Potatoes (0 to 5), Apples (0 to 3), and occasionally Mushroom Stew (0 to 1). While Rotten Flesh isn't ideal, the Potatoes and Apples are genuinely useful for early-game food.
Cobweb Storage
The most rewarding loot table with three separate rolls. The first roll can give Cobwebs (4 to 27, weight 6), Iron Ingots (0 to 4, weight 3), or Leather (0 to 7, weight 1). The second roll offers either Cobwebs (1 to 30, weight 2) or Copper Ingots (0 to 21, weight 1). The third roll always gives Cobwebs (4 to 23). Iron and Copper Ingots from these Chests can give you a meaningful head start in early survival.
Trash
The least valuable table, rolling 1 to 4 items. Cobwebs dominate (7 to 17, weight 7), with Paper (0 to 17, weight 2), Brown Mushrooms (1 to 3, weight 1), and String (2 to 18, weight 1) as secondary drops. The String is the most useful item here, handy for crafting Bows and Fishing Rods.
All four structures spawn only in these five biomes: Plains, Sunflower Plains, Savanna, Savanna Plateau, and Windswept Savanna. If your base is in a different biome, you'll need to travel to find these buildings.
Loot Table Summary
| Food Chests | Rotten Flesh, Potatoes, Apples, Mushroom Stew (1-3 rolls) |
| Cobweb Chests | Iron Ingots, Copper Ingots, Leather, Cobwebs (3 rolls) |
| Trash Chests | Cobwebs, Paper, Brown Mushrooms, String (1-4 rolls) |
| Best Find | Up to 21 Copper Ingots or 4 Iron Ingots per Chest |
This mod is built for Minecraft 1.20.1 on Fabric Loader (version 0.17.3 or higher). It will not work on other Minecraft versions or on Forge/NeoForge. Make sure your Fabric Loader and Fabric API are up to date before installing.
FAQ
Do the structures spawn in newly generated chunks only?
Yes. Like all Minecraft structures, these only generate in chunks that haven't been explored yet. If you've already explored your nearby Plains and Savanna biomes, you'll need to travel to unexplored territory to find them.
Why can't I find any structures?
Make sure you're searching in the correct biomes: Plains, Sunflower Plains, Savanna, Savanna Plateau, or Windswept Savanna. The structures don't spawn in any other biome. Also ensure you're exploring new chunks that were generated after installing the mod.
Does this mod add any new blocks or items?
No. The mod only adds structures built from vanilla Minecraft blocks. All loot in the Chests consists of vanilla items like Iron Ingots, Copper Ingots, Apples, and Rotten Flesh. There are no custom blocks, items, or recipes.
Is this mod compatible with other structure mods?
Generally yes. The mod uses Minecraft's standard Jigsaw structure system and random spread placement. Each structure has its own unique salt value, so placement won't conflict with other mods' structures. However, if another mod adds structures with very dense spawning in Plains or Savanna biomes, you may see occasional overlaps.
Can I adjust how often the structures spawn?
The mod doesn't include a configuration file. However, you can modify the worldgen JSON files inside the mod's JAR if you want to change spacing and separation values. The structure_set JSONs control how frequently each building appears. You would need to extract the JAR, edit the files, and repackage it, or use a datapack to override the values.