Villages&Pillages

Overview

Villages & Pillages introduces a new structure type to Minecraft: the Witch Village. These sinister settlements generate naturally in Swamp and Mangrove Swamp biomes, offering a dark twist on the familiar village concept. Instead of friendly Villagers going about their business, you'll find Witches patrolling mossy roads, caged Villagers trapped in wooden prisons, and houses stocked with brewing ingredients and potions.

The mod is purely a world generation addition. It doesn't add new items, blocks, or mobs. Instead, it creates a carefully designed structure using vanilla blocks and entities, giving Swamp biomes a much-needed point of interest. Each Witch Village features a central gathering area, a network of roads and crossroads, multiple houses in varying sizes, dead trees, and Villager cages scattered throughout. You can browse any items associated with this mod using the tabs on this page.

Prerequisites

Villages & Pillages requires YUNG's API as a dependency. Make sure you have YUNG's API for your game version (1.20+, Forge 47.1.3+) installed before adding this mod. Without it, the mod will not load and Witch Villages won't generate.

Witch Village Structure

Each Witch Village is built using YUNG's API jigsaw system, which means no two villages are exactly alike. The structure generates at Y level 68 and extends up to 128 blocks in total radius. The village always starts with a central piece, then branches outward through a network of roads and crossroads, with houses placed along the way.

Village Center

The center of every Witch Village serves as the main gathering point. If you have the Waystones mod installed, the village center automatically includes a Waystone, allowing you to fast-travel to and from Witch Villages. This is one of the mod's built-in compatibility features and makes revisiting these remote Swamp structures much easier.

Roads and Crossroads

The road system uses Mossy Cobblestone and Mossy Cobblestone Walls, giving the village an overgrown, abandoned feel. Roads come in short, medium, and long variants, connecting to various types of crossroads: simple one-way junctions, two-way intersections, three-way forks, and full four-way crossings. Some crossroads generate in a damaged or broken state, with crumbling paths and missing sections that reinforce the eerie atmosphere.

Houses

There are five house variants: three small and two medium designs. A village can generate up to four houses placed at different depth stages along the road network, ensuring that each village has a reasonable number of buildings to explore. Houses are constructed from Oak Wood, Spruce materials, Cobblestone (mostly replaced with Mossy Cobblestone through processing), and feature Cobwebs, lit Black Candles, and Vines growing across their surfaces. The mod also reduces natural tree generation within the village boundaries by 50%, keeping the structures clear and visible.

Decorations and Atmosphere

Witch Villages go beyond simple building placement to create a genuinely unsettling environment. Dead trees in three different styles dot the landscape around the village, their bare branches adding to the desolate mood. Up to 6 Villager cages can appear along the roads, each containing a trapped Villager waiting to be rescued. The cages use two distinct designs and are spaced apart so they don't cluster together.

Inside the houses, the details are equally thoughtful. Flower Pots are randomly filled with Dead Bushes, Wither Roses, Red Mushrooms, Brown Mushrooms, or Ferns. Brewing Stands come pre-stocked with ingredients and partially brewed Potions. Lit Black Candles appear in clusters of 3 or 4 on shelves and tables. Some doors are left open through a dedicated processor, suggesting the Witches come and go freely. The 75% chance for Cobblestone to become Mossy Cobblestone means most of the stonework looks ancient and overgrown.

Mobs

The Witch Village uses vanilla mob spawning overrides to populate the structure with its inhabitants. No new mobs are introduced; instead, the mod configures existing mobs to spawn within the village boundaries.

Witches

Between 4 and 8 Witches spawn within each Witch Village's structure pieces. These are standard vanilla Witches with 26 HP that throw harmful Splash Potions and drink beneficial ones to heal or protect themselves. They're classified as monster spawns, meaning they follow normal hostile mob spawning rules and will continue to respawn in the area as long as the light level permits. Clearing a village permanently requires lighting up the roads and interiors.

Cats

Each village also spawns 2 to 4 Cats as creature spawns. These are standard tame-able Cats that can be befriended with Raw Cod or Raw Salmon, just like in regular villages. The presence of Cats adds a touch of life to the otherwise hostile settlement.

Caged Villagers

Villagers are placed in cages as part of the structure generation, separate from the mob spawning system. They are pre-placed entities, not spawned through the spawn override system, which means each one is unique and won't respawn once freed. Breaking the cage blocks releases them, and they can then be interacted with normally for trading.

Loot and Rewards

Witch Villages contain three distinct loot tables spread across different container types. The loot is heavily themed around potion brewing, making these villages one of the best early sources of brewing materials in the game.

Attic Chests

Found in the upper levels of houses, attic Chests contain 2-4 rolls from a pool of Emeralds (1), Cobwebs (2-4), and String (2-4), plus 3-5 rolls from Paintings (1), Flower Pots (1), Books (1), Leather (1-2, double weight), and Glass Bottles (2-4). These are the most "general purpose" containers, offering materials useful for trading, Enchanting, and crafting.

Barrels

Barrels are the primary brewing supply containers. They provide 3-5 rolls from Redstone (3-6), Glowstone Dust (3-6), Spider Eyes (3-6), Sugar (3-6), Brown Mushrooms (3-6), Red Mushrooms (3-6), Fermented Spider Eyes (3-6), Rabbit Feet (1), and Pufferfish (1). On top of that, you get 2-4 rolls of pre-made potions: Glass Bottles (2-5) and Splash Potions of Slowness, Poison, Weakness, or Harming. A single barrel can supply enough ingredients to start serious potion brewing.

Personal Chests

Ground-floor personal Chests offer 3-5 rolls of Sticks (1-3), Glass Bottles (2-5), Glowstone Dust (3-6), Redstone (3-6), Spider Eyes (3-6), Gunpowder (3-6), and Sugar (3-6). They also contain 2-4 rolls of beneficial Potions: Healing, Regeneration, Fire Resistance, Swiftness, and Water Breathing. These drinkable Potions are immediately useful, making personal Chests the most valuable containers for players who need a quick survival boost.

Brewing Stands

One of the most interesting details in Witch Village houses is the pre-loaded Brewing Stands. Each Brewing Stand in the village is randomly configured with one of eight possible recipes when the structure generates. The ingredient slot contains 2-4 units of the brewing ingredient, and the output slots contain partially completed Potions.

The possible Brewing Stand recipes are: Glistering Melon Slice for Healing, Magma Cream for Fire Resistance, Sugar for Swiftness, Pufferfish for Water Breathing, Fermented Spider Eye for Slowness, Spider Eye for Poison, Fermented Spider Eye for Weakness, and Fermented Spider Eye for Harming. The first output slot always has a Potion, the second slot has a 75% chance of containing one, and the third slot has a 50% chance. This means you can collect partially brewed Potions and brewing ingredients just by picking up the Brewing Stands.

Compatibility

Villages & Pillages is designed to work with all world generation mods. Because it uses YUNG's API for structure placement and jigsaw assembly, it integrates cleanly with other mods that modify terrain or add biomes. Any mod that adds biomes tagged as swamp (using either the Forge tag #forge:is_swamp or the common tag #c:swamp) will also be eligible for Witch Village generation.

The Waystones mod receives special treatment: when detected, the village center will include a Waystone block, making it easy to set up fast travel to discovered Witch Villages. This is handled entirely through the structure data files with no additional configuration needed.