YUNG's Better Witch Huts

Overview

YUNG's Better Witch Huts overhauls one of Minecraft's most underwhelming structures. The vanilla Witch Hut is little more than a wooden box on stilts with a Cauldron and a Witch inside, offering almost no reason to explore it. This mod replaces those huts entirely with three distinct structure variants, ranging from compact single-room huts to sprawling two-story dwellings, and introduces a completely new structure called the Witch Circle.

Every redesigned hut can contain loot Chests filled with brewing ingredients, potions, and rare items like Rabbit Feet and Phantom Membranes. Brewing Stands come pre-loaded with active recipes, giving you free potions just for exploring. The structures also feature proper Oak Log stilts that extend down to the terrain, decorative Potted Plants that vary between huts, and furniture like tables, chairs, and beds that make each hut feel like a lived-in home.

This mod requires YUNG's API as a dependency. Both structures generate exclusively in Swamp biomes (with Witch Huts also appearing in Mangrove Swamps), so head to the nearest wetland to start finding them.

Structure Variants

Small Witch Hut

The small hut is the most compact variant, similar in footprint to the vanilla Witch Hut but with improved design and decoration. It typically contains a single room with a Brewing Stand and possibly a Potted Plant, but may not always include a Chest. The Brewing Stand will be stocked with a random potion recipe. While the loot potential is lower than the larger variants, the small hut is still worth checking for its free potions.

Large Witch Hut

The large hut is a multi-room structure that feels like a proper dwelling. Expect to find Chests with brewing ingredients, a Brewing Stand with an active recipe, furniture like tables and chairs, and decorative elements like Potted Plants. These huts have a noticeably bigger interior and more interesting layouts than the small variant, making them the standard target when you spot one on the horizon.

Double Witch Hut

The double hut is the grand prize. This two-story structure features a ground floor and a second-level "penthouse" accessible via internal stairs. Both floors can contain Chests, Barrels, and Brewing Stands, effectively doubling your loot potential. You will find beds, gates, and more elaborate furnishing. When these generate over water, they always include exterior stairs leading up to the entrance. The double variant is worth thoroughly searching, as it is easy to miss a Barrel or Chest tucked in a corner.

Witch Circle

The Witch Circle is a completely new structure type, separate from the huts. It consists of a circular stone platform with a Cauldron and fire at its center, evoking the feel of a ritual gathering spot. The platform is built from a randomized mix of Stone Bricks, Mossy Stone Bricks, and Cracked Stone Bricks, with Cobblestone and Mossy Cobblestone accents. The brickwork extends downward to anchor the structure into the terrain. Witch Circles do not contain Chests, but they still spawn a Witch and a Cat. They generate only in standard Swamp biomes (not Mangrove Swamps) with wider spacing than huts, making them a less common but atmospheric find.

Loot Tables

Witch Hut Chests draw from two separate loot pools. The first pool rolls 3 to 5 times and awards brewing ingredients and useful materials. The second pool rolls 2 to 4 times and provides pre-brewed potions, both regular and splash variants. This means a single Chest can contain between 5 and 9 items total, and larger huts with multiple Chests can yield a significant haul.

Ingredient Pool (3–5 Rolls)

Each roll picks one item from the following weighted table: Sugar (1–3, weight 10), Gunpowder (2–5, weight 10), Carrots (3–6, weight 10), Redstone (4–7, weight 10), Spider Eyes (1–3, weight 10), Slime Balls (4–8, weight 10), Pufferfish (1, weight 5), Phantom Membranes (1, weight 5), and Rabbit Foot (1, weight 1). The Rabbit Foot is by far the rarest drop at weight 1, making it roughly a 1.5% chance per roll. Phantom Membranes and Pufferfish are uncommon at weight 5 each.

Potion Pool (2–4 Rolls)

Each roll has an equal chance of yielding any of these seven potions: Potion of Swiftness, Potion of Night Vision, Potion of Invisibility, Water Bottle (no effect), Splash Potion of Weakness, Splash Potion of Harming, or Splash Potion of Slowness. All potions have equal weight, so you have roughly a 14% chance of getting any specific one per roll. The Splash Potion of Weakness is particularly valuable for curing Zombie Villagers.

Brewing Stand Contents

Every Brewing Stand found in a Witch Hut comes pre-loaded with a random potion recipe. The ingredient slot contains 2 to 5 of the brewing material, and at least one output slot holds the finished potion. There is a 50% chance that a second output slot also contains a potion of the same type, giving you either one or two free potions per Brewing Stand.

The five possible Brewing Stand recipes are: Glistering Melon Slice producing a Potion of Healing, Sugar producing a Potion of Swiftness, Pufferfish producing a Potion of Water Breathing, Golden Carrot producing a Potion of Night Vision, and Phantom Membrane producing a Potion of Slow Falling. Each recipe has an equal 20% chance of being selected. You also get the leftover ingredients in the top slot, which is a nice bonus for your own brewing.

Decorative Details

The mod uses several structure processors to add variety to each hut. Potted Plants are randomized from a pool of seven options: Potted Red Mushroom (most common), Potted Brown Mushroom, Potted Cornflower, Potted Cactus, Potted Dead Bush, Potted Fern, and Potted Azalea. This means every hut feels slightly different even if it uses the same base template.

The support legs of each hut are built from Oak Logs that extend downward until they reach solid ground, so huts built over water or uneven terrain will have legs of varying heights. Some variants also use Oak Fence posts as thinner supports. Witch Circles use a similar system where their Stone Brick pillars extend down through air and water to anchor into the terrain below, creating an impressive look when built over deeper water.

Configuration

The mod has one configuration option, found in the betterwitchhuts-forge-1_21.toml config file. The "Disable Vanilla Witch Huts" setting (default: true) controls whether the original vanilla Witch Huts are prevented from generating. When set to true, the mod uses a mixin to intercept Swamp Hut generation and cancel it, ensuring only the improved huts appear. If you set this to false, both vanilla and modded Witch Huts will generate in your world, though this is not recommended as it can lead to an unusually high density of hut structures in Swamp biomes. Changing this setting requires a world restart to take effect.