Amy Potts
- Mamapotts
- JIRAUSER513964
- America/Chicago
- Yes
- No
MCPE-86447![[MCPE Mod] Auldrick](../../../data/avatars/users/10122.svg){kind=small}
Amy Potts: The bug tracker is not a community support site and the things you're describing are probably not bugs, though I understand why they seem like bugs to you (and lots of other people). If you haven't already, I would recommend asking for help on sites such as the Minecraft Discord, the MCPE Subreddit, or the Minecraft Forums.
However, I can give you a little bit of insight into why the strange things you're seeing are happening.
Village mechanics are really pretty complicated, and outside of the developers I don't know of anybody who fully understands them, but community members have deduced quite a bit by experimentation. For instance, 64x64 is the smallest a village can be, but it can be larger. (At one time, it could extend thousands of blocks, but I think that was fixed.)
That your villagers won't claim the workstations you're providing means that the workstations are not in their village. Most likely, that's because you're trying to create a village and you brought these villagers from another village or a village breeder. However, in that situation they continue to dwell in their original home village; it's as if they're just visiting this one. And of course, they're not going to claim a workstation in somebody else's village since they probably already have one in their home village. But even if they don't, they wouldn't claim a workstation that's outside their village (nobody likes a long commute to work).
The same theory explains why they keep breeding. There must be an extra bed in their home village, and they're breeding to fill it. But when the baby is born, it becomes a dweller in that same home village, and it isn't close enough to claim the empty bed. After a moment, the adults notice the bed is still unclaimed, so they breed another baby.
Bells define a gathering place. Once every day, at a certain time, villagers who have a profession take a break to socialize. They leave their workstation and wander around trying to find a gathering place (bell). When they encounter another villager, the two of them stop and chat for a bit before moving on, except that I think if the encounter is within range of a bell they stay put there and don't wander far away. When their break is over, they go back to their workstation. (They also restock their trades at this time, as well as when they first arrive in the morning.) Sometimes villagers whose workstations are near the edges of a village don't have enough time to find a gathering place before their break ends. The game generates multiple bells sometimes to improve their chances of being near one. It's not a big problem if they can't find a bell, but having the bells seems to help keep them from wandering too far, which makes it harder for them to find their workstation again after the break. At least that's the way it looks to me.
You might want to look for other YouTube videos that explain village mechanics. Ignore any that were recorded before release 1.11, because a lot of changes to the mechanics occurred before then as a result of bug fixes and design changes after the 1.9 release.
It's certainly understandable that you find the village mechanics hard to understand, because they're quite complicated. But if you ask for help from the community, you'll find you pick up lots of little tidbits like what I've mentioned here, and before long you'll begin to understand the villagers well enough to intuitively know why they're doing something that seems strange. You're actually lucky that you're a noob now, not a year ago when their behavior was buggy and changing with every release.
![[Mod] GoldenHelmet](../../../data/avatars/users/18951.svg){kind=small}
@Amy Potts & others: to add just a bit to what [MCPE Mod] Auldrick has said, we do have open tickets on out-of-control breeding (MCPE-47212) and new/younger villagers stealing workstations from established villagers (MCPE-43071). Both of these phenomena occur when you spend significant amounts of time with part of a village within your simulation distance and part of it outside your simulation distance. For example if you were building something or sitting afk a short distance from the village. Or if it's a large village with beds and workstations > 64 blocks apart and you're building down on one end of it for a while.
Also, senior villagers getting priority in linking was added to Java in 1.16 as a fix for MC-164233, so that feature may be added to Bedrock in the future.
Finally, the video linked in the report summary is there to help the developers understand the mechanics behind the issue and to suggest ways to fix it. For help with village design follow Auldrick's suggestions.
Are you using a bell and placing workstations no more than 4 Y levels above the bell?
I’ve had many stonemasons offer different items for sale. Different colors of terra-cotta, different glazed stones, etc. Farmers as well, some level 5 farmers sell glittering melon, some sell golden carrots.
I wish I could access The Villager data on Nintendo switch. I leaned the hard way not to break their workstations. But now some villagers aren’t linking to workstations at all. Why don’t senior villagers get priority? Why do villagers keep breeding when there are no extra beds? There’s only so much space for beds in a 64x64 village (is that the correct village size?). I want my village to look nice with houses. I have only recent discovered villager trader and I absolutely love it but it’s getting very difficult with MULTIPLE villager bugs. I have spent hours and days trying to keep them in order but they do whatever they want and none of it makes sense. I want to trade! I’ve broken all of my beds and workstations and I am going to try starting over. Ugh. Does anyone know the connection of bells and why there are often 2 in a village? Don’t they just need one? Please help. I’m a noob. Also, that recommended video is impossible to understand, his voice is too quiet and I tried very hard to hear past the thick accent but Sadly I could not.