No iron golem spawns

Played another hour last night, no more than 25 blocks from village edge, including many minutes spent inside the wall of the village. No golems. I broke all the doors and replaced them first thing when I started the play session.

It occurs to me that of the 4 or so copies of this world I have made, this village has only ever spawned golems in the first play session on each copy. I've got one creative-mode copy and 3 survival mode copies and they all popped at least one golem when I first opened them after copying, but none since then. It's like the village just gets lost. The villagers seem to recognize it (they hide behind doors at night), but not the golem spawner.

Tonight I'm going to flush the console cache just in case, and try a new creative flat world (not a copy of this world) and open/close/copy it a couple of times to see if it behaves similarly.

This weekend I played several hours in the survival map and not a single golem spawned. Note that this farm has spawned golems before, for about a 40-minute period several days ago. Since then nothing. I have destroyed and replaced the doors a few times, removed the water from the central pool, cleared cache, and closed down a monster spawner I found 100 or so blocks away (shouldn't matter, as I don't think iron golems are supposed to be subject to the normal mob cap).

I also created two villages in creative (flat world, easy difficulty) - one that looks kinda like the diagram (no water or lava though) and one that was just a collection of doors with blocks on the ground behind them - and in about 90 minutes of play only got 2 golems to spawn.

I think this bug is fairly non-specific. That is, golem spawning is just broken. Either that or it's broken in a very specific way that is impossible to detect, like "golems won't spawn if there is both a grey sheep and a dappled horse in loaded chunks. Golems spawn at double normal rate if a salmon is within 10 blocks of a swimming chicken." 🙂

Possibly related to MCPE-29902, though why breaking/replacing all doors doesn't fix it is a mystery.

I did finally get a golem (two actually...the village is over-breeding villagers which I will put into a new bug report) in the dry central pool. Added water to flush them down to the kill area and did not get a golem in about 40 minutes with water in the pool. Removed the water and about 20 minutes later two more golems showed up.

So...maybe flowing water is now a problem for spawning? I will try to do more rigorous testing.

ETA: What is this I can't even.

After flushing the 2nd pair of golems mentioned above, I left the water in place because I was tired of messing with it. I went about my business around the village, tending crops, trading, or whatever. Probably some AFK time as well. Later in the evening last night on a whim I went down to check the chest and there were 70 iron bars in it. So the golems had been popping for a while (probably 12-15 of them I'd say).

But the remainder of the night - about 90 minutes of play - not a single golem. I made exactly zero changes to anything. So I dunno about the water thing. I'm back to "it's just broken in a non-specific way." After 10+ hours of play I get an hour or two of normal spawning, then back to nada zilch zippo. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.

MD - I beleive your village center being recalculated contantly by loosely villagers.  Instead of redesigning your build, try trap villagers around the fence of golem spawn.  Don't let them touch the doors.  Try first 10 villagers, 3 each in north and south and 2 each in east and west.  Move other villagers away from iron farm, just outside of it.  After that, remove all doors and replace it.

Other than that, there may be an interference in your design.  

I don't have problem with water flowing in spawn.

Try the design from nimstv, he's on youtube. It works for me 2 10x10 flooded spawnplatforms, 40 doors and 14 villagers in a "pouch" on one side. also I have a ticking area there. Works perfect for me.

Thanks for ideas. I am not interested in an optimized design, however. I'd like as natural a village as I can manage with the understanding that I don't want the villagers just wandering off too far. I can't create a ticking area because this is a survival world with no cheats.

If "villagers can't be allowed to touch the doors" is a requirement to spawn iron golems, then I'd like devs to make that clear. Likewise, if village center is somehow being recalculated even though all of the villagers roam around (so they should all have recognized all the doors) then I'd like to understand that better. And even so, a village center issue would cause iron golems to appear outside the pool, but at the normal rate. That I could understand. 

It should work fine. It worked perfectly in Console Edition and, if I remember correctly, worked fine in Bedrock version 1.2-ish (not the same world; this one was created fresh in 1.4.2). I also didn't have the villager cap issue before - that seems new for 1.4.

I've been thinking more and more that this is related to more general mob spawning issues (i.e. MCPE-21856). So last night I went on a small killing spree outside of the village (taking out all passive mobs except horses, because...horses man I can't do that), then traveled 1,000 blocks away from the village for a while (hoping for some despawns).

Upon returning, the village spawned 2 iron golems (at the same time; village has 24 doors and 24 villagers due to the villager cap bug MCPE-29771), then over the next 45 minutes it spawned nothing more.

IMO this bug needs a "Related to" for MCPE-21856.

I found an older Reddit thread mentioning that Render Distance and Simulation Distance might interact in a way that prevents far-off mobs from despawning, affecting mob caps. And but so anyway, as another shot in the dark I set render distance to 10, to match the simulation distance. Didn't change anything: 2 hours played, no golems.

Through testing I discovered that Villagers can now only detect doors within the same chunk they are in. So if a village isn't properly aligned, it will never spawn golems, no matter how many villagers you add.

That's interesting, but I'm not sure my results bear out your findings. The village spans at least four chunks, and possibly as many as nine chunks. The villagers roam freely around the village, though they do show a preference for one side vs. the other.

Nevertheless, they reliably breed up to exactly 24 villagers. There are 24 doors in the village, so due to bug MCPE-29771 I'm pretty certain that they have detected all of the doors even though, since the center pool itself occupies a whole chunk, at least 1/2 the doors would be invisible to them if your findings were the case in my world.

I'm pretty convinced my villagers think they are living in a 24-door village even though the village is in at least four different chunks. And the village has spawned golems before as noted in my comment from 13 July. Maybe it's the case that they only first notice doors when they are in the same chunk, but as they move around they remember those doors and therefore eventually the village grows to include all 24 doors? Or did your testing show that villagers forget doors that are in different chunks (shrinking the village)?

I can't square the breeding behavior with that kind of villager/door mechanic, but I will go do the math on the village to see where the chunk boundaries are.

I'm pretty convinced now that MCPE-36035 is actually getting at the core of the problem.

I gave up on getting the farm to work and just left it be for a week or more. 20 hours of play in and around the village and not a single golem. Then this weekend I decided to shut off the water and within 2 minutes a golem spawned. Flushed him down and removed the water again and another golem spawned in a few minutes. I kept doing that for an hour - spawn, flush, remove water, repeat. I got 5 or 6 golems that way.

Then I left the water in place and played for 2 more hours. Not a single golem.

I have since set the central area up with a push-button flush mechanism and the golems are spawning normally as I would expect. Hence my conviction that MCPE-36035 (iron golems don't spawn on water) is the problem. Maybe the Drowned spawn rules somehow interfered with the golems?

MD

I am going to test your design with seed and coordinate you provided.

UPDATE:  Your design does work.  The golem spawning was normal without any issue with water.

I personally don't like 16x16 spawn.  Golem sometime will spawn outside even thought the village is perfectly centered.  3 golems were spawned outside. I suggest 18x18.  So, it worked so far with your exact design at my end.  I am going to attach a photo.  Let me know if I built it right.  It has 24 doors and 10 villagers roam freely.

Thanks. Your picture looks identical for all intents and purposes. I did not think there was anything wrong with the design (the occasional rogue golem notwithstanding). I have tested the seed and the design extensively in creative and it works fine. I am not suggesting that there is a bug related to spawn area, or on # of villagers required (though they will breed up to 24 now), or that the seed is bad. I am suggesting that, over a period of time, such a farm will stop working, and that spawning in water is key to the issue.

For a short period a month or so ago, I got a dozen or more golems to spawn with the water flowing. I wasn't even paying much attention to it, just puttering around the village doing my stuff. Came back to 30+ iron bars in the collection chest. Then it just stopped and never started up again.

I can't explain my more recent experience of A) leaving the farm alone (24 villagers, water flowing) for ~20 hours of game play with zero golems and B) turning off the water and getting a golem within 2 minutes, and regular golems after that (but never if the water is in place) without surmising that there is a bug in how golems spawn in water.

One person on MCPE-36035 said that the golems-in-water bug is fixed in 1.6.0 so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. For now I'm rigging up an every-5-minutes redstone clock to flush the spawn area.

If you play that world for ~10 hours or so (survival/Normal, including a few overnights without sleeping) and the farm keeps producing normally, then I definitely will throw my hands up in exasperation. Don't just go AFK, though - I've been all over the area building things and exploring the (VAST!) cave structure under the village. My guess is that other spawns (Drowned, if I had to guess) are affecting the farm. Caves are all lit up and the two zombie spawners I found are shut down. Not that they should matter for iron golems.

MD

I was testing golem farm pretty good amount of time.  My setup doesn't involve much other than just smallest simulation distance, peaceful, and AFK around the farm.  This helps narrow down the problem.  

I believe the design shouldn't work, even if it worked in the past.  It doesn't met the roof criteria. For example, there are 3 roof spaces (uppermost) counted behind the door and 3 (bottommost) counted in front of the door.  Counting from front door; a block under fence, and 2 water blocks fall into 5 block space limits. This cancelled each other out.

It may work by under certain condition such as light level above 11 during noon underneath water blocks.  Front door will lose 2 roof spaces and count it as a house. However, I have seen golem spawned at night during some test sessions, but eventually farm quits working for a while.  I think roof check is broken or update block is too slow or stuck.

This is what I am understanding from wiki.  I may be wrong about it.  Read roof check and transparent blocks: https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Tutorials/Village_mechanics#Housing

There are 3 solutions, but this one is better and easy.

Move spawn area down by 1 block and move fence down by 1 block - get rid of these blocks underneath fences.   Now, front doors will no longer have any roof space.   

Wow, good find. I guess perhaps Console Edition was the broken edition, if this farm was working for me there. But now I'm curious if this entire time I forgot that my old farm had a sunken spawn pit? Ugh, my face will be red if I find that.

I will sink the spawn floor down a block tonight and see how it goes. Thanks for spending so much time helping with this!

One lingering question (for academic purposes only, if the sunken floor works) - why did the villagers all "see" the houses and run into them at night? And why did they reliably breed up to population 24? I wonder if, as you say, it was related to light level? So they recognized the village for an hour or two each day, got their groove on, and the rest of the time they didn't see any houses. That doesn't explain why they ran into the houses at night, though.

I was thinking you might have forgotten the pit in Console Edition. 🙂

I have tested it on CE earlier.  Farm either quits working or backup working again, similiar to what I have experienced over BE.  That gave me confirmation on roof mechanics.

You have a good question about the 24 doors that breeded up to 24 villagers. (I just thought of a good test for it, perhaps try it tonight).

You know farm still have 8 valid doors from the middle of each side.  Front door has 1 valid roof space and 3 spaces behind.  Water blocks are 1 block down which is out of door range. Village is still around.  So, with that remaining 16 doors being either valid or not at random times.  The question is; Have you ever noticed it wouldn't breed up to 24 villagers at some point?

I haven't test more than 10 villagers.  I will be breeding them between night and day during the test session. That might give us more insight.

UPDATE:  Here is attachment for a better reference on roof check.  Green represents 5 block space limits (5 front and 5 behind door) and Red represents valid roof space

UPDATE 2:  I found the source.  I will post a new comment.