Iron golems no longer can be made or spawn naturally in iron farms

Confirmed that something is amiss with iron golem natural spawning when sufficient villagers and doors exist. I had problems with a village that exists under my golem catch area. Villagers would breed, but no golems. I then travelled to a village, added doors and made sure that villagers were willing. They bred, but again, when sufficient doors and villagers exist, no golems will spawn.

Has anything changed for natural iron golem spawning? I ensure that I have at least 10 villagers and at least 21 valid doors.

Android LG Q6 Nougat Minecraft 1.4.2

I'm on andrpid bedrock 1.4.2 

Iron farm used to work doesnt work anymore.

Someone says removing water made it spawnable. But above case on village is not the same case so..

Natural spawning iron golem does spawn in water so as long as they dont change the behavior the farm should work.

Could not reproduce in Windows 10 version 1.4.2.0.

In a desert village, I added buildings with plenty of doors. Within 10 minutes an iron golem spawned spontaneously, and within 20 minutes a second one spawned.

In my Creative test world, iron golems were not spawning in my iron farm, but I found out it was because Mob Spawning was turned off. When I turned it on, they started spawning. This is apparently a recent change, because it used to work with Mob Spawning turned off.

Please verify that you have Mob Spawning turned on.

Mob spawning is turned on. No cheats are enabled. No mods or behaviour packs added. All other passive and hostile mobs spawn correctly. Might be worth testing on mobile platform for 1.4.2 Bedrock too.

Note that world was created in 1.4.0. I received only a few golem spawns but none after upgrading to 1.4.2. Tests involving villages were done after 1.4.2 was installed. I will test another village that is within running distance of the test naturally generated village. Note that the golem farm village is almost 100 blocks away from nearest village.

That's good information. Both the worlds I tested with were much older than 1.4.0, so I doubt it was an issue with the upgrade, more likely something new blocking the spawning. It would be helpful if you could describe your farm's spawning platform, or even better if you do some screenshots or video (I'm assuming those are possible on Xbox One).

It's highly unlikely that it's a platform-specific bug. All the platform-specific bugs are related to platform-specific features or OS differences. But we'll look at that possibility if we can't find any other way to reproduce this issue.

My golem farm is a slightly modified version of this one for the base model and dimensions. (YT LINK) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtHzOsqSyDk

Instead of having pods on the sides, I build a third level below where I put my villagers. This way, I can give them a bit of a garden patch and make them willing to build their numbers so that is serves as both a trading village and a golem farm.

I usually start with two villagers and let them build from there.The doors in my version are on the villager level, and I add some glass to ensure light levels for the doors. Never had a problem with this configuration before.

I did modify the platform levels to have some dry spots, but that did not affect the golem spawning.

Forget about "it used to work". Unless it's already been said by a dev that your specific configuration should work, you can't rely on past behavior of a complex device like this to remain unchanged in an update.

One thing you should look for is whether you've added any doors within a 64-block radius of your farm. A single door added nearby would probably only reduce its efficiency a little (because it would only move the village center by a little bit), but a single door near the 64-block limit could cause it to stop working altogether if it moved the center somewhere golems can't spawn.

We really have to be able to reproduce your problem, which means in this case we have to reproduce your farm pretty accurately. I really thing we're going to need screenshots showing enough different angles to allow us to copy it.

I think he should send a video link of how to build his farm, that way we can test whether the update caused the issue or there is something wrong with the farm configuration itself.

I re-made the iron farm exactly as in the YT video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtHzOsqSyDk ). I made it over the ocean biome and populated from willing villagers from village nearest to spawn. (Seed = Stronghold Village "-1804478546")

 The golem farm does work. Golems generated regularly and would drop for up to 4 iron ingots and occasional poppy flower.

 However, I noticed that fish mobs were also spawning on the top level (not sure about the lower level). They would swim around and only occasionally fall into the lava pit.

 The salmon dropped as raw salmon and the raw fish dropped as cooked fish along with the periodic bone drop. Not sure if that is new intended behaviour for the fish drops.

 The top level corner coordinates are as follows if you need to recreate to test. (top slab edge blocks).

 NW = 422 75 222  /  NE = 441 75 222 

/  SW = 422 75 241  /  SE = 441 75 241

 The villager pods are located on the North Side and the South Side of the build, exactly as illustrated in the video.

 Hoppers in the killing pit are at Y level 62. And lava source is at Y level 64 (one block higher than player standing height). This allows player a chance to survive lava fire if accidentally falling into the killing pit.

 Still no golems at naturally generated village nearest to spawn. (East of Spawn). 21 valid doors added. Plenty of villagers bred, willing, and self-farming.

I would like to clarify two things. First is that the creator of the post be the one to provide a video, image or any link to show the exact configuration of the farm so we may try to reproduce the bug. Secondly, about the manual spawning of golems. Make sure that there is nothing but air touching the T-shape iron block configuration to spawn the golem and place the pumpkin or jack o lantern last.

The bug tracker is not a chat forum. Please restrict comments to providing information about the bug, and feel free to consider or disregard comments from non-staff as you see fit.

Sorry for the delay all. A couple things to clarify and add from my end.

• Creating Golems manually is a non issue. Once it was clarified to me of that they can not be created manually when water is present. This was just a side issue to the main issue of the ticket.

• This main issue is with existing iron farms. Mine worked fine prior to 1.4(or 1.4.2). It is a standard 18x18 iron farm design with 10+ villagers, and a lava trap in a middle(on my realm). It has 36 doors (18 on each side) and is over 100 blocks away from the nearest village.

I get that it may be a legacy thing since my map is older.....but it seems silly that we have to create a new iron farm or map every time a new major release happens.

While I would like to try creating a new iron farm in survival to see if I have the same issue (and work more closely on the feedback for this issue) I simply don't have the time. So if someone wants to open a new ticket and work more closely with the bug team on it (and Mojang closes this ticket out) that is fine.

We've had reports (including mine) of several iron golem farms in worlds upgraded to 1.4 or later, some of which work and some of which don't. To be able to reproduce this bug and work on it, we need to get a copy of one that doesn't work. You can't really get a copy of an Xbox One world, so does anybody using Android or Windows 10 have such a world they would be willing to share? If we have to, we can find a way around the world size limit.

Again, it's unlikely that it's a platform dependency, but I would never rule that out entirely. It will just be more efficient to leave testing the least likely theory until more likely ones have failed.

Thanks @Auldrick. That I can do 🙂 Exporting my world from windows 10 (realms) is not a problem. I've exported it to a zip file and made it available to download here (https://1drv.ms/u/s!AgJR8HV9Zk6MiT3x2KWNdRZ6GN3E). Hope this helps you all. The Iron Farm coordinates are at 774, 177. Let me know if you have any issues accessing the zip file.

@unknown Sorry, I can't access that URL (404 error). Did you share it in OneDrive? Was it shared for a limited time, which has expired now?

sorry about that @Auldrick. Yeah it's on my OneDrive. Try it again please (https://1drv.ms/u/s!AgJR8HV9Zk6MiT3x2KWNdRZ6GN3E ). I made sure to set the expiration time for longer.

I have it now, thank you! Feel free to delete or protect it now if you prefer.

If needed I have an iron farm that produces zero golems but was plentiful before update aquatic. For ease it is identical to GruvaGuy's tutorial here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HB6lqAGRDY

Interestingly I had two of these at y=200 above the ocean, both highly productive before the update aquatic and after the update one still produced golems although at a lower rate and the other produced none. I have since built a third farm at sea level and it has not spawned a single golem. Is it to do with the passive mob cap/fish? All the farms catch prodigious amounts of fish and ink. and for reference all farms have 24 doors with appropriate sky access, 10 or more villagers, adequate head height for spawning etc. I am on Windows 10 with simulation distance at max

Confirmed on Windows 10 using 1.4.2.0. There definitely seems to be a problem with villagers detecting doors made of a wood other than regular oak. There may also be a problem with calculating the size of a village and the number of iron golems it should generate.

@unknown: I was able to get your iron farm producing again by making two changes: I added more villagers to the pod that only had 5 in it, and I replaced all the dark oak doors with regular oak. Changing either of those by itself didn't fix the problem. However, I noted that your iron farm is just barely 125 or so blocks from a village you've built up with added doors and buildings, and which has four iron golems in it with what look to be too few villagers to authorize that many. That probably means some or all of these golems were spawned manually, but if the iron farm and the village are getting blended by the game, the excess golems would prevent more from spawning at the farm. I'm not sure how much separation is required in cases like this: The technical community have experimented and drawn conclusions, but experiments can never be definitive for this purpose. So we're going to need guidance from the developers on this. You should be able to get your farm working by making the same easy changes I made, though.

To everybody: Iron farms are tricky and can fail for lots of reasons, so it's possible that different people's iron farms are having different problems. As various workarounds and possible solutions are mentioned here, please try them in your own worlds. If they work for you, then this is the bug report you want to watch for a permanent resolution. But if they don't, please let us know so that we can identify a new group of people having iron farms with a different problem. Depending on the details, we might create a new bug report or amend the current one with the additional information. If you decide to create a new report yourself, be sure to stress that you have already tried the workarounds suggested here and that they didn't help. Otherwise, your report will probably just be closed as a duplicate of this one, which won't help any of us if it's actually different.

Confirmed. After swapping out my doors with regular oak doors and adding 5 more villagers it started working again. Thanks @Auldrick for the workaround while the bug is being worked on

After some additional experiments, it appears that non-oak doors can be used, but there's a difference in how villagers detect them. Villagers look at the 5 blocks on either side of the bottom half of a door, not counting the block the door is on. They test whether each of these blocks has "sky access", meaning there are no blocks above them that would block sunlight. If the number of blocks with sky access is different between the sides, the door is considered valid and is added to the village. Otherwise it's ignored.

For oak doors, this test is repeated periodically, so if the door initially has equal sky access but you later place or break a block that makes it unequal, the door will be detected and become valid. But for non-oak wooden doors, this doesn't happen. Sky access for non-oak doors is only tested right after the door is initially placed.

Update: It's not what I thought. What's actually happening is that for non-oak doors, the test for sky access is being performed on the wrong blocks. Instead of testing the blocks perpendicular to the plane of the (closed) door, the sky access test is being performed on the blocks in the same plane as the door.

Note that once a door (any kind of wood) is determined to be valid, it will remain valid for as long as it exists. That is, later changes to the sky access on either side will not cause it to become invalid. Another way to say this is that villagers only add doors to villages, they don't delete them. The only way to delete a valid door from a village is to break it.

Wow. Mind blown. I only do "natural-ish" snail iron farms and my process has always been 1) build spawn area and kill pit, 2) place doors (of various types due to architectural/aesthetic concerns) where they need to be, 3) build houses around doors.

And then comes 4) wonder why the dang iron golems are spawning outside the wading pool, and why the villagers seem to ignore the south block of flats...

Note to self: add step 3a) break all doors and replace them after houses are built.

Thanks @Auldrick!

@unknown: Golems spawn within 16 blocks of the village center. If they're spawning outside the spawn pad, it's because the village center isn't where you want it to be. The center is recalculated each time a valid door is added, so the order they're added makes a difference. If you continue to have this problem, place your doors a few at a time and work from both ends toward the middle. If you have doors on both sides of the spawn pad, alternate between the sides as you work. That will keep the center from jumping around too far from the center of the spawn pad.

Thanks. I do understand the mechanism - I worked up an Excel sheet that will calculate village center based on Xs placed in cells to indicate doors. And back in the old Console Edition the layouts worked fine.

I think probably my problem was that some doors were, say, dark oak, and after placing them (100% sky on both sides for 5+ blocks out) I would then build the house around it. But, I learned from your post, those doors would not be valid no matter how many "roof" blocks I added behind it, since it's only checked when placed. So yeah my village center was off because half my doors (the non-oak ones) were probably not valid even though they looked valid.

When I do step 3a) break-and-replace all doors (as the final step before populating the village and starting up the farm), I will pay attention to the order I replace them. Alternating sides, as you say. Good idea, thanks.

@unknown I just now updated above. My previous conclusion was slightly off. I'm sure you'll find the correction helpful.

@Auldrick Thanks. And also great googly moogly that's a "fun" bug. Nearly impossible for a console heathen like myself to ever figure out.

Another anecdote: in my (brand new 1.4.2) world I finally found a village (built, apparently, over the Hellmouth - half of the foundations stretch down into caves, so I named it Sunnydale) and proceeded to:

• Fence it off so villagers would not wander down into the catacombs

• Destroy every door except one

• Build nearby a modern set of condominiums with a 16x16 "water & lava" feature in the middle

In light of the information in this bug, I built the entire village before adding a single door. So all walls and roofs were already in place.

I then added 24 doors with symmetrical arrangement around the pool, made a short fenced chute from the old village to the new condos, and broke the last original village door. The villagers dutifully "discovered" the new doors and moved through the chute into the condos. I then razed the old village down to foundations.

So I have 24 doors, about 14 villagers and...no iron golems. For about 3 hours of game play, not a single one. I have searched hither and yon even though if it was some sort of weird village center issue, the out-of-whack center point couldn't be more than about 10 blocks from my intended center because the closest door of original village (and the last one to be destroyed) is only maybe 20 blocks from the closest "condo" door.

I have also destroyed all 24 doors and replaced them (all are regular oak, by the way). Still no golems.

Tonight I plan on destroying the doors and leaving it that way for a good hour, then replacing them to see if the golems will start spawning. So far, however, there does seem to be a bug unrelated to the bizarre non-oak valid door check.

Diagram of the condo village is attached. The border of the pool is a cobble block with fence on top. Outer farm border is 2 cobble blocks; roof (all the way around the perimeter) is dark oak plank and dark oak stairs. White area is just grass blocks, where the villagers mingle and make new villagers (in clear violation of the HOA policy!) Numbers indicate height above ground level (doors are resting on ground of course). This is my standard snail farm design and it's worked on several maps before.

I can only speculate, but I think your problem is that the center IS where you intended it to be. Golems can only spawn within 16 blocks of the village center, and in this case that would be very close to the lava. The only blocks within range are water source and lava, and golems cannot spawn on either. (They can spawn on flowing water with a solid block underneath, just not on a source block.) As to why this design has worked in other situations, maybe it's because the order you placed the doors was different and drew the center to the side far enough to bring the grass within range? It wouldn't have to shift very far, although the farther it shifts the more grass will be available for spawning.

My apologies, my description was bad and I feel bad. This is a bog standard flowing water/drop hole/lava blade snail farm. Only water source blocks are in corners of pool. Center area is not actually lava, its a 2x2 hole that drops to the kill area. Drops feed to hoppers and a chest. Golem Farm 101. The design is still sound, as far as i know.

Broke all doors and waited a bit, then put them back. Played an hour, no golem. Copied world and opened in creative, removed 4 water source blocks, got a golem. So now I’m testing flowing water more closely. Maybe survival map is confused about the water? There have never been source blocks anywhere but the corners, but...shrug.

Given the revised description, it seems to me your condo iron farm should work. In fact, my own Creative iron farm is almost identical, and it reliably spawns around 6-8 golems an hour in the flowing water. I've tested it in Survival, too, so the flowing water shouldn't be a problem.

The only thing that's a bit different with yours is that your doors and villagers are a little bit farther from the center and are more spread out. The way I understand how villages are formed and golems are spawned, your setup should work, but it wouldn't hurt to add more doors as a test. They don't have to be useful doors, you could just put them against the blank walls.

Your diagram is brilliant, btw. Very efficient way of communicating your build.

Thanks. I did some more testing last night and...well...I still think something's wrong with the world, but the farm is working now. Since I had copied it to creative and removed the water blocks and that worked, I tried copying the world and opening in survival. The idea being just copying the world might fix whatever glitch I think I had.

Waited maybe a half hour without getting a golem, so then I removed the water blocks. I did get a golem after that. So I put the water back, flushing the golem - Golem 1 - down the hole (5 iron; this will be important in a moment), and got back to waiting. The idea now being that for whatever reason maybe removing and replacing the source blocks un-glitched the farm.

After another 20 minutes or so (off destroying the original village; not paying close attention to the pool), I come back and there are 10 iron in the chest. So at least one more golem - Golem 2 - had spawned.

Next I moved about 20 blocks from the edge of the village and nerd-poled up about 30 to look down at the pool and watch. Spent about 30 minutes up there and never did see a spawn in the pool (I was not staring at it the entire time), but when I came back down and went into the village there was a golem - Golem 4 (trust me) - roaming the walkway outside of the pool. So clearly I have a slight village center problem, but that's fine I can fix it.

After corralling that golem and pushing it through a break in the outer pool wall, I went to check the chest and there was 21 iron in there. So again at least one other golem - Golem 3 - had spawned some time when I was watching-not-watching the pool from my nerd pole.

Alright, so overall maybe 40-50 minutes of time from when Golem 1 spawned on the dry pool to when Golem 4 spawned outside the pool fence. With 21 total iron it could easily have been 5 or even 6 golems in that time (maybe they spawned right next to the hole and dropped so quickly I never saw them). So...not really that far from what might be expected?

My last tests tonight will be back in the original world - I'm going to give the existing farm a solid 30 minutes to spawn something, and if it doesn't I'm going to remove the water source blocks again. Trying to suss out whether a) there is no glitch; I was just really unlucky getting no spawns in the first half-hour I was running the farm, b) there is a glitch, related to the water, or c) there is a glitch, and copying the world fixed it.