[MCPE-46240] Player-made iron golems run away from villages

Updated description by @unknown

Steps to reproduce

Stand in a village (1 villager and 1 claimed bed is enough).
Spawn an iron golem using iron blocks and a carved pumpkin/Jack-o-Lantern.
Observer the iron golem for a while.

Expected result

The iron golem patrols the village, staying within a certain distance of its center.

Actual result

The iron golem wanders without regard for the village and eventually wanders far away.

Original description
Iron Golems are constantly running away from the villages I spawn them in. It seems their AI doesn't recognize the new villages, because instead of guarding and patrolling the new village, they run, somewhat erratically, all over the place until they leave the village and get lost. This has happened on multiple occasions, in different worlds I've created.

Other than this, the iron golems seem to behave perfectly normal. They kill mobs as normal, avoid water and everything else. It just seems they can't recognize the new villages as places they are supposed to protect. Also, every iron golem this has happened to has been spawned by myself, and I've only played in creative mode, if that means something.

Linked issues

is duplicated by 13

MCPE-163209 The considerable remoteness of the Iron Golems from the villages. Resolved

MCPE-45510 Iron Golems not returning to village center. Resolved

MCPE-46132 Iron golems leaving Resolved

MCPE-48894 Iron golem not staying in artificial village Resolved

MCPE-50909 Village Iron Golems Wander off/despawn after a few minutes Resolved

8 more links

relates to 1

MCPE-117370 Iron Golems will wander away from the village even theres 30 villagers and 20 beds Resolved

Attachments

Comments 20

Rocks 2019-05-13T00:49:31Z

1 tip, you may need a bell to indicate the 'village center.' I think technically it's not a village without a bell.

Sydney Layne 2019-05-13T01:34:19Z

I thought that too, but it turns out the presence of a bell doesn't make any difference in this situation. I tested this both with and without bells present in the village, and the iron golem always ran away.

In fact, in those pictures I posted there is a bell present at the house, though it was obstructed from view. This seems to happen in every village of mine, and these villages do meet the parameters of at least 1 villager, 1 workstation, 1 bed, and 1 bell. Iron golems have even ran away from villages with around 14 villagers and 2 bells present.

I've just added a picture of the aforementioned village, notice how I've leashed the iron golems to fence posts to keep them from running away.

Rocks 2019-05-13T13:07:22Z

Seems problematic. One thing I could suggest, try ringing the bell. If you can't interact with it, it's not valid.

Sydney Layne 2019-05-13T15:27:27Z

The bells ring correctly, and villagers do respond to them. All of the villages this happens in do seem to be recognized as true villages. I used the locate command to find a village, it takes me to that village.

Bad Omen effects also cause raids when I enter these villages, so they are true legitimate villages.

The problem seems based in the Iron Golems AI. I don't recall this being a problem before the release of 1.11, "Village and Pillage." Perhaps the Iron Golems weren't correctly updated to recognize the new villages.

Sydney Layne 2019-05-17T04:12:04Z

I've been wondering, has anyone experienced something similar to this, or been able to reproduce this bug?

Or is this a local, isolated bug?

10 more comments

dcn 2019-05-25T03:40:45Z

bells are only used to set the gathering place and spaz out villagers. not much else. village borders are apparently set by the first claimed bed.

the problem your having is that your spawning the golems. only naturally generated golems, the first auto golem and golem gossip golems, are going to acknowledge a village and then only the village that spawned them.

Jon 2019-05-31T04:29:29Z

I have this same issue on Bedrock for Switch. But I also noticed that Villagers will do the same. I’ve seen villagers wandering off into the Wild to only be seen later wandering to nowhere. Cats do the same. But I don’t know if it’s normal. All have naturally spawn.

Sydney Layne 2019-05-31T12:38:29Z

Ive just found a naturally spawned iron golem, and he is exhibiting the same erratic behaviour as other iron golems, though he hasn't ran away from the village yet. I'll keep a close eye on him when I've got time, as it usually takes them 15-30 minutes to wander away from a village.

However, even if this isn't a bug but rather a feature where iron golems only patrol villages they are naturally spawned in, then I'd say it's a bad feature. It takes away from an Iron Golem's original purpose if the only way you can get them to guard a village is by chaining them to a fence post.

As for villagers running away, I haven't experienced that problem so much here on android. However I have seen oddities in their AI, though I'll save that for another post.

Sydney Layne 2019-05-31T14:14:52Z

Update: After observing the naturally spawned iron golem for a decent while, I never saw it run away. So I reckon Dcn was right about how only naturally spawned iron golems patrol their villages.

Somehow though, I don't think that is supposed to be a feature. I read on the Wiki that ALL iron golems are supposed to patrol villages, not only naturally spawned golems. I'm pretty sure that by now, the wiki would've been mostly updated to 1.14, so I assume its info is valid.

insane96mcp 2019-07-02T13:02:50Z

[1.11.4 on Realm] Can confirm happens with naturally spawned Iron Golems. Mine went in the near forest about 100 blocks from the village (then died while fighting RIP)

Desko 2020-05-08T11:56:02Z

It seems that player-spawned iron golems lack the data in the behavior pack to wander within and defend villages. This is not the intended behavior.

[Mod] GoldenHelmet 2020-05-09T18:33:53Z

Confirmed in 1.14.60. Player-created iron golems do not join villages (verified by checking village and entity data with MCCToolchest), and therefore they wander away from them over time. By contrast, iron golems spawned during village generation and spawned by villages join any village they are located in and stay within that village as they wander.

I tested this recording the paths of iron golems with a repeating command block that places iron blocks under their position. A player-made iron golem, starting near the room with beds, soon wandered off to the northwest:

[media]

A village-spawned iron golem mostly stayed within 32 blocks of the village center over a much longer time:

[media]

Based on the flat test results above, it is most likely that issues with village-spawned iron golems wandering away from villages and de-linking are probably due to them pursuing monsters beyond range of the village, and/or peculiarities of terrain making it difficult for them to find their way back to non-flat villages.

Tim D. 2020-06-03T14:00:51Z

8 golems I made in a village wandered off. I know where they are, but those things are a pain to lead back. I can confirm that as you approach a village, the golems don't even seem to recognize that they're in a village. If I take the lead off they immediately run as fast as possible back toward wherever they were when I first put the lead on them.

This is in a mega taiga biome (podzol), in case you are wondering. Amazon Fire OS.

[Mod] GoldenHelmet 2020-06-03T17:29:03Z

Due to MCPE-41092 player-spawned iron golems will tend to wander toward the northwest (-X and -Z). The fact that they don't join villages would not be quite as much of a problem if they would actually wander randomly rather than having a tendency to go off in a certain direction.

Daniel Wystyrk 2020-06-18T12:05:51Z

Thank you for your report!
However, this issue has been closed as Working as Intended.

If you need help or have a suggestion you might like to follow a link below.

Quick Links:
📓 Issue Guidelines – 💬 Mojang Support – 📧 Suggestions – 📖 Minecraft Wiki

Valeriy Zabawski 2022-01-04T06:41:03Z

Hi. Could you please explain why is this expected behavior?

[Mod] GoldenHelmet 2022-01-08T18:42:50Z

Questions like that should be addressed to Mojang community mangers or developers, whom you might be able to find on Twitter or in various Discord servers. The moderators on the bug tracker are volunteers and do not have access to Mojang's internal deliberations and design decisions.

DuckyXwintqr 2025-12-14T06:58:06Z

Can Confirm for the lastest 1.21.130 Release

DuckyXwintqr 2025-12-14T07:27:11Z

I don't know why this is marked as WAI which is not supposed to happen as Player-built Iron Golems DO NOT wander away on Java Edition but I found the core Issue, and it is an easy fix.

},

"component_groups": {

"minecraft:player_created": {

"minecraft:behavior.hurt_by_target": {

"priority": 2,

"entity_types": {

"filters": {

"all_of": [

{ "test": "is_family", "subject": "other", "operator": "not", "value": "player" },

{ "test": "is_family", "subject": "other", "operator": "not", "value": "creeper" }

]

}

},

"minecraft:village_created": {

"minecraft:behavior.defend_village_target": {

"priority": 1,

"must_reach": true,

"attack_chance": 0.05,

"entity_types": {

"filters": {

"any_of": [

{ "test": "is_family", "subject": "other", "value": "mob" },

{ "test": "is_family", "subject": "other", "value": "player" }

]

}

},

"minecraft:dweller": {

"dwelling_type": "village",

"dweller_role": "defender",

"update_interval_base": 60,

"update_interval_variant": 40,

"can_find_poi": false,

"can_migrate": true,

"first_founding_reward": 0

}

See how the “minecraft:village_created” block contains this portion:

},

"minecraft:dweller": {

"dwelling_type": "village",

"dweller_role": "defender",

"update_interval_base": 60,

"update_interval_variant": 40,

"can_find_poi": false,

"can_migrate": true,

"first_founding_reward": 0

}

This block of code is what keeps the Village-created Iron Golems from wandering away from villages. This is what registers them to any Villages they spawn at and also the very code that makes them search for a nearest Village. Now take a look at the block just above the “minecraft:village_created” called “minecraft:player_created”.

As you can see, The “minecraft:dweller” block is missing. Which is the root-cause of Player-created Iron Golems to wander off from Villages. In short, Player-created Iron Golems do not have the code that automatically registers it to any Village it is spawned in.

The fix is easy, All you need to do is remove the default “minecraft:player_created” block and replace it with this:

},
"component_groups": {
"minecraft:player_created": {
"minecraft:behavior.hurt_by_target": {
"priority": 2,
"entity_types": {
"filters": {
"all_of": [
{ "test": "is_family", "subject": "other", "operator": "not", "value": "player" },
{ "test": "is_family", "subject": "other", "operator": "not", "value": "creeper" }
]
}
}
},
"minecraft:dweller": {
"dwelling_type": "village",
"dweller_role": "defender",
"update_interval_base": 60,
"update_interval_variant": 40,
"can_find_poi": false,
"can_migrate": true,
"first_founding_reward": 0
}

DuckyXwintqr 2025-12-14T07:31:10Z

I provided a fix which should stop the Player-created Iron Golems from wandering away from villages or any structures that contains a bell, beds, and villagers.