Shannon Young
Assigned
Reported
Comments
@Kyle
Hi, let me start by saying that I am sorry for your loss. For what it’s worth, my experience with this issue is that the chunk border problem is not only related to keeping your villager locked into a single chunk, but additionally, ensuring that all naturally spawning entities are restricted from entering or exiting the chunk. This includes cats, fish, etc. Also, fencing needs to be set up to keep mobs wholly within their chunk. Typically, if I am really concerned about despawning then I will use solid blocks instead.
For an iron farm, I build underground with a surface level whirlpool to pull in any other spawns and kill them. I then use a red stone filter to filter out any stuff that I don’t want. For trading villages, I use fencing and landscaping to ensure that mobs can’t move between chunks that include villagers. For villages built for looks (Western town, Alien ship, etc) I build them with a nearby zombie spawner so that I can restock the village.
That said, as others have mentioned, this is a very old bug. My kids and I don’t play survival anymore because of it. My daughter still plays the game but only in creative and adventure modes. My son and his friends play on Java. I canceled their realm subscriptions. My point being that the last iron farm I made was a year ago and I haven’t played since, but this might work to fix your farm. I would suggest testing in creative before spending all that time trying to get it working in survival. Good luck!
@GoldenHelmet Thanks for updating the description.
The description should also include reference to MCPE-71243 and MCPE-101202 which are related to the "appearance" of villagers despawning but with the difference that if you use MCCToolchest to inspect the data, you discover that they are either (a) positioned in walls (but not suffocating ¯_(ツ)_/¯ ) or (b) present but invisible. Having all players exit the realm for 15 minutes is the current work-around. Additionally, these issues are new in 1.16.100, fixed in 1.16.200-beta, and unrelated to chunk borders.
@Hunter
Hi. I have mostly given up on this one but buried in the comments are examples of entities disappearing that are safely locked within chunk borders. My own examples are with missing villagers in a realm that my kids and their friends play in.
I have also had villagers and other mobs that are locked to a single chunk despawn. It’s super annoying and I agree that the description does not accurately convey that even if you carefully lock in your mobs, they can still despawn. There are two approaches that the kids and I use- first, accept the things we cannot change and second, protect where something is really valuable and time-consuming to set up.
That said, I have a set of work-arounds that seem to work. My experience is with villagers but it applies to other mobs as well.
Trading Villages:
1. Design so that all villagers are in a single 16x16 chunk.
2. Use solid block walls around the borders with gates to keep any other entity from spawning in the chunk and then moving out of the chunk. (Cats, passive mobs, etc)
Alternatively, you can also design a multiple chunk village as long as the villagers can’t cross chunk borders, can’t breed (no framers) and there is no grass (passive mob spawning). This is harder to get right, though.
Iron Farms:
1. Build on a small island or over water - somewhere that is close enough to land for raids to spawn outside of the borders but far enough away that neither passive mobs nor other players may wander in and out of the chunk loading area.
2. AFK from the same chunk as the farm. AFK for a long time after making the farm in case future versions of the game break the farm.
3. Build out your water trap beyond the “center” of the chunk bc the village center will move every in-game day.
4. For a 16x6x16 volume around any possible center that is not inside the watertrap, have only solid blocks (underground) or air (above ground).
silentwhisper has a design for a 1 chunk farm that can be adapted to meet these requirements.
Breeding Villages:
1. Use a 1 chunk design with solid walls.
2. Put your farmers in one section and use a 1 block high trap door drop through for the babies.
3. You can send them to the nether but frankly, I find it easier to use a watertrap under an area with beds and wait for the babies to grow up.
4. Once they are grown, filter out the nitwits (either kill or drop through water trap and let drown do it.)
5. Use boats or minecarts and the watertrap to move adults to a different village.
6. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Hostile mobs:
Nametag them. “Interaction” is not enough to keep them from despawning, in spite of what the wiki says.
Passive mobs:
Lock them in using solid block walls and gates at the chunk borders.
Seems pretty reproducible but just in case its helpful, I uploaded `village_1_16_100.mcworld` which exhibits this issue.
[media]
@Danny
The villagers were locked in place, but there was a gate that kept surface mobs from moving in/out of the chunk. For Iron Golem farm V2, I ended up making my own design that was a combo of a bunch of different versions. I can try and figure out how to create a video tutorial but short version:
1. Lock villagers in and have them stand in water.
2. If building over water, ensure that there is land within 64 blocks to allow (accidental) raids to spawn outside of the village.
3. If building over land, block the entire chunk so that no surface passive mobs can move in/out. (My suspicion about this one is purely anecdotal - belt and suspenders, as it were.)
@GoldenHelmet
My experience is anecdotal. Honestly, I spend so much time working around this bug so that my kids don't cry over their lost stuff that I really have no idea at this point what works and I don't have time to build a test world and check it 50 times to see if an entity despawns. I just keep adding to the protective measures. That in mind...
Factoid #1: We play in a realm
Factoid #2: I use MCCToolchest to replace villagers and other mobs that are removed by this bug. It's a pain but I'm getting really good at it.
Factoid #3: I have had villagers who were protected and locked by solid block walls into their chunk disappear.
Factoid #4: I occasionally download a copy of the world, turn to creative with chunk borders, and then report back to my kids and their friends about any entities (including beds and double chests - those disappear, too) that they have that cross a border.
Case #1: Chickens (spawned using eggs) and foxes (name tagged) were allowed to move between chunks in a village that was spread across 4 chunks. Villagers kept despawning anyway.
Case #2: I had a 1-chunk iron farm based on silentwhisper's design, build over water. My daughter wanted me to stop killing cats so I modified it to allow cats to survive. She tamed a bunch of them and left the gate into the village chunk open. About 8 of my villagers despawned, breaking the farm.
Since then, I have only built 1-chunk villages using vertical stacking if necessary. I carefully ensure that no mobs (passive or hostile) can spawn in the chunk or move in/out of the chunk. I hid my iron farm so that my daughter doesn't have to know about the cats. I have not had any issues since then.
I originally got to this set of work-arounds by following the comments on this thread. Specifically, the comments related to @Rogue Cheddar's missing librarians.
@GravityBoots
No, a single tamed cat that can cross borders or is sitting on the line between two chunks, can cause villagers that are wholly encapsulated to despawn. This scenario happened to my iron farm. I set it up so it wouldn’t kill the cats for my daughter. She tamed them and left them sitting on the ground. I pushed the cat across the border (oops) and later realized that some villagers despawned. I then used MCCToolchest to look at positions both the cat and some of the villagers disappeared.
In a different world where I had set up a village that crossed several chunks, the villagers were restricted but bc my son liked to prank my base by throwing eggs and creating bunches of chickens, I put a name tagged fox in the village and made 1 block holes for the fox to go through so he could kill the chickens. Kept having villagers despawn in that village, too. It took a while to figure out but someone has observed that there seems to be a connection between despawning entities and other entities that cross a border.
Anyhow, its a weird edge case but now I build solid walls along the borders of my villages which are all 1 chunk with < 20 beds. That way, no golem spawn and the entire village loads/unloads at the same time. Haven’t had problems since. (Fingers crossed)
Hi @GravityBoots,
That’s a wonderfully extensive report! Thanks so much! You are incorrect, however, on one point.
Entities that cannot cross borders can despawn if there is a different entity that can cross. I’ve had this happen bc of chickens, tamed cats, tamed foxes, etc.
Note: it does appear that the entity that can move across borders must be an entity that the game rules say shouldn’t despawn when you move more than 44 blocks away from the entity. What that means is that you don’t need to guard against stray cats, for example, but you should ensure that if you tame a cat, that it cannot be pushed across a border when sitting. In fact, it is best to ensure that the cat is wholly out of the chunk once tamed and cannot cross back into it.
@Westlander
Hi. I'm as disappointed as you are by this. It's really disappointing that the only way to make an iron farm is to make an ugly iron farm. 😞 If you look at the previous comments, spawning on everything is apparently by design.
Not sure which of Silentwhisperer's iron farms you are using. Is it the one chunk version with the beds placed around a 3x3 block hole? If you are using that version, the center of the village is not in the center of the chunk. The spawn volume should be a 16x6x16 volume around the lower north-west corner of the first bed placed.
It should be pretty simple to get your farm working again.
(a) Make the upper level 2 full blocks and then add the slabs (for hostile mobs). Tip: Add a ladder to one of the blocks above the water to allow you to "escape" the water trap in case you accidentally fall in.
OR
(b) add a ring above the slabs that are 4 blocks above the floor, and then place half-slabs on that. That will allow you to "escape" from the top water trap and get out of the trap.
Further explanation
The spawn area for the iron golem is a 16x6x16 area that should theoretically extend 3 blocks up from the bottom of the first bed placed and three blocks down. That's why the beds are placed 3 blocks up from the first floor. Iron golem can spawn in any point in that volume where they have 4 blocks above them and 2 blocks in the x-z plane. Only solid blocks are considered "filled in" spaces where golem cannot spawn. Half-slabs don't count. Nor does glass, etc.
The Silentwhisperer farm was build with the idea that the spawn blocks are inclusive (bed + floor + 1 block wall) but my own testing suggests that the wall is spawnable b/c the top of that wall is included in the 6 block range.
This said, it is a really disappointing design choice by Mojang and I think it's totally confusing. Oh well. This should allow you to use the iron golem farm with minimal changes since I know how frustrating it is to set these things up! Good luck!
Oh, and while we're talking about iron golem farms, be sure to guard your farm against MCPE-21416 by placing a fence or wall at ground level to keep any passive mobs from being able to move in/out of the chunk. It doesn't appear to break if you build over water, but sheep, chickens, cats, etc. that spawn inside the chunk and then move out of the chunk when the chunk is unloading can cause your villagers to despawn. And that is even more frustrating.
I also recommend after you make the farm, to AFK for a few days in case Mojang introduces a different "rule" or bug that breaks it.
Version 1.16.40
Villagers went missing from a single-chunk village (iron golem farm) where the villagers are constrained to a single x,z position and standing in water. The village was built over water to guard against "land" mobs spawning in the village and then leaving the chunk. Using MCCToolchest to check the number of villagers assigned to the village, there should be 20 villagers but there are only 13 so it isn't that the villager teleported. Instead, I can confirm that they despawned.
Version 1.16.40 Bedrock Realm
This has happened twice this week while we have been building or AFK near the village but not in the village. Someone returns to the village and there are scads of villagers wandering around. Looking at MCCToolchest, both the babies and the adult will claim the same bed but the baby will be trying to pathfind to the bed while the adult will be wandering around and not sleeping.
Due to MCPE-21416, the village is set up to block adults from moving between chunks and no passive or hostile "land" mob can spawn in any village chunks.
All villagers were originally added one at a time and linked to a bed and workstation (and they can reach the bed) before setting another bed to breed another villager. That said, I was not aware of this issue and did not guard against it in creating the village so that the entire village would always be loaded.
Interesting idea concerning other mobs being able to move between borders.
In our current realm world, I have not had any villagers despawn (knock on wood). It's set up so that no mobs - passive or hostile can spawn inside the village borders. My sheep, however, keep despawning and my son's farm animals keep despawning, but the fence areas do allow for other mobs that are naturally spawning to move in and out of the chunks. In the village, the only mobs that could spawn in the village and then move out of the village are fish and drown.
In the previous realm, there were chickens, rabbits, cats, and foxes that could move freely throughout the several chunks of the village. These would sometimes despawn (as per the original bug description), but the strange thing was that the villagers would also despawn. Always the same two villagers, neither of which had their bed or work station anywhere near a border. This was a tundra village that was underground so its not zombies and I never came upon an illager patrol that spawned in the village (after the 1.16 update).
@GoldenHelmet
Thank you for the explanation.
I can't say that I am not disappointed with Mojang's UI/UX design choices but oh well. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Another just spawned (see screenshot IMG_0193) on the grass path block.
Took about 20 minutes for a golem to spawn outside the water trap on the roof. (See screenshot)
@GoldenHelmet
Help. The issue I am having is that I do NOT want iron golem spawning inside my village. I have walls/light to protect from zombies and raids and the iron golem are just annoying. Accidentally hit one and you have to allow yourself to be killed or else kill it, get negative points and never be able to enter your own village again. Also, they stomp on crops so you are constantly chasing after them with a hoe. Etc.
I was having the same issue with the wandering trader and his annoying lamas and have resolved by placing the bell centered over a 15x15 water trap. I get leather and leads, no more annoying lamas destroying my farmer's crops. Thought I could use the bell placement to also deal with the golem.
So... that doesn't work for the iron golem. I moved the "lead" villager to the other side of the village and that appeared to fix the issue for 1.16.10 with most Iron golems spawning in the water trap. Woohoo! The ones that didn't spawn in the trap will spawn in the river outside the village walls. They throw around zombies and eventually die. Whatever. Either way, since they aren't destroying crops or killing players, not an unsurmountable problem.
However, with 1.16.20, the iron golem are spawning in the village again.
I've attached a screenshot of the village. All beds and workstations are placed on slabs. All roofs are slabs. All fences are placed on slabs. Carpet, walls, fences, or lanterns are placed over every workstation. Any other block is dirt path. The bell is located 2 blocks to the water side (east) of the center of the water trap. Most of the villagers are librarians. The island to the west of the village is needed to allow raids to have a spawn point outside the village.
Update: I discovered that the lead villager changed ownership to the other side of the village. Not sure why b/c the previous lead villager is still there. I moved the new lead villager to the water-side and now the golem are spawning in the water trap again. Looks like the issue may be that with 1.16.20, the lead villager changed. The lead villager is currently in the 2nd cubicle in from the left on the water side. I will run this for an hour and see if golem are spawning outside the water trap. That said, how do I possibly guard against the lead changing again and why isn't the bell the village center?
Additionally, if the rules keep changing wrt what blocks they are allowed to spawn on, how are we players possibly suppose to keep up and try and build a functional village that still looks (fairly) nice?
Thanks.
@GoldenHelmet
Thanks for your reply. At the time when I wrote this up, MCPE-21416 was being reported as specific to chunk borders since that was the original bug opened in April, 2017. I have been following that issue and it has since come up in the comments (and I have added a few of my own) that relate to entities that are not able to cross chunk borders - although the description still includes chunk borders as the defining characteristic of that issue.
WRT the chunk saving incorrectly, that's what's so strange about this one. One of the red carpet tiles was in the original location that was generated by the world (this was an igloo basement), while the other piece of carpet was moved to make space for the added chest in the corner of the room. The chunk in question is [20, 14]. I used MCCToolchest and realm backups to inspect the player positions for the players who were playing in the realm during the time between about 8:30AM and 9:00AM. I was not playing at that time.
Player 1 - [37,22] to [37,24]
Player 2 - [31,19] to [37,22]
Player 3 - [37,23]
Player 4 - [38,40] to [39,40]
Since that is more than 4 chunks away, chunk [20,14] should not have even been loaded.
None of the players came over to my village during that time and so no, nothing was placed or removed from either that chest nor the hidden one underneath the chiseled stone brick. I may have placed or removed items from one or both of those chests the night before. At this point I don't remember.
WRT the cats, I later discovered a whole bunch of cats had teleported (while sitting) to inside one of the villager's rooms. It does not appear that any of the cats despawned.
Version 1.16.10
Not on a chunk border.
Exited using "Save & Quit" button. Playing in a realm, but I was the only person in the realm during this time.
I trapped a zombie villager in a dirt box. He was also standing in water. I made sure that I hit him so that he had been "interacted" with. Went to go make a potion of weakness and when I came back he was gone.
I just had a villager disappear who was not able to cross chunk borders.
Coordinates: (328, 34, 202) - (330, 34, 204)
Seed: -355490836
Version: 1.16.1
Villager: Diamond belt, I don't remember what all of his trades were.
Underground village in a tundra biome so no possibility of zombies spawning.
Playing in a realm. Between the backup when the villager was last in the realm and when he disappeared, the only person in the realm was my son and I have verified that he did not kill the villager.
[media]
Still happening. Playing on a realm, but also happening in a creative copy.
Bedrock v1.19.80
Happened once unexpectedly where I was teleported into the void. We rolled back the world and tried again. Now it’s teleporting me to a spot near the overworld portal.