Pillager Caravans

Pillager Caravans adds roaming, cargo-filled convoys guarded by pillagers, vindicators, and even ravagers. Instead of static treasure chests, caravans travel across biomes – sometimes near your base – with cargo that changes depending on the environment. The information provided here is intended to help understand the core concepts of the mod and customize it to your needs.

Core Concept

Caravan generation is fully data-driven, meaning everything can be customized with datapacks. It’s divided into two main parts – Caravan Variations and Caravan Placements:

• Caravan Variation defines what a caravan looks like: which mobs are part of it, what cargo it carries, and any special properties it has.
• Caravan Placement defines where and when caravans appear, setting their spawn conditions and selecting one of the available variations based on weighted chances.

Caravan Variation

Data Pack Directory: data/<modid>/caravans/variation/

• cooldown – The number of ticks (20 ticks = 1 second) before the game tries to spawn another caravan after this one has successfully spawned.
• leader – A Caravan Member object that acts as the leader of the caravan. This should be an illager-type mob (including modded ones), a ravager, or at least a witch – only these entities have the necessary AI to travel and lead others.
• members – An array of Caravan Member objects that make up the caravan group.
  • All illager-type members will follow their leader.
  • Animals will be leashed to random illager members (except the leader), forming one or more “trains”.
  • If no illager members are present, animals won’t be leashed to anyone and will not follow the caravan.

{
  "cooldown": 12000,
  "leader": {
    "type": "minecraft:vindicator"
  },
  "members": [
    {
      "type": "minecraft:pillager",
      "count": 2
    },
    {
      "type": "minecraft:llama",
      "armor": "minecraft:orange_carpet",
      "cargo": "caravans:caravans/cargo/gold",
      "count": 2
    }
  ]
}

Caravan Member

A nested object inside a Caravan Variation that defines an entity with optional extra parameters. All fields except type are optional and can be omitted.

• type – The entity ID.
• armor – The armor item worn by the animal (such as horse armor or a carpet for llamas).
• cargo – The loot table for the cargo this animal carries. Only llamas, donkeys, mules, or modded animals with cargo support can use this field.
• count – How many copies of this entity to spawn. If not specified, only one will appear.

{
  "type": "minecraft:llama",
  "armor": "minecraft:orange_carpet",
  "cargo": "caravans:caravans/cargo/gold",
  "count": 2
}

Caravan Placement

Data Pack Directory: data/<modid>/caravans/placement/

• weight – How likely this placement file is to be chosen compared to others. If several placements match the same area, one of them will be picked randomly using these weights.
• biomes – A single biome ID, a biome tag (like #minecraft:is_forest), or a list of them. Caravans from this placement will only spawn in these biomes.
• pools – A list of themed groups of caravan variations.
  • Each pool has its own weight – controlling how often that pool is picked.
  • Inside each pool is a list of variations, each with a variation ID and weight.
  • When a caravan spawns, the game first chooses a random pool based on pool weights, then picks one of that pool’s variations by its own weight.

{
  "weight": 1000,
  "biomes": "#caravans:has_desert_caravan",
  "pools": [
    {
      "weight": 2,
      "variations": [
        {
          "variation": "caravans:desert_gold_tier_1",
          "weight": 5
        },
        {
          "variation": "caravans:desert_gold_tier_2",
          "weight": 3
        },
        {
          "variation": "caravans:desert_gold_tier_3",
          "weight": 1
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "weight": 1,
      "variations": [
        {
          "variation": "caravans:desert_sugar_cane_tier_1",
          "weight": 5
        },
        {
          "variation": "caravans:desert_sugar_cane_tier_2",
          "weight": 3
        },
        {
          "variation": "caravans:desert_sugar_cane_tier_3",
          "weight": 1
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Examples

To see all features in action, check out the built-in Pillager Caravans data pack.

Overriding

If you want to completely disable the built-in caravans, you can override the Caravan Placement files in your data pack. Simply follow the standard Minecraft resource override rules and set the biomes array to empty – this will exclude the file from being used during caravan generation.

Any Questions?

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