Best ways to find villages in Minecraft 1.20 

Villages are some of the most visited structures in Minecraft's realm. While encountering structures in the Overworld is fun and exciting, what truly drives players to explore them is the great starter loot they hold. Food and wood are some of the most necessary items during the early days of a survival journey, and the villages provide them with ease.

Though these are quite commonly seen in the game, there are ways to make the process of locating them much faster and more convenient. In this article, we delve into the various ways to locate a village in the Minecraft 1.20 update.

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Guide to quickly locating a village in Minecraft 1.20

Aside from the loot, the mobs in Minecraft's villages can be of significant help in players' quest to acquire rare and useful items.

Villages are inhabited by some of the most valuable mobs known as villagers. These remarkable passive entities can be transformed into employed traders, some of whom may offer rare and hard-to-obtain items.

However, to engage in trading within villages, players must first locate one. Here are some of the best methods to quickly find one:

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Use commands

Using the /locate command to find a plains biome village (Image via Mojang)

Commands in Minecraft essentially function as cheat codes and are integrated into the vanilla version of the game. It's important to note that players can only take advantage of this feature if cheats are enabled in their world.

With cheats enabled, locating not just villages but any structure in the game becomes a breeze. All players need to do is open their chat window and type "/locate structure minecraft:village_type."

In this command, they must specify the type of village they are trying to find, with options including plains, taiga, desert, savanna, and snowy. When entered correctly, the game will provide the coordinates of the nearest village matching the player's specified type.

A temporary LAN world can have cheats enabled (Image via Mojang)

For Java Edition players seeking to use this command in a world where cheats are initially disabled, there's a simple trick to temporarily enable them. Upon loading the world, they need to pause the game and go to the "Open to LAN" option. Here, they can create a LAN world with cheats enabled.

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Explore the plains and desert biome

Plains and desert biome villages (Image via Mojang)

To increase their chances of finding villages in Minecraft, players should concentrate their exploration efforts in flat biomes such as deserts and plains.

Villages are more commonly generated in these areas due to the spacious terrain, making it easier for gamers to spot the distinct village structures. This focused approach enhances their odds of discovering villages, ensuring a productive and enjoyable adventure.

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Use a custom seed

Entering a seed on the world creation screen (Image via Mojang)

Players beginning a new world have the option to use a custom seed that generates a world with a village either at the spawn point or very close to it. Numerous such seeds for Minecraft 1.20 are readily accessible on the internet, enabling players to simply copy and paste them into the world creation screen.

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Use a seed map

A seed map (Image via Chunkbase)

Many players may have already established a base and invested a significant amount of time in their Minecraft world. Now, they are keen to find and explore nearby villages.

To simplify this task, they can utilize a seed map, an online tool that requires them to enter their world seed, game version, and edition. It then provides them with a map of their world, allowing them to easily browse and record the coordinates of villages and other nearby structures.