How to find pillager outposts in Minecraft 1.19 update

Minecraft 1.19 added a lot of interesting and exciting features, including, but not limited to: mangrove swamps, mud, ancient cities, the warden, the allay, the deep dark cave biome, frogs, frog lights, and tadpoles. The most interesting of these features, for the more mechanically minded players, is the allay, which can pick up and return items to players.

One of the best places to find the new allay, a very exciting and useful mob for the automation of item sorting, are pillager outposts. But that begs the question, how can players find pillager outposts?

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The best method of finding pillager outposts in Minecraft

The biomes

A pillager outpost on the edge of a canyon (Image via Minecraft)

The first thing that players need to know when looking for a pillager outpost are the biomes that can generate them. The full list of biomes that can contain a pillager outpost are: deserts, plains, meadows, groves, snowy slopes, jagged peaks, frozen peaks, stony peaks, savannahs, snowy taiga (BE), snowy plains, sunflower plains (BE), and taigas. BE refers to a Bedrock exclusive.

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Quirks of generation

A pillager outpost in Bedrock, spawned in the middle of a village (Image via Minecraft)

There are also a few different quirks of generation that impact the abilities of different versions of the game to generate pillager outposts. For example, in the Java Edition of the game, pillager outposts are unable to spawn close to or within villages, whereas Bedrock Edition does not have this limitation, meaning that pillager outposts are able to spawn in the middle of villages.

In the Java Edition of the game, if a pillager outpost spawns in water or air, a platform of either grass, sand, dirt, or stone will spawn underneath it in a circular shape. This also applies to any of the smaller structures that spawn around the main outpost. If the outpost spawns high enough up, these pillars can also have air beneath them.

In the Bedrock Edition of the game, the foundation that is generated beneath the outpost is similar to that of a woodland mansion. The watchtower uses cobblestone, birch planks, and dark oak logs. The tents and cages use dark oak planks as their foundation. Targets use cobblestone as a foundation.

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How to find them

A player flying with an elytra through a desert (Image via Minecraft)

Now that players know what biomes pillager outposts spawn in, as well as the quirks of generation that they have, it's time to go find one.

Because there is only one predominantly wooded biome that pillager outposts can spawn in (two if on Bedrock Edition), finding an outpost should be quite simple.

The easiest method to find one is to fly through the air using an elytra and firework rockets, low to the ground, and over expanses of the biomes they can spawn in. This will allow players to cover a lot of area in little time, and they should soon run into an outpost, so long as they are focused on flying over the right biomes.

Players that do not have access to an elytra can use the basic idea of the above method, swapping out the elytra and firework rockets with a fast horse, which will also allow players to cover a lot of ground in very little time.