Minecraft 1.21: How to breed villagers

Minecraft 1.21's villagers haven't changed much, but their usefulness still means that many players try to have as many of them nearby as possible for trading purposes. But how can you breed more villagers beyond what an ordinary village contains? The process might be easier than you think, though village breeding is somewhat different than breeding standard animal mobs.

Even better, villager breeding doesn't require much in the way of resources. As long as they have extra beds to accommodate their offspring and plenty of food to keep them happy, villagers will even breed on their own without much input from the player.

However, it doesn't hurt to examine the process of how to breed villagers in the Minecraft Tricky Trials update in case you're unfamiliar.

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How to breed villagers in Minecraft's Tricky Trials update

Required resources

Villagers need beds and a certain amount of food to breed in Minecraft (Image via Mojang)

To breed any villagers in Minecraft 1.21, you'll need two specific resources. You'll need beds for both the parent villagers and their offspring, as well as certain foods.

Below, you will find the required resources and a brief explanation of how to acquire each one and what the villagers need them for:

• Beds: Crafted by combining three wooden plank blocks with three blocks of wool of the same color. You'll need a bed to accommodate both parent villagers if they don't have assigned beds already as well as a bed for the newborn villager. Be sure to place plenty of them, particularly in an area where the villagers can be safe from hostile mobs, like an existing village building or one of your own creation.
• Carrots: Can be found in village farm plots in plains and snowy villages or grown yourself. They are also occasionally dropped by husks, zombies, and zombie villagers when killed. Villagers can breed if both parents have at least 12 carrots.
• Potatoes: Can grow in snowy, plains, and taiga village farm plots or grown yourself. Can be dropped by zombies, husks, and zombie villagers. Villagers can breed if both parents have at least 12 potatoes in their inventories.
• Beetroots: Found growing in village farm plots and can be grown yourself. Villagers can breed if both parents have at least 12 beetroots in their respective inventories.
• Bread: Crafted by combining three pieces of wheat with a crafting table and can also be looted from chests in dungeons, mineshafts, strongholds, trial chambers, villages, woodland mansions, and the bonus spawn chest. Can be purchased from novice-level farmer villagers with emeralds and is awarded by farmer villagers when you enter a village with the Hero of the Village effect. Villagers can breed if both parents have at least three bread pieces in their respective inventories.

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How to make villagers breed in Minecraft 1.21

Two villagers breeding in the Minecraft 1.21 update (Image via Mojang)

To breed villagers in Minecraft 1.21, you'll need the foods and beds mentioned above, as well as two villagers in close proximity to each other. As long as the two villagers remain close to each other and have enough food and extra beds, they'll eventually consume the food in their inventory and enter love mode. They will then breed and create a baby villager.

Here are the steps for villager breeding in Minecraft 1.21 if you don't want to wait for the villagers to carry it out of their own volition:

1. With the extra beds placed, bring two villagers close together any way you see fit. You can nudge villagers to make them move or nudge them into boats and row the boat to an area or drag it with a lead before breaking the boat to free the villagers.
2. Throw the necessary food items onto the ground near the villagers. They should pick them up and add them to their inventories if the loose food items are close enough to them.
3. Keep the villagers as close together as possible during this time. Seal the villagers in with fences or other blocks if you need to. Otherwise, the villagers may roam about and not be close enough to each other to breed and the process will be drawn out.
4. Eventually, the villagers will consume their food and enter love mode, then breed and produce a baby villager.

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A final note on villager breeding and the hidden willingness stat in Minecraft 1.21

Baby villagers as seen in Minecraft (Image via Mojang)

Villagers require food items to breed in Minecraft 1.21 due to a hidden "willingness" stat that increases when they consume the food. However, there are certain things that can cause the desire to breed to halt even if the willingness stat is high enough.

Specifically, if you directly kill villagers or destroy significant amounts of a village, villagers will enter a "mourning" state where they cannot breed for a time.

Moreover, you must ensure that your mob griefing game rule in your Minecraft session is set to true instead of false, and this can be changed with the /gamerule mobGriefing command. If set to false, villagers won't break crop blocks to collect food from farms or pick up food items from the ground.