Minecraft has been carefully designed to provide a complete open-world experience to its player base. You have many options to do whatever you want in the game. However, can the same be said for the in-game NPCs like Villagers?
Surprisingly, the Villagers can behave just like the player and perform basic actions like working and jumping. However, can they do complex tasks like climbing ladders?
As it turns out, Villagers in Minecraft can climb Ladders. However, they’re programmed to ignore such areas and pathfind towards other places instead. They will climb ladders if all other paths are closed.
The possibility of Villager pathfinding to a Ladder is so minuscule that adding it to the equation is hard. Therefore, you should know how the mechanic works in its essence.
Ladders in Minecraft
As the name might suggest, these ladders are solid block structures that are generally used for climbing vertical distances. They’re key in the early portions of the game and can be placed on almost all forms of blocks.
Furthermore, they can also be used to cushion a player’s impact after a free fall. This is because falling on a ladder causes your falling speed to be reset to descend from a ladder. As you would expect, there is no falling damage at that speed, so you come out unscathed.
How Does Climbing Work in Ladders
The climbing mechanic in a ladder works a tad differently than one might expect. For example, the jump button ascends the player instead of the usual movement keys. Consequently, the horizontal motion will eject a player from the ladder block after a while.
That being said, the ascent and descent speeds of the ladder remain constant in most cases. Therefore, normal actions like consuming foods or blocking are not affected.
Villager Movements In Minecraft
The Villagers are programmed to stay close to a village at most times. However, there have been instances where they might wander around. These mobile NPCs can pathfind pretty well around certain obstructions.
Like the mob movement system, it’ll be extremely rare to see a Villager falling off cliffs or jumping into harmful blocks in an unrestricted environment. These Villagers are not supposed to trespass the 32-block area around a village. If such an anomaly occurs, they’ll try to run back to the village as soon as possible.
Villager: Pathfinding
A Villager can open all wooden doors to cross through. However, the mechanic is only limited to such doors. As mentioned, Villagers can climb ladders, but they’re programmed to avoid them as much as possible. Therefore, any climbing activities result from a natural mob obstruction or an artificial barricade.
A Villager won’t climb such ladders if not connected to the ground. This is because they would need to perform complex movements that require them to jump and grab the ladder at the perfect time. While this may sound easy for a player, it’s extremely hard to implement in an AI.
Can Villagers Descend Ladders?
Unfortunately, descending the ladders is not programmed in Villager’s AI. Therefore, it’s common to see them getting stuck after ascending a floor. This behavior can also be seen in some natural villages.
You might see many Villagers stranded on the roofs of village structures, seemingly unable to get off. While this can be mitigated by installing trapdoors for the Villagers to fall through, it’s still an unnecessary chore.
How to Stop a Villager From Pathfinding?
A Villager can be stopped by making a barricade around the Villager. This should consist of solid blocks placed close to the NPC to restrict its movements. While it will restrict it from jumping up and down ladders, it’s unnecessary and can render the Villager useless.
Therefore, it’s only recommended if you have a bigger construction that can better utilize this restriction. For example, you can build Villager trading halls to remove the hassle of going to a village whenever you want to trade.
Forcing Villagers To Climb Ladders
It’s not hard to make Villagers climb these blocks since a simple push will do the job most of the time. However, there are extreme methods as well that include blocking every other block path. Despite this, you can also cause an orchestrated emergency that would make the villagers go a specific way no matter what.
However, such brute methods are rather unnecessary in most cases. Furthermore, you can always use job sites to lure the villagers toward a specific direction. Whenever a Villager notices it, it’ll change its job and move towards it.
Consequently, rails can also move Villagers to a certain location. While the method can be labeled “foolproof,” it takes too many resources for a one-time effort. Therefore, we recommend this method if Villager trafficking is your hobby.
Can You Use Leads on Villagers?
In the Bedrock Edition, it’s possible to put a lead on old Villagers to make them follow you wherever you want. While the method is rather crude, it works like a charm. Unfortunately, it’s not possible to do the same for other Villagers.
Therefore, your best bet is to go for other forms of forced movement control. You can put a lead on multiple old Villagers at a time, so moving large groups at once is possible. However, you will need to have a leash for every Villager.
Villagers can move up and down a ladder, but it can only be done forcibly. Therefore, it’s generally recommended to use rails or job site luring methods instead of ladders.
However, it’s undeniably the cheapest method because you can afford a villager accidentally perishing.