I built a fully automatic farm that was working #1 for a couple days. However, today, I mined deep underground for a couple hours, and when I went back I saw some unexplainable things.
First, the villager that was usually harvesting the farm totally disappeared. It is absolutely impossible that a zombie came in an killed him because all the entrances are locked either by iron doors or solid blocks. It is also impossible that a zombie spawned inside because the light level is around 9 24h/24. The only mob that could enter the farm is an Enderman, but usually Endermen and villagers are good buddies, so I doubt an Enderman would kill a poor little villager. Is it possible that villagers can only live a certain amount of time and after that time they simply die of old age?
The other one, for which I really have no clue about, is a duplication of minecarts. At the beginning, I only had one minecart running under my farm to collect the harvested wheat. When I came back for my explorations, there were 3 minecarts on the circuit...... The original minecart was not a simple minecart either, it was a minecart with hopper, and both the new ones spawned with a hopper inside like their mother minecart.
I attached a screenshot showing the 3 minecarts and, at the same time, a part of the underground rail network. I would've liked to take a screenshot of the villager too, but it's kind of hard to screenshot something that is no more there...
If anyone has an idea about what's going on I would be interested to know it, it is getting pretty scary.
If there are any moving pistons, low/slab overhangs or ceilings, water deeper than two blocks, or drops greater than 4 blocks in your autofarm then it is possible that the villager suffocated or drowned or repeatedly fell until it died. But it actually sounds like an error in how the location of entities are being recorded as you move around and world chunks are being loaded and unloaded. That was a big issue with animals - especially chickens - in versions prior to 1.6 (I think). Such a bug could explain a villager simply glitching into a wall and dying, and also multiple minecarts magically appearing on a track where only one had been placed. What version are you using? And did the cloned hopper minecarts also have identical inventories by any chance?
I'm running 1.8.8. I think the most possible thing would be, as you mentioned it, a location error when the chunk was reloaded. My farm is simply a 27x18 rectangle of harvested dirt surrounded by walls ans a 3 blocks high glass roof. I have 6 water spots, but they are only one block deep and covered by a fence to make sure the villager doesn't go for a swim instead of harvesting. I first thought about a zombie siege spawning in the farm, but I saw on the forum that we have to be close to the village to make it happen. Thus I was more than 400 meters away (in Euclidian distance) so it couldn't have happened.
I haven't looked if the cloned hopper minecarts have the same inventory as the original one, but it would be really possible because when I looked in the chest, even before noticing the villager was gone, it seemed to me that it was filling a lot more quickly; I wasn't expecting it to be that full after 2-3 hours of mining underground.
That's pretty bad, because I need a villager with empty inventory, which means that I need to breed villagers, hope a baby farmer will pop out, lead him quickly out of the house before he gets fed by other villagers, give him 8 full stacks of seeds and put him inside the farm. If they all despawn after a certain time it would be really annoying to do all this over and over. It seems pretty simple to do, but trust me, villagers are evil and things go bad 75% of the time. I sometimes just want to throw them in the nether.... Ok... I admit it... I have a nether portal especially done to throw villagers in the lava
Passive mobs like villagers aren't supposed to despawn. Only "Monsters, bats, squids, ocelots, and hostile wolves" and chickens that originally spawn with jockeys on them. I guess you could always use a nametag on your farmer if you wanted to absolutely make sure that natural despawning isn't occurring.
I built a fully automatic farm that was working #1 for a couple days. However, today, I mined deep underground for a couple hours, and when I went back I saw some unexplainable things.
First, the villager that was usually harvesting the farm totally disappeared. It is absolutely impossible that a zombie came in an killed him because all the entrances are locked either by iron doors or solid blocks. It is also impossible that a zombie spawned inside because the light level is around 9 24h/24. The only mob that could enter the farm is an Enderman, but usually Endermen and villagers are good buddies, so I doubt an Enderman would kill a poor little villager. Is it possible that villagers can only live a certain amount of time and after that time they simply die of old age?
The other one, for which I really have no clue about, is a duplication of minecarts. At the beginning, I only had one minecart running under my farm to collect the harvested wheat. When I came back for my explorations, there were 3 minecarts on the circuit...... The original minecart was not a simple minecart either, it was a minecart with hopper, and both the new ones spawned with a hopper inside like their mother minecart.
I attached a screenshot showing the 3 minecarts and, at the same time, a part of the underground rail network. I would've liked to take a screenshot of the villager too, but it's kind of hard to screenshot something that is no more there...
If anyone has an idea about what's going on I would be interested to know it, it is getting pretty scary.
wanna blow me, eh?
If there are any moving pistons, low/slab overhangs or ceilings, water deeper than two blocks, or drops greater than 4 blocks in your autofarm then it is possible that the villager suffocated or drowned or repeatedly fell until it died. But it actually sounds like an error in how the location of entities are being recorded as you move around and world chunks are being loaded and unloaded. That was a big issue with animals - especially chickens - in versions prior to 1.6 (I think). Such a bug could explain a villager simply glitching into a wall and dying, and also multiple minecarts magically appearing on a track where only one had been placed. What version are you using? And did the cloned hopper minecarts also have identical inventories by any chance?
I'm running 1.8.8. I think the most possible thing would be, as you mentioned it, a location error when the chunk was reloaded. My farm is simply a 27x18 rectangle of harvested dirt surrounded by walls ans a 3 blocks high glass roof. I have 6 water spots, but they are only one block deep and covered by a fence to make sure the villager doesn't go for a swim instead of harvesting. I first thought about a zombie siege spawning in the farm, but I saw on the forum that we have to be close to the village to make it happen. Thus I was more than 400 meters away (in Euclidian distance) so it couldn't have happened.
I haven't looked if the cloned hopper minecarts have the same inventory as the original one, but it would be really possible because when I looked in the chest, even before noticing the villager was gone, it seemed to me that it was filling a lot more quickly; I wasn't expecting it to be that full after 2-3 hours of mining underground.
wanna blow me, eh?
That's pretty bad, because I need a villager with empty inventory, which means that I need to breed villagers, hope a baby farmer will pop out, lead him quickly out of the house before he gets fed by other villagers, give him 8 full stacks of seeds and put him inside the farm. If they all despawn after a certain time it would be really annoying to do all this over and over. It seems pretty simple to do, but trust me, villagers are evil and things go bad 75% of the time. I sometimes just want to throw them in the nether.... Ok... I admit it... I have a nether portal especially done to throw villagers in the lava
wanna blow me, eh?
Passive mobs like villagers aren't supposed to despawn. Only "Monsters, bats, squids, ocelots, and hostile wolves" and chickens that originally spawn with jockeys on them. I guess you could always use a nametag on your farmer if you wanted to absolutely make sure that natural despawning isn't occurring.