🔔 Villagers Reborn

An emptied village can come back. On a server, villages get wiped out: raids, zombies, a careless trade hall. If the village still has its bell and some free beds, Villagers Reborn brings villagers home again at nightfall. A small, self-contained datapack for Minecraft 26.3. No mods, no resource pack, nothing to craft.

🏘️ What it does

At nightfall, if you are near a village that has:

• a bell,
• 2 or more free beds, and
• fewer than 2 villagers around the bell,

then one villager appears, standing on one of those free beds. It is an ordinary villager: it already knows its bed and the bell, and from there the village grows the usual vanilla way.

To rebuild a ruined village: put up a bell, place a few beds, and be nearby when night falls.

🌙 How it works

• Once a night, per player. As night falls in the Overworld, the pack looks around each player (spectators are skipped).
• It uses the villagers' own logic. Rather than scanning blocks, the pack lets a few hidden probe villagers do what villagers always do: look for an unclaimed bed and a bell they can walk to. If the probe villagers find a bell and at least two free beds, one of them stays as your new villager and the rest quietly vanish. If they find nothing, they are gone within about ten seconds, and within thirty at most.
• A bed someone sleeps in is not free. A bed that an online player has set as their respawn point does not count as one of the two free beds, and no villager is placed on it.
• "Nearby" means walkable. The bed and the bell need to be within about 48 blocks of you and reachable on foot, the same way a real villager would judge it.

⏳ Pacing

Each bell brings back two villagers over two nights, one per night, and then rests for 30 nights before it will do so again. A village is not a villager farm. Moving the bell a few blocks does not reset the rest.

🎆 You will know when it happens

When a villager returns, a firework bursts over the bell, gold and green. The rocket launches from the top of the column above the bell (on the roof, if the bell is under one). If a player is within 8 blocks of that launch point, it is sparkles and the firework sound instead of a rocket, so nobody takes damage.

Players within 64 blocks of the bell also see "A villager has returned to the village" on their action bar, and the first time, a Village Reborn advancement toast. Nobody else on the server is told; there is no chat message.

🪶 Light on your server

There is no tick loop. Nothing runs every tick and nothing scans the world. The check starts from the game's own once-a-night event for each player. A short check runs every two seconds only while probe villagers are out, for at most thirty seconds, and then stops by itself. Each bell's record is kept on an invisible marker that the game never ticks.

📦 Installing

Drop the zip into your world's datapacks folder (or your server's) and /reload. It works on existing worlds.

🧹 Removing it

Run this before deleting the pack:

/function elkonia:villagers_reborn/admin/uninstall

Then remove the zip. Villagers that already came back stay, as ordinary villagers. A Village Reborn advancement that someone already earned stays earned.

The uninstall only reaches loaded chunks. Bell markers and probe villagers in unloaded chunks stay behind. The markers are invisible and do nothing. A leftover probe villager is harmless: it is invisible until its effect runs out, and after that it is a quiet villager that cannot be hurt. Probe villagers only exist for the thirty seconds after nightfall, so leftovers are rare.

⚠️ Known limits

• Only you count, not the whole server. The check happens around each online player. A village nobody visits at night will not repopulate.
• A lively village next door can hide an empty one. If 2 or more villagers are within 50 blocks of you at nightfall, that night's check is skipped, even if the empty village's bell is further off.
• The day and night cycle must be running in the Overworld. With the daylight cycle turned off, night never "falls" and nothing happens.
• Offline players' beds count as free. A datapack cannot see where an offline player respawns, so their bed may be given to a villager.
• A probe villager may pick a player's bed while another free bed goes unclaimed. In a village with exactly two free beds plus players' beds, that night may be skipped; it will try again the next.
• A probe villager may lie in a player's bed for up to thirty seconds at dusk before it is removed.
• Out in the wild at dusk, a few invisible probe villagers appear by you for up to ten seconds, find no bell, and vanish. You will not see or hear them.
• Villagers count as "present" only within 50 blocks of the bell. Villagers further out do not stop a new one arriving.
• Two bells more than 16 blocks apart are two villages, each with its own two villagers and its own rest. Two players far apart around the same bell can also use up two nights' worth in one night.
• Rewinding time with /time set can cut a bell's rest short.
• Server logs show one ordinary "Villager died" line for each probe villager that is removed. That is normal.
• The firework can be set off higher up by a phantom or someone flying through it with elytra. Harmless, just early.

Requires: Minecraft 26.3 only. Vanilla, no mods, no loaders, server-side only.