Overview
Village & Pillage, numbered 1.14, remains the largest single change to survival gameplay outside the Nether Update, because it rebuilt the part of the game players interact with most. Before it, villagers traded from a fixed table and had no visible logic. After it, every villager takes a profession from a job site block, levels up through five tiers as you trade, unlocks new offers at each tier, and can be employed, unemployed and re-employed by moving a block. That turned trading from a lottery into a system you design: a Librarian beside a lectern you keep breaking and replacing will eventually offer whatever enchanted book you want. Raids gave villages stakes — pillagers, ravagers and the Bad Omen chain mean a village is something you defend rather than loot. And the update quietly filled a decade of gaps in the block list: blast furnace, smoker, composter, grindstone, stonecutter, loom, barrel, cartography table, lectern, bell, lantern, campfire, scaffolding. Bamboo and sweet berries arrived as renewable resources, crossbows as a real ranged alternative, and every stone type finally got its stairs and slabs.
A real trading economy with professions, levels and reroll-able offers; raids as a repeatable source of totems and emeralds; a dozen utility blocks that had been missing since launch; and five distinct village architectures instead of one generic layout.
Village & Pillage rebuilt the most-used part of the game from scratch. Villagers gained real professions anchored to workstation blocks, with visible levels and trade unlocks that turned trading into a progression system. Raids gave villages stakes, and the new workstations filled in a decade of missing utility blocks. It remains the largest single update to survival gameplay outside the Nether Update.
How to get it
Java Edition 1.14 was released on 23 April 2019, and 1.14.4 is the build to run — the early 1.14 releases had serious performance problems that took 4 point releases to settle. Villager trading changes from this version apply to every release since.
Tips
- Break and replace an unemployed villager's job site block to reroll its trades — this is the basis of every trading hall.
- A villager must be traded with at least 1 time to lock its profession; before that it will happily change jobs.
- Raids come in waves and the ravager appears from wave 3, so build a defensible choke point before deliberately triggering one.
- Run 1.14.4 rather than 1.14 or 1.14.1 if you care about tick performance; the early builds were noticeably worse.
Version notes
Released 23 April 2019. Rebuilt villages and villager trading, added pillagers, ravagers, raids and outposts, wandering traders, pandas, foxes and cats, and roughly a dozen workstation blocks.
What it added
- Villages completely rebuilt with plains, desert, savanna, taiga and snowy variants
- Villager professions tied to job site blocks, with levelling and trade unlocking
- Pillagers, ravagers, raids and pillager outposts
- Wandering traders and trader llamas
- Pandas, foxes and cats split out from ocelots
- A dozen new workstation blocks: blast furnace, smoker, composter, grindstone, stonecutter, loom, barrel, cartography table and more
- Bamboo, scaffolding, lanterns, campfires, bells and sweet berries
- Crossbows and the new stone-type stair and slab families
Properties
Minecraft 1.14 was released on April 23, 2019 as a major release. It added 7 mobs, 17 blocks and items the site documents, and 1 generated structures.
- New blocks and items
- 17
- New structures
- 1
New mobs
Pillager, Ravager, Panda, Fox, Cat, Wandering Trader and 1 more arrived in this release.
New blocks and items
Blast Furnace, Smoker, Composter, Grindstone, Stonecutter, Loom and 11 more were added, and each has its own page with the recipe, the drops and the break times.
New structures
Pillager Outpost first generated in 1.14.
- Pillager Outpost — A dark oak watchtower flying an ominous banner, surrounded by tents, log piles, and often a cage holding an iron golem or, beneath the tower, cages containing allays.
Where it sits in the release line
1.14 sits 14 of 28 in the release list this site covers, with 1.15 after it and 1.13 before.
Worlds always upgrade forwards and never downgrade: a world opened in a newer version cannot be opened in an older one again, so back it up before the first launch on a new release.
| Version | Name | Released | Type | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Minecraft 1.15 | Buzzy Bees | December 10, 2019 | Major release |
 | Minecraft 1.14 ← | Village & Pillage | April 23, 2019 | Major release |
 | Minecraft 1.13 | Update Aquatic | July 18, 2018 | Major release |
Guides and tools that cover this
Frequently asked questions
How do villager professions work after 1.14?
An unemployed villager claims a nearby job site block and takes the matching profession. Remove the block before the first trade and it becomes unemployed again, which is how trades are rerolled.
What triggers a raid?
Entering a village while carrying Bad Omen. In 1.14 that came from killing a raid captain; since 1.21 the captain drops an Ominous Bottle you drink when you choose.
Why is 1.14.4 recommended over 1.14?
The initial 1.14 builds had significant server tick performance issues, particularly around villager pathfinding. The point releases fixed most of them.
What did Minecraft 1.14 add?
Villages completely rebuilt with plains, desert, savanna, taiga and snowy variants Villager professions tied to job site blocks, with levelling and trade unlocking Pillagers, ravagers, raids and pillager outposts
When was Minecraft 1.14 released?
Java Edition 1.14 was released on April 23, 2019. Bedrock dates for the same content often differ by days or weeks.