Towns, taverns and treasures: Minecraft villages and structures worth exploring

In vanilla, exploring rarely pays off: villages all look about the same, and most chests hold bones and rotten flesh. So I made the trip worth it: rare towns, taverns instead of churches, stone brick houses, furnished mansions and real treasures. All of it with vanilla blocks and vanilla loot, in the land you haven't explored yet.

Download .jar CurseForge

Part of Cassonade, a free vanilla+ mod for Minecraft 26.3 (Fabric)

A snowy town seen from above, its streets lined with houses close together

A pirate's booty in a lush cave: barrels piled on the moss under glow berries

How it works

Exploring finally pays off: bigger villages, taverns, and treasures worth the trip.

Villages

Towns: now and then, about one village in ten, a town stands in its place: its streets run three times as far, lined with houses close together, none on top of another. Cartographers' village maps and /locate find them as they find villages.
Market squares: a town's heart is a market square around its bell, with four stalls under striped wool awnings, goods on their counters and barrels of produce. One stall is left bare: a wandering trader who comes to town sets up there and stays, instead of roaming the streets.
Lamp posts: lanterns on posts along the streets instead of torches on a fence, in the village's wood or stone, never in the middle of a path. In a zombie village, they are dark.
Taverns take the place of churches, in the village's materials, a long hall along the street behind a tower that is their porch: a bar with kegs in the wall, some holding food and drink and one the church's loot, the brewing stand set in the counter, tables, a fireplace and hanging lanterns.
Small inns: where the biome has a small church too (plains, desert, savanna), it becomes an inn, the same hall without the tower, its door under an awning, a short counter with three kegs and a single table by the fire.
The tavern keeper: the cleric wears a green waistcoat and a cream apron, with the same trades. The kegs don't make fishermen.
Evenings at the tavern: when villagers meet at the bell in the late afternoon, they meet in the tavern instead, as long as its fire burns. They chat between the tables and sip their drinks. Put the fire out and they go back to the bell.
Houses are built mostly of stone bricks rather than cobblestone, some mossy or cracked, with a little cobblestone left, and on a slope their foundations go down to the ground. In a zombie village, the bricks are mossy, the tavern's fire and candles are out and its lanterns gone.

Treasures

Woodland mansions: stone brick walls, candles, flowers and hanging lanterns in the rooms, lanterns instead of torches, barrels in rooms and corridors, and no empty chest. Their chests also hold emeralds, diamonds, enchanted books and rare treasures, and their barrels up to two backpack upgrade templates.
Jungle temples: two more treasures in each chest, emeralds, diamonds, enchanted books, gold blocks, golden apples, and rarely netherite scrap or an enchanted golden apple.
Pillager outposts: one or two more treasures in their chest, since you have to beat the pillagers first: emeralds, diamonds, enchanted books, an enchanted crossbow, golden apples, and rarely diamond horse armor or an enchanted golden apple.
Desert pyramids: one more treasure in each of the four chests, emeralds, diamonds, enchanted books, gold blocks or golden apples.
Igloos: you find them early, so the treasure stays modest: emeralds, an enchanted book, a Frost Walker book, a splash potion of Weakness to cure the zombie villager in the basement, or a diamond or two.
Ocean monuments: past the elder guardians, deep under the murky sea, barrels in the corners of the treasure room, around the gold blocks: gold, prismarine crystals, emeralds, diamonds, enchanted books, and rarely diamond nautilus armor, a heart of the sea, netherite scrap, an enchanted trident or an enchanted golden apple. Finally a reason to go down there.
A pirate's booty: very rarely, a lush cave hides a pile of barrels on its floor, full of gold, emeralds, diamonds and enchanted books, sometimes a spyglass or an enchanted diamond sword, and more rarely a heart of the sea, netherite scrap or an enchanted golden apple.
A pirate's map: now and then, a shipwreck's map chest holds one besides the treasure map, a red X on the nearest booty. So the shipwreck leads you to the cave.

Mineshafts

Miners' camps: one or two to an abandoned mineshaft, left in a corridor without rails: a straw bed against one wall, a cold campfire and a barrel against the other, with the miners' things: torches, coal, raw ores, rails, food, often a worn pickaxe.

Lighthouses

On the coasts: rarely, on a beach or a stony shore, a lighthouse looks out to sea: a white tower on a stone base, its lamp under a green copper roof, and the keeper's cottage against it.
The keeper: a fisherman lives in the cottage, with a chest of supplies, now and then with a pirate's map in it.
Up by the lamp: a barrel often holds a spyglass, and rarely a naturalist's spyglass.
At night: from far out at sea, well past the land the game draws, you see its light flash every few seconds as the turning beam sweeps past you. A landmark to sail home by.

Questions

How do I find a town?

Explore: about one village in ten is a town, in every biome villages grow in. A cartographer's village map can lead to one. Only land never visited before can hold one.

Do I need a new world?

Towns, taverns, lighthouses, miners' camps, the new houses and mansions, the monuments' barrels and the pirate's booty only show up in land never visited before: in an old world, go explore further out. Chests nobody has opened yet still get the richer loot.

Doesn't richer loot make the game easier?

Not really: it's vanilla items, in places you have to find first, often far away or deep down. A better reward for a long trip, not a shortcut at the start.

Does it work in multiplayer?

Yes, with Cassonade on the server, which builds the world and tells your game where the lighthouses shine. On a server without the mod, villages and structures stay vanilla.