Dial-A-Zombie
Part 10 ~ 12 July 2025
Played: 21 March 2025
Been busy as a beaver working in town today! In fact, aside from a short trip to the nether for glowstone, I haven't left the local area.
First thing's first, rebuilding the stable with slightly more humane dimensions. I went with a 6 by 6 fence and a 2-wide gate. I even sprang for packed mud floors (something of a pain to gather in early game), plus hay and water in each pen. My horsey friends are gonna be living in luxury – at least compared to the villagers, sheep, and chickens XD
With that taken care of, it's on to today's main task: raising the undead. There's a convenient zombie spawner below the river, just a few blocks northeast of the villager breeder. With a bit of finesse, I can use this to grab a zombie whenever I want one, rather than hoping for random spawns at night. So it's time to break the number one rule of Minecraft and DIG STRAIGHT DOWN! :D
Here's my cheeky little setup. A 1-wide corridor leading to a bubble column, with a 1.5-high clearance to the sides so I can escape by crouching. The zombie tries to path out through the back but instead gets whisked away to the surface, where it's trapped in a box with an iron door! A redstone lamp toggles the spawner activity; a quick off-on usually spawns one or two zombies which is easily manageable. I dub this contraption the Zombie Well :)
With one zombie – holding an item so as not to despawn – in containment, I readied the village for zombie invasion. Specifically, my farmers got an anti-sunlight roof, and were loaded into separate boats. (Pro tip: use chest boats so the zombie doesn't hop in with them. Yes, I totally thought of this in advance and didn't end up running around breaking boats and crafting chest boats during the zombie attack.) And with that done, night fell, and I led the zombie to my unsuspecting villagers – first the farmers, and then into the foundry for the three smiths and fletcher. Ain't I mean? Well, yeah. I said as much back on day 4. Keep up!
But not to worry! Where I bring the disease, I also bring the cure! After unlocking brewing via the nether fortress, I cooked up a batch of weakness potions, and I've looted some gold apples from chests here and there. So with the zombie safely stashed in the back of the foundry, I worked my magic and got my villagers back to prime trading condition. And as a reward for my effort (and definitely NOT any sort of good karma) I now get crazy discounts on trades! Iron now sells at 1 for 1 emerald, and gold carrots cost only 1 emerald for 3. Which is nice, because that's the primary food source for my horses, and also for me once I'm out of porkchops...
