Zombie Siege

A Zombie Siege is a coordinated nighttime attack on a village by a hoard of about 20-30 zombies.

Mechanics and Gameplay

File:Find the Halflings!.png

A group of zombies swarming a villager's home

 At midnight each night, there is a 10% chance for the game to attempt to cause a zombie siege that night. If the game decides to start a siege, attempts are made each tick to start the siege until either a siege is successfully started or the sun rises. Specifically, the siege attempt is abandoned when the light level reaches 12. However, bad weather can allow siege start attempts to continue well past sunrise, since it reduces the sky's light level.

Zombie Siege Requirements

The player must be inside the villlage for a siege to be attempted. If the considered village has less than 10 beds or less than 20 villagers, the next player's village is considered.

When a village is chosen as the site of a siege, attempts are made by the game to select a random siege starting point on a circle with a radius nearly equal that of the village's size. If all ten of the attempts fail, the entire siege attempt will fail, but another siege may be tried on the next game tick that passes.

If a valid siege starting point is found, a location is chosen. If the game succeeds in finding a valid zombie spawn point, the siege is started at the selected point. Otherwise, the next player's village is considered for a siege.

Siege Gameplay

Zombies will pound on the doors of buildings in an effort to break-in. If the game is set to Hard difficulty, zombies will eventually break down the door, and attack villagers as they flee. Usually, a group of zombies will gather around the door to a single building, leaving other houses open for villagers to run into. Zombie Villagers may also appear when a villager is killed by a zombie. There is a 50% chance on normal difficulty and 100% on hard that a Villager will become a Zombie Villager when killed by a Zombie. If a baby villager is killed during a siege, it may become a baby zombie villager.

When this game mechanic was added, it was accompanied by the addition of a village-defending mob: the iron golem. Iron golems will attack any zombies on sight.

History

Notch intended to add this event as a possible feature during the early stages of Minecraft. The idea of sieges, with the usage of NPC villages, was added in the 12w07b Snapshot for update 1.2.

Iron golems were added in the 12w08a snapshot a week later.

As of snapshot 12w32a, zombies are now potentially stronger because of the addition to mob armor and mob weaponry.

Gallery

• Siege Villagers.png

  Coward villagers

• Zombie Siege.png

  ATTACK

• Iron Golem Defense.png

  Imma ragdoll these zombies

• Zombiesiege.jpg

  OMG so many zombies.