Helpful Villagers — 1.12.2 Forward-Port

A Minecraft Forge 1.12.2 forward-port of WeaselNinja's "Helpful Villagers" mod (originally for 1.7.10), made with the original author's permission and extended with new content. Put those lazy villagers to work: vanilla villagers are replaced with recruitable profession villagers that gather resources, fight, craft, fish, ranch and trade.

Original mod © WeaselNinja (MIT). 1.12.2 port and additions by Isuth. See LICENSE.

Professions

Regular, Lumberjack, Miner, Farmer, Soldier, Archer, Merchant, Fisherman, Rancher, Builder (ported from upstream 1.4.0b5) and Cleric (new in this port).

Each village forms around guild halls (an item frame holding a profession marker next to a door); villagers gather materials, return to store and craft, and defend the settlement.

What this port adds beyond the original

• Reworked guard AI (Soldier & Archer) — vanilla-style target/attack task split: weapon-based damage with cooldowns, bow draw + strafing/kiting, creeper handling, village-door patrol routes, and a guild-hall resupply loop (tools, armour, arrows).
• Shields for soldiers (offhand slot, blocking, sourced from chests or the craft queue).
• Cleric profession — heals (splash potions) and cleanses villagers using essence brewed from mob drops at a brewing stand, shadows the guards, and enchants + repairs their gear at kill-count milestones.
• General villager AI hardening — door pathing fixes and an anti-stuck watchdog for all professions.

Building

Requires JDK 8 (ForgeGradle 3 / Gradle 4.9 do not run on newer JDKs).

./gradlew build        # Linux/macOS
.\gradlew.bat build    # Windows

The reobfuscated mod jar lands in build/libs/. Forge 1.12.2-14.23.5.2860, MCP mappings snapshot 20171003-1.12.

Repository layout

src/main/java/com/spege/helpfulvillagers/   the 1.12.2 mod source (entity, ai, village, econ,
                                            crafting, inventory, network, gui, renderer, util)
src/main/resources/                          assets, lang, mcmod.info
docs/superpowers/                            design specs and implementation plans
notes/                                       development log (notes/CLAUDE.md) and tooling

Credits

• WeaselNinja — original "Helpful Villagers" mod (MIT).
• Isuth — 1.12.2 forward-port and new content.