Villages are the fastest early-game start there is: beds, food, an anvil if you are lucky, and trades that carry a whole playthrough. The map plots the villages around your spawn so you can pick a seed that starts you next to one instead of walking for twenty minutes.

• The biome decides the village variant — plains, desert, savanna, taiga and snowy villages each build differently and stock different trades.
• A village generated in or next to a dark biome can spawn as a zombie village instead, which is rarer and comes with its own loot.