TONI’s Better Pillager Outposts: Fortified War Camps (Forge/Fabric)

Pillager outposts worth raiding

The vanilla pillager outpost is one tower, one chest and a cage. Better Pillager Outposts replaces it with the place the raid captains actually come from: a fortified war camp with curtain walls, four corner towers, a gatehouse with a portcullis, a four storey keep, a dungeon under it and a ring of camps, pens and siege works outside the walls.

Every outpost is assembled from jigsaw pieces, so no two are laid out the same, and it is built in the style of the biome it stands in – dark oak and birch on the plains, spruce in the taiga, sandstone in the desert, acacia and granite on the savanna, and frost-bitten stone in the snow.

It only changes world generation: server-side, nothing to install on clients, and outposts keep their vanilla spacing, rarity and distance from villages. On Fabric it needs Fabric API, like most Fabric mods.

At a glance

• Walled compound – log palisade on a stone footing, four octagonal towers with timber watch rooms, a wall walk all the way round.
• Gatehouse – two fighting towers, a half-raised portcullis, murder holes and a road of banner masts.
• Four storey keep – war hall, barracks, armoury and captain’s hall under a battlemented deck with a bell turret and four roofed lookouts.
• Dungeon – prison cells with villagers to free, a store room and a vault behind an iron door.
• Random annexes – ravager pen, prisoner cages, tent camps, archery range, siege workshop, lumber yard, watchtower; the gate road ends in a forward camp, a siege line or a scout post.
• Five biome styles – plains, taiga, desert, savanna and snowy.
• Ten loot tables, plus the vanilla outpost table in the best chests.
• 134 ports – every Minecraft version from 1.16.2 to 26.3 on Fabric and Quilt, Forge wherever it exists, NeoForge from 1.20.1.

The Keep

The keep rises from a stone base into two jettied timber storeys and a battlemented deck with four roofed lookouts and a bell turret. Climb it floor by floor:

• War hall – a long map table, the outpost’s orders and the war chest.
• Barracks – bunks, footlockers and a vindicator who did not expect visitors.
• Armoury – fletching benches, an anvil, a grindstone, armour on stands and the arsenal chest.
• Captain’s hall – a library, a lectern, a trophy corner, a jukebox and the captain’s own strongbox.
• The deck – braziers, archers and the patrol captain himself, banner on his head.

Walls and Gate

A log palisade on a battered stone footing runs between four octagonal towers, each with a timber watch room and a tall hipped roof. A wall walk joins them all. The gatehouse has two fighting towers, a half-raised portcullis, murder holes and a room over the gate passage. Ominous banners hang everywhere you look.

Inside the walls: a smithy with blast furnaces and a quenching trough, an archery yard, a mess fire and tent, a supply depot stacked with barrels and hay, and a well behind the keep.

The Dungeon

A trapdoor in the war hall drops into the dungeon: a guard room, a corridor of iron-barred cells with villagers waiting to be let out, an interrogation room, a store room – and behind an iron door, the vault.

Outside The Walls

Up to five annexes hang off the walls, picked at random, plus a road to the gate that ends somewhere different each time:

• Ravager pen – a stockade with a live ravager and its feed store.
• Prisoner cages – an iron golem, captured villagers and (1.20+) allays.
• Tent camp and forward camp – bedrolls, cook fires and supply barrels.
• Archery range – butts, targets and practice dummies.
• Siege workshop and siege line – catapults under construction and ready to fire.
• Lumber yard and watchtower – timber piles and a tall lookout.
• Scout post – a stilted lookout with a beacon fire at the end of the road.

Five Biomes

The same fortress, five ways. Outposts in deserts, savannas, taigas and snowy biomes get their own style; plains, meadows, cherry groves and anything a biome mod adds to the outpost list get the classic dark oak and birch.

Loot

Each room has its own loot table: the war chest, barracks lockers, the arsenal, the forge, supply barrels, camp stores, prison scraps, the captain’s strongbox and the vault. The richest chests also roll the vanilla outpost table, so goat horns, sentry trims and the rest still turn up on the versions that have them.

Compatibility

One jar per Minecraft version and loader – pick the file that matches your game. Every version from 1.16.2 to 26.3 is covered: Fabric and Quilt (needs Fabric API / QFAPI) on all of them, Forge on every version Forge was released for, and NeoForge from 1.20.1 on.

The mod is entirely data driven – structures, template pools, processors, loot tables and biome tags – so it is safe on servers (clients do not need it) and can be tweaked with a data pack.

• Replaces vanilla outposts in newly generated chunks; existing outposts are left alone.
• Keeps vanilla spacing, rarity and the distance from villages. /locate finds them as usual.
• Pillagers keep spawning around the outpost, and a few vindicators join them in the dark.
• 1.18.2 and newer: five biome styles. 1.16.2 – 1.18.1: the classic style everywhere (older versions cannot pick by biome).
• Biome mods: biomes added to the vanilla outpost tag get outposts in the classic style.

Which file do I download?

Pick your loader and Minecraft version on the Files tab. Every file name says both, for example betteroutposts-fabric-1.21.1-1.0.0.jar. Every Minecraft version booted its own server with the mod before upload, and real Fabric, Quilt, Forge and NeoForge servers loaded the jars.

On 1.16.2 – 1.18.1 every outpost uses the classic plains style: those versions cannot pick a structure by biome.

FAQ

Do I need it on the client?
No. It is a server-side data mod. Installing it on a client is harmless.

Can I add it to an existing world?
Yes. Outposts in chunks you have not visited yet will be the new ones.

How do I find one?
/locate structure minecraft:pillager_outpost, or betteroutposts:outpost_desert / _savanna / _taiga / _snowy for the biome styles (1.19+).

Modpacks?
Go ahead.

More from the same author

• Better Shipwrecks – sunken galleons, broken brigs and pirate wrecks
• Better Bastions – the Nether bastion overhaul: huge procedural piglin fortresses
• Better Trail Ruins – archaeology and buried ruins
• TNT Expansion – nukes, meteors, black holes and 130+ TNTs

Screenshots taken with Complementary Reimagined shaders (not included).