Compatibility
Minecraft: Java Edition
Platforms
Supported environments
Links
Tags
Creators
Details
Adds dynamic traveling merchant caravans that roam between villages and across the wilderness. Trade with them, protect them from raiders for rewards, or rob their pack animals for loot — the choice is yours.
Client & Server mod — must be installed on both sides.
Free to use in any modpack — public or private, no permission needed.
What it does
- Traveling Caravans — merchant groups dynamically spawn as you explore and travel toward nearby villages or wander through the wilderness.
- Caravan Trading — every caravan receives a randomized selection of trades from a datapack-driven trade pool.
- Pack Animal Loot — mules and llamas can carry loot-filled chests. Desert caravans use camels as leaders and bring a mule along to carry the cargo.
- Mini-Raids — stay near a caravan long enough and raiders may launch an ambush.
- Defend for Rewards — help the merchants survive an attack to earn XP and temporary trade discounts.
- Biome-Aware Caravans — animals and chest loot adapt to the biome, with camels in hot regions, llamas in cold areas, and mules in temperate environments.
- Caravan Stops — discover naturally generated abandoned stops with barrels and loot while exploring.
- Advancements — unlock achievements for discovering, trading with, defending, and interacting with caravans.
- Optional Iron Golem Guards — caravans can be configured to travel with additional protection.
Compatibility
- MCA Reborn / Minecraft Comes Alive — caravan membership is stored on the entity, allowing villagers replaced during spawning to retain their caravan membership.
- Mods that cancel or replace spawning mobs are handled safely. If the caravan leader cannot spawn, the caravan creation is aborted instead of leaving an incomplete group behind.
Dynamic Raids
Travel isn't always safe. Raiders can ambush nearby caravans, turning a peaceful trading encounter into a fight.
Protect the merchants and surviving caravan members will reward participating players with experience and trade discounts.
Biome Variations
Caravans adapt to the environment around them:
- Deserts & Badlands — camels lead the caravan, with a mule carrying cargo.
- Cold mountain regions — llamas become the primary pack animals.
- Temperate biomes — caravans commonly travel with mules.
- Biome-specific loot — chest contents can change depending on where the caravan spawned.
Caravan Stops
Abandoned Caravan Stops can generate throughout the world, giving travelers a place to rest and barrels containing useful resources.
Configuration
Better Caravans is designed to be highly configurable for both singleplayer worlds and servers.
Settings include:
- Caravan spawn chance, delay, distance, lifespan, and allowed dimensions.
- Village search radius and movement behavior.
- Number of merchants and animals.
- Biome-specific caravan animals.
- Chest-bearing animals and chest loot.
- Optional iron golem guards.
- Mini-raid chance, timing, raider count, sounds, and rewards.
- Trade count and discount ranges.
- Caravan Stop world generation.
- Admin/debug commands.
Config file:
<server>/config/bettercaravans-common.toml
Datapack-Driven Trades
The entire caravan trade pool can be customized through JSON datapacks:
data/bettercaravans/caravan_trades/*.json
You can add new trades, remove existing ones, rebalance prices, adjust weights, or completely replace the default trade pool without modifying the mod.
On NeoForge, a normal /reload reloads caravan trade files.
/bettercaravans trade_reload works on every supported build when enable_commands = true.
Admin Commands
Set enable_commands = true in the [Commands] config section to enable Better Caravans admin/debug commands.
/bettercaravans spawn [here]— force a caravan to spawn./bettercaravans despawn— remove the nearest caravan./bettercaravans raid start / kill_enemies— control caravan raids./bettercaravans stop place / find— test Caravan Stop generation./bettercaravans info— inspect the nearest caravan.
Languages
Fully translated into 10 languages:
English, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, Korean, and Italian.
Feedback
Please report any bugs, errors, or feature suggestions on Discord: https://discord.gg/HTkn94BXmA