5 interesting facts about nitwits in Minecraft

Villager trading within Minecraft is potentially the most powerful thing players can have, allowing unlimited access to Minecraft's best enchantments, resources, and tools. However, not all villagers are useful for trading. Baby villagers, unemployed villagers, and the nitwit cannot trade with players.

Despite this, though, nitwits still have a ton of cool background information and trivia, making them worth learning about. This article will explore five interesting facts about Minecraft's nitwits.

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5 interesting facts about Minecraft's nitwits

1) Baby zombie nitwits are a rare sight

Zombie villagers are rare in general, let alone the baby nitwit variant (Image via Mojang)

Baby nitwits are almost impossible to find in vanilla survival, but for very good reason: the only way to find them in survival is as a baby zombie villager. This is because a nitwit is a valid selection when spawning a zombie villager, and all zombies have a small chance to spawn as babies.

If a player is exceptionally lucky, or rather unlucky in this case, a randomly spawned zombie villager will be both a nitwit and a baby. Since there are currently no ways to cure a nitwit, it might be worth leaving this mob as a cool, rare find rather than converting it back into a living Minecraft villager since they wouldn't be able to trade anyway.

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2) Being a nitwit is a job?

Interestingly, many systems consider nitwits as being employed like other villagers (Image via Mojang)

A strange pseudo-paradox of the nitwit is that the game considers nitwit a profession for many things, while the villager is considered unemployed for others.

For example, the reason nitwits can't get any of Minecraft's many villager professions is that the game considers being a nitwit a profession. There is just no associated workstation for them, so they can never lose their occupation. This is also why nitwit zombie villagers, as mentioned above, can appear; the game considers it a valid choice of profession when spawning one.

However, the game also considers nitwits unemployed for some things. Minecraft villager breeding, for example, considers nitwits as unemployed. This makes them useful for breeding, as they can breed at any time of day and run no risk of accidentally pathfinding to a workstation.

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3) How nitwits happen

Thankfully, nitwits can breed as normal (Image via Mojang)

The zombie villagers mentioned above are not the only way that nitwits are found, however. They can also spawn naturally when generating a village. Unfortunately for Bedrock players, every baby villager has a 10% chance of converting into a nitwit when growing up.

Java players will know immediately if a villager will be a nitwit, as they are born with the iconic green clothing rather than growing into it like what happens in Bedrock.

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4) Bedrock nitwits have their own schedule

Nitwits are often on their own due to being up later and sleeping longer (Image via Mojang)

Despite being unemployed, nitwits do not share a daily schedule with unemployed villagers on the Bedrock Edition, known for the Minecraft Marketplace. As mentioned, the game considers being a nitwit a profession in some aspects, including Bedrock scheduling.

In this game version, the Nitwits sleep in for longer and go to bed later than the rest of the townsfolk. Obviously, there is a nod to them being unemployed and able to stay up late and sleep in without worry.

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5) Share a schedule with unemployed villagers on Java

Sharing a schedule means nitwits often interact with unemployed villagers (Image via Mojang)

Since nitwits are technically unemployed and do not have an associated workstation, Java Edition, known for its incredible mods, lumps them in with unemployed villagers. This means they spend most of their day wandering but will go to bed and sleep at a normal time.

As Minecraft Bedrock Edition sees more parity updates, it will be interesting to see which of these two interpretations of a nitwit's day-to-day life survives and becomes the official schedule. Bedrock's would make more sense than Java's as an accurate reflection of their lack of gainful employment.

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While nitwits might not be as broken as the rest of the game's villagers, they are an interesting mob. In fact, in many ways, it is their lack of real utility that makes them so interesting and compelling.