Guard¶

Hired with a work contract, the guard works at a target. At night it stands at its post, or goes hunting, and shoots the monsters around it with bow and arrows. Every shot costs an arrow, so the village needs a steady supply: that is what the fletcher is for. The experience of its kills it fills into bottles o' enchanting, which the smith repairs with.

Setting it up¶

Place a target where the guard should stand watch. Room above it? Then the guard stands on top of it: build a tower and put the target at the top.
Right-click the target with an empty hand to open its overview.
Give the guard its wage, a bow and arrows (it carries up to 64). Optionally link an input chest with arrows (and spare bows) and an output chest for the loot.
Tab Settings: how far around the target it guards, 8 to 32 blocks (16 by default), and what it does at night: Guard or Hunt.
For the experience: glass bottles in its input chest or a village chest (the apothecary makes them).

A village chest works too: the guard takes arrows and bows from there when it runs low. Let the fletcher bring its arrows into the village chest.

The night shift¶

Guards work at night and sleep in the morning, the other way round from everyone else:

Time	The guard
Dusk to morning	stands at its post and shoots monsters
Early morning	picks up its arrows that missed and what the monsters dropped, fills its experience into bottles, brings the loot and the bottles to its output chest
Morning	sleeps
Afternoon	free time

At its post it shoots every monster it can see within its radius and at most 24 blocks away (zombies, skeletons, spiders, creepers, witches, pillagers, ...), the closest first, about one arrow every 1.5 seconds, like a skeleton. It does not attack neutral mobs (endermen, zombified piglins, wolves, golems). Guards do not panic.

Its arrows hit only monsters: they fly through villagers, players, iron golems and animals.

Hunting¶

Set to Hunt, the guard does not wait at its post: at night it roams up to 32 blocks around the target and looks for monsters, shooting them up to 24 blocks away. More kills, more experience and loot, but more arrows and more danger. With 8 arrows or less, or with less than half its health, it goes back to its post for the rest of the night.

Raids¶

Guards fight raids, also in the daytime when they would sleep: they do not hide, and they guard at least 24 blocks around their target. They shoot raiders first. When a guard sees a raider it rings the closest bell (within 48 blocks of its target), at most every half minute: as in vanilla the raiders glow and the villagers hide.

Experience¶

In vanilla only players get experience from monsters. A guard gets the experience of every monster its arrows kill (a zombie 5, a blaze 10, ...). In the morning it fills it into bottles o' enchanting: 7 experience per bottle, as much as a thrown bottle gives on average, so no experience comes out of nothing. It needs a glass bottle for each (it keeps 16) and brings the full bottles to its output chest. Throw them for experience yourself, or leave them to the smith. The menu shows the experience it has not bottled yet.

Armor¶

A guard puts on armor you give it or it finds in a village chest, one piece for each slot (any armor: leather, chain mail, iron, ...). The armor protects it like a player and wears out like a player's; shortly before a piece breaks it takes it off and gives it back, so the smith can repair it. Villagers show no armor, with one exception:

Uniforms. A guard in a leather tunic wears its tabard in the color of the tunic. Let the tanner dye the tunics in the color of your village, and all your guards look alike.

Supplies¶

Bow: wears out one use per shot. Shortly before it breaks the guard gives it back (see Worn tools); keep spare bows in its input chest or a village chest. Infinity does not help: a guard always uses up an arrow.
Arrows: below 16 it fetches more from its input chest before the night. Without arrows it does not stand watch ("needs arrows").

The menu shows how many monsters it killed last night.