So I finally caught me a Zombie Villager! However I am nowhere near getting the required materials to transform him back into a normal Squidward.
What will cause him to de-spawn? Leaving the area? Logging off? Or is he fine and stay there until I transform him?
2 Answers
Chunk loading has little to do with mobs despawning.
At over 32m from the player, mobs have a chance to despawn at random. You could probably get away with being in this area for a short time, but eventually the zombie villager will despawn.
At over 128m from the player, mobs will despawn instantly. Neither of these values are affected by render distance.
Passive mobs and named mobs are excluded from this limit. If you want to keep the zombie villager, one possible method to do so would be to name it with a nametag. Although, in all honesty, zombie villagers are common and not worth the hassle; just find a new one when you have the right supplies.
The other answer is provably wrong:
Create a new superflat world, spawn a spider at your spawn, and then teleport (/tp ~1000 ~ ~) far away from it. When you teleport back (/tp ~-1000 ~ ~) the spider will have instantly gone, even though those chunks stayed loaded.
Also try spawning a spider outside of the spawn chunks, then set your render distance to 2. When you see the chunk with the spider unload, it should despawn, right? If you go back into the chunks, so long as you didn't go too far away, it'll still be there.
Quoted from this arqade answer:
[W]hen a chunk is unloaded, so are the mobs (and all other items) on it, although passive mobs won't be removed.
A chunk unloads when it moves out of your render distance (when it no longer renders on your screen). However, an area of 16x16 chunks exists around your spawn point where it will stay loaded, as long as one player stays in the overworld. Anything in here will not despawn. So, if you want to keep your Zombie Villager from despawning, either stay near him or keep him in the 16x16 area of chunks near spawn.
NOTE: "Spawn" means WORLD spawn, not bed spawn. It is where you originally spawn. Also, logging off will NOT despawn anything. The world is saved in its state, and will only resumed when reopened.
Also, make sure he won't burn in the day :P
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