Minecraft is a sandbox survival game, and anyone who has played this game for a considerable number of hours will tell you that like any other popular survival game out there, players in Minecraft are always in need of items and resources that they can utilize in various recipes to get better and more robust, to survive the unknown dangers waiting to bring harm to them.
In Minecraft, players can harvest and mine resources by themselves, but specific resources are only found at certain locations or with certain mobs in the game. In this case, villagers in Minecraft are among those mobs that people can rely on to get the best in-game items in exchange for a specific amount of emeralds. Villagers offer many valuable things, and with some negotiation, players can get those items for an excellent price.
Players can also trade with a wandering trade and Piglins in the Nether expansion in this game, but we’ll elaborate on them a little later.
Have you not tried Minecraft yet? Visit Minecraft’s official website to begin your adventure today!
So, without any delays, let’s look at how players can efficiently trade with villagers and traders and know how they can acquire valuable items to assist them during their gameplay sessions.
Minecraft Trading Guide Content List
Who Are Villagers & What Do They Do In Minecraft?
Before players start dreaming about acquiring all the riches and goodies from the villagers in this game, let us first do a little background check on who and what these villager characters are and what they do.
Villagers are mobs in Minecraft that live in villages and go about their specific duties, breed with others of their kind, generate offspring, and, most importantly, act as the perfect trading partner for players.
To successfully start trading with villagers in Minecraft, players will first need to find them.
Players must first find villages that spawn in several biomes like plains, savannahs, deserts, taigas, meadows, etc.
Players will need a specific amount of emeralds to trade with them to buy the required tools and equipment. To know which villager to trade with for a specific type of item, players need only look at their outfits, as each villager working on a particular job block will wear a uniform in accordance with it.
To make things a little easier to understand, we have provided you all with a table below that will guide you on what jobs villagers can do and what job blocks they require to do so:
| Job | Description | Block Type |
| Armorer | Sells armor of different qualities | Blast Furnace |
| Butcher | Sells meat | Smoker |
| Cartographer | Sells maps and banners | Cartography Table |
| Cleric | Sells magical items and enchantments | Brewing Stand |
| Farmer | Sells food items and brewing equipment | Composter |
| Fisherman | Sells fish and fishing rods | Barrel |
| Fletcher | Sells bow, arrows, flint, and tipped arrows | Fletching Table |
| Leatherworker | Sells leather armor, horse armor and saddles | Cauldron |
| Librarian | Sells enchanted books and name tags | Lectern |
| Mason | Sells variety of bricks | Stonecutter |
| Shepherd | Sells a variety of wool and paintings | Loom |
| Toolsmith | Sells tools of different qualities | Smithing Table |
| Weaponsmith | Sells iron, diamond swords and axes | Grindstone |
Please Note: Nitwit and Unemployed are two additional positions that villagers can take up in-game as well, but we have omitted them from the table displayed above since they do not work and don’t require or use any specific equipment, as a result, have nothing of value to trade with the players.
Additionally, players can change the jobs of villagers if they wish to do so. To do this, players must destroy the job block the particular villager is currently working on and replace it with another one of a different profession.
Players will get to know if the migration of the villager from one job to another is successful by either looking at the uniform of the villager to see if it changed or adjusted according to their new job or if they start seeing little green, plus-shaped stars floating next to the villagers.
Moreover, Villagers will level up when players keep trading them. All villagers start from the Novice level, then move up to the Apprentice level, then the Journeyman and Expert level, and finally reach the pinnacle of trading at the Maser level. As the level of the villager increases, rarer items become available with them to trade for.
People who are finding it difficult to know the level of a village trader should look for a small bar at the top of the trade menu when they initiate a trade with any trader. That small bar donates the level of the villagers.
Who Is The Wandering Trader In Minecraft?
The Wandering Trader is a character with whom players can interact that spawns in the player’s world with two leashed llamas for a limited time. Although they look and act like regular villagers, the trader is not essentially considered a villager, mainly because he doesn’t live in a village.
Moreover, like with regular villagers, players can also trade with the wandering trader, as its name suggests. Players will be able to trade for unique and rare items like dyes, flowers, plants, blue ice, etc., that they won’t find anywhere else on the map.
Here is a list of all the items available to buy from the wandering trader:
| Cost | Items |
| 1 Emerald | Flowers, All Seeds, Pumpkin, Vines, Ferns, Dyes, Rooted Dirt, Sugar Cane, Red Sand, Small Dripleaf, Moss Block, Red and Blue Mushrooms, Pointed Dripstone, Lily Pads. |
| 2 Emeralds | Glow Sone, Sea Pickle |
| 3 Emeralds | Cactus, Coral Block Variants |
| 4 Emeralds | Slimeballs |
| 5 Emeralds | Saplings, Nautilus Shell |
The wandering trader also has a secondary trading option at the bottom of the list, consisting of the most valuable items. Here, take a look at the list:
| Cost | Items |
| 1 Emerald | Gunpowder |
| 3 Emeralds | Packed Ice, Podzol |
| 5 Emeralds | Bucket of Pufferfish, Bucket of tropical Fish |
| 6 Emeralds | Blue Ice |
Moving on to the two big differences between a wandering trader and a regular villager, the first significant difference is that the wandering trader trades in random pieces of stuff; on the other hand, the villagers stay true to their profession and trade only in things that are associated with their specific jobs.
Coming to the second difference between the two, the wandering trader does not level up like an ordinary villager does after players regularly trade with them, so players will not get access to rarer trade options.
What Are Emeralds And How To Acquire Them
Emeralds are rare minerals that both players and villagers use during trading with each other and can be considered the primary currency used in the game.
Players can obtain emeralds in a few ways:
- By trading various items with villagers. This is the best way to collect many emeralds, especially when the villagers level up and give more for each trade.
- By directly mining rare emerald ores from emerald deposits. Naturally occurring emeralds are hard to find but worthwhile if you uncover one.
- By searching chests in village houses.
- Searching for buried treasures and shipwrecks is incredibly time-consuming, but this is the least effective way to farm for them.
Also Read: Tired of living a lonely life in Minecraft? Check out our post on how to tame a cat to get yourself a furry companion.
How To Trade With Villagers
Trading with Villagers in Minecraft is quite simple and straightforward. Players must find the villagers they want to trade with by identifying them through their distinct uniforms, approaching them, and right-clicking on them.
Trading with the villagers is just the beginning as players will also have to get familiar with this game’s supply and demand mechanics, just like they have to do in real life.
Players will have to diversify their trading habits a bit if they wish to keep the rates of their favorite items on the lower side. If the players over-trade for a particular item, the trader will start keeping less of it, and what he does decide to keep in stock and trade with will be higher-priced than before.
Trading Tips & Tricks
Trading is quite profitable in Minecraft, but it is always good to remember specific important points when participating.
Here are a few helpful tips and tricks that players can use during their gameplay sessions to not only get exchange value for their items during trades with the villagers but also earn more emeralds from them in the process:
- Popularity – If players manage to manage a high level of popularity with the villagers they are trading with, then the price of the items will be lower. On the other hand, if the player has harmed the villager by any chance, then the prices will be higher than normal. Try to keep your popularity among villagers at peak condition to get the best deals possible.
- Players should try not to overspend on commonly found items like sticks, coal, flint, etc., by buying them from villagers. The process may make it easier to acquire these items quickly, but spending hard-earned emeralds on buying these basic items is a bad choice that must be avoided.
- Players are often made to overpay for certain items while trading with the villagers, but did you know that players can repeat the same on them? When trading with traders like fishermen and farmers, for example, players can trade with them with items like fish and crops respectively, to get a higher amount of emeralds for each trade than they would receive from any other trader.
- Another direct, riskier tactic that players can employ to try and bring the prices of the items down while trading with villagers is by completing raids. By saving a village from various enemies like pillagers, ravagers, witches, etc., players will receive a ‘Hero of the Village’ status, which will translate to lower trade prices for players for a maximum limit of 40 in-game minutes. Players can try and stack the effects of the status by doing multiple raids in quick succession, but the discounts will eventually get capped, and trade prices will not go lower than 55% of the overall item’s value.
Conclusion
That’s it for our comprehensive Minecraft trading guide. We hope this will give a lot of players a great insight into the workings of the trading systems in this game and how they can successfully profit from it by using a few tried-and-tested tricks and tips, to ultimately have an enjoyable gaming session.
