The Complete Villager Trading Guide

Villagers pay emeralds for bulk items you can farm, such as Paper, Sticks and Rotten Flesh, and charge them for enchanted books and diamond gear. Set up a couple of buyers first and the rest follows.

How a villager gets its trades

An adult villager with no job claims a free job site block nearby and takes the matching profession. Nitwits never take a job, and babies must grow up first. All 13 jobs and their blocks are in villager jobs and workstations.

A villager has five levels, and each level adds up to two offers picked at random from that level's pool. The first trade you complete locks its profession and offers for good. Until then, breaking its job site block makes it unemployed again, and it rolls fresh Novice offers when it next takes a job.

Rerolling a Librarian for Mending

1. 1.Trap an unemployed adult villager so it cannot wander, then place a Lectern beside it. One costs a Bookshelf and 4 wooden slabs.
2. 2.Open its trades and read them. Do not take anything.
3. 3.If no book is worth buying, break the Lectern, wait until the villager loses its Librarian outfit, and place the Lectern again. Roll in daylight, because a sleeping villager will not take the job.
4. 4.When the book you want appears, buy it once. That locks it in.

A Novice Librarian shows two of its three possible trades, so a book appears about two rolls in three. Its enchantment is picked with equal chance from 40 options: every enchantment except Soul Speed, Swift Sneak and Wind Burst. That makes Mending roughly one roll in 60. The level is random too, so a Protection book may be Protection I.

A book costs 2 + 3 × its level up to 6 + 13 × its level. The four treasure enchantments a Librarian can sell (Mending, Frost Walker, Curse of Binding and Curse of Vanishing) cost double, and nothing goes above 64.

Librarians also offer books at Apprentice, Journeyman and Expert, so one can sell four. The best enchantments for every tool and armour piece tell you which books to hold out for. For cells that stop neighbours stealing each other's Lecterns, follow the villager trading hall build.

The trades worth having

Prices are before any discount.

Diamond gear is enchanted as if at 5 to 19 levels on an Enchanting Table, and that number is added to the price. Each piece has only 3 in stock per restock, where most trades hold 12 or 16.

Where the emeralds come from

Not every villager rolls every trade: a Novice Fletcher shows two of its three possible offers, so one in three will not buy Sticks. The smiths also buy a Diamond for 1 emerald at higher levels: poor value, worth it only to push a smith towards Master.

Levelling a villager to Master

Each trade gives the villager experience, and the badge on its belt shows its level. Old offers stay as new ones appear.

To level one quickly, use its highest-experience offer at each level, usually one where it pays you. A Librarian's Paper trade gives 2, its Book trade 10, its Ink Sac trade 20 and its Book and Quill trade 30. If it rolled all four, 5 Paper, 6 Book, 4 Ink Sac and 4 Book and Quill trades take it to Master, and none uses more than half its stock, so prices stay flat.

Offers above Novice appear after the villager has traded, so they cannot be rerolled: a Librarian that rolls a poor book at Apprentice keeps it.

How prices move

Every trade starts at its base price, and three things move it. Two of them scale with the trade's multiplier: 0.2 on the smiths' gear and Bell, the Leatherworker's gear, the Fisherman's enchanted Fishing Rod, enchanted books and every Cartographer map except the Empty Map, and 0.05 on nearly everything else.

• Demand. At each restock the villager adds twice the number of times you used a trade and subtracts its full stock. Once that running total is above zero, the price climbs by base price × multiplier × demand. Buy no more than half a trade's stock between restocks, splitting big orders between two villagers, and it never climbs. Only the first item in a price moves, so the Book in a book trade stays one Book.
• Reputation. Each villager keeps a score for every player, and a positive score takes multiplier × reputation off, so it cuts the 0.2 trades four times as hard. Curing a zombie villager gives the largest permanent boost, as the zombie villager curing guide shows. Hitting villagers drags your score down.
• Hero of the Village. Win a raid and, for 40 minutes, every villager gives you 30% off at level I, plus 6.25% for each level above that, up to 55% at level V. Its level matches the level of the Ominous Bottle you drank to start the raid.

Whatever happens, a price never drops below 1 or rises above 64.

Villagers restock up to twice a day by working at their job site block. A greyed-out trade just needs that restock. If one never comes back, check that the villager can still reach its own job site block.

Mistakes that cost you

• Trading before reading every offer. One misclick locks a bad roll forever.
• Expecting a Name Tag from a Master Librarian. Since 26.1 they sell a Red Candle and a Yellow Candle for 3 emeralds each. Craft the tag instead: a Paper with an Iron, Gold or Copper Nugget diagonally above it.
• Running out of Books. Every enchanted book trade takes an ordinary Book as well as emeralds. Each one is 3 Paper and 1 Leather.

Once your Librarian sells Mending, the anvil and Mending guide shows how to combine it onto gear without hitting Too Expensive, and the anvil cost calculator works out the price first.