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Let's talk about Villager Trading! - Librarian, Wondering Trader

The latest snapshot/preview includes experimental changes to the wandering trader and librarian trades, which we're introducing to rebalance the villager trade system. Here's a look at what's changed: 

Librarian

Before these changes, players could get any village enchantment from any librarian. A novice librarian could sell the best enchantment in the game! For some players, this felt too random and made trading feel overpowered when compared to using the enchanting table or searching for enchanted books in structures.

With the new rules, librarians from different biomes sell different enchantments, and each village biome has one enchantment that is only sold by master librarians.

Players will have to work towards getting the best trades instead of relying on random chance. We hope this makes librarian trading more interesting and skilful, while also revealing some clues about their history of each village type through the enchantments that are sold there.
 
Wandering Trader

Some players felt that the Wandering Trader had unfair prices and didn't sell many useful items. We have lowered their prices, added more trades and increased the amounts available. The Wandering Trader will also now buy useful items from players, so it's possible to help them on their journey by giving them supplies even if you don't feel like buying anything.

As this is an experiment, we would really appreciate your feedback as work continues and to help us decide on the future direction for villager trades!

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  • 1
    Registered User commented
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    This seems to be one of the most relevant changes in the last few updates, In fact I like the concept of doing villagers this way.

    It is true that this will make the trade a little more tiring, but its cool and makes the game more dynamic, this will make you explore more instead of just putting and removing lecterns.
    Also now it seems easier to get enchantments, once you are in the biome you will only have to change it once or a few times to get the enchantment established.

  • 0
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    I really love the wandering trader changes, they are really good for survival players while being even better for other survival challenges like skyblock, superflat ext. I like the villager changes, especially for enchants like mending that were so easy to get, and even though a lot of people are engry this will balance the game. My problem is that it will be harder to obtain all the biomes books in superflat or skyblock, but this problem is avoided cause we can still fish to get them.
    What i didn't like is the diamond changes. Making diamond easier to find is not the right way, its value has been decreased already. I think you should make the trim copying cheaper, while keeping the diamond spawns as is.

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    Completely against biome-specific villager trades
    It's an artificial needless difficulty increase that makes villager trading more tedious than it needs to be.

  • 0
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    I think that the new changes for wandering traders is good as they were quite underwhelming. However the villager changes should not be kept as it would ruin super flat survival. I think that there should be a smaller chance of a villager having an op book like mending as well as the guaranteed one for different biomes.

  • 1
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    I think the changes to the Librarians makes them less useful. I believe all librarians should be the way they were before, but the biome specific enchantments could be way more common, so players can still adventure out for specific trades, but still make the same trades at home without the need to move villagers. Although, A Special Enchantment trade as a final level to a librarian villager seems really cool, it makes Mending A Little more Valuable. With the Villager Discount from curing only effects the first time around seems to be a major nerf along with the Villager Trades rework. I think this change should probably be reverted or the "Hero of the Village" effect should be buffed to receive much LARGER DISCOUNTS as it makes another reason to do RAIDS. 

  • 1
    Registered User commented
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    Setting up villager trading systems is annoying and tedious already without this change. If someone thinks that librarians are overpowered, they can choose to not use them. Not to mention working a villager all the way up to Master just to get a mid-level decent enchantment sounds disappointing, especially for a new player.

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    Not a huge fan of the different biomes. Just makes it tedious for players to just have to hike all over the world to find enchantments. I would like to see that higher level villagers would have higher level enchantments, so you don't spend all that time upgrading a villager just to get a garbage or no enchantment

  • 1
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    Personally, the librarian trade nerf seems too extreme. They won’t even sell the highest level of some enchantments. Maybe have some kind of system where the more a villager levels up from novice to master, the higher level books they sell? Like at novice level, it would sell sharpness 1 for example. At master level it would be at sharpness 5.

  • 1
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    I dont like this change and my reasons are as follows:

    - I believe that villager trading is a subgenre to minecraft similar to speedrunning.

    - Some players like me, prefer playing minecraft through the trading game. Its helps me get high quality tools, after doing a considerate amount of mining and chopping wood, getting clay for trading and getting emeralds. Its is its own journey when compared to the regular mining, and enchanting. Specially in multiplayer, most players are not well versed with the trading system, so it gives players like me - who enjoy trading - an upper hand, and become the human traders to other players. The trading ecosystem,  to gain emeralds, and all possible trades is complicated as is, and I believe that the new update will add unnecessary complications to the current subgenre. 

    - I love this game, and that is why I believe that my feedback to the changes is necessary to help keep the game on the right track, if the development of the game is truly democratic for the player base. 

  • 67
    Registered User commented
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    These changes generally seem positive however, the special trades should give the max tier version of their enchant and not the mid tier version. Or the level you get should be random per villager.

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    If these changes are made, they must be accompanied by two things:
    - improve the travel system, it's terribly long when you want to travel with villagers, and for the swamps, we have no choice
    - biomes should be easier to find: maybe the cartographer could now sell maps to find biomes?

  • 227
    Registered User commented
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    Worst idea ever

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    At least allow us to get hero of the village V and bad omen V, as well as Evoker Captains

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    Not a fan. Stick to the one cure and leave it at that. Too many things to take into consideration and not a guaranteed optimal way to implement without groups of players with certain play styles getting upset. Also, it's a bit forceful to players. Pushing for exploration, while the file sizes grow, yields more corruptions. Also having to make different breeders causes for more entities and on top of that not even being guaranteed the max level for said enchant, not worth it. Sounds like a literal waste of time. I like the idea of a nerf/balance, but not this way.

  • 0
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    this is the worst thing I think i've ever read, the fact that you get a 1 in 37 chance of getting the book you need is enough. make them more expensive, make them cost more emeralds or books whatever, this is really dumb. how do you expect us to transport the villagers? on a leash? oh wait... 

  • 1
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    While I see the reason you made this change. I do not see the need for it... Many players (including myself) use Villager Trading Halls and this update will pretty much render them useless or make them extremely time consuming to set up which will drive players away from doing that and then villagers will become just as useless as wandering traders before this update. Not being able to get the top enchants from the librarian is an even worse change to make since players will then have to combine books and then getting xp is gonna be needed a lot more making the game too grindy. Please rethink this change.

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    I love this change a lot, it's a really cool way to make the player make different villages across their world. However, how is the player (without a wiki or some other source of outside information) going to be able to know which enchantments are in which biomes? If there is some intuitive wat to solve that, I'm all in for the change (as long as it doesn't apply to superflats).

  • 55
    Registered User commented
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    I think the changes are great, but I would rather have unbreaking and protection at their max level as armor is already quite expensive to enchant. For that it would be better to just find the perfect armor in an end city.

  • 0
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    While this is a step in the right direction, it's not enough. The real way to rebalance villager trading is to bring the alternatives up to the same level.

    1. Enchanting Tables: Now that villagers are less RNG-dependant, enchanting tables are the most RNG-dependant way of getting enchantments. Many people have suggested the ability to "bias" the table's RNG by surrounding it with chiselled bookshelves with the enchantment you want. This would be an end-game solution to make enchantments more renewable and would still require the initial luck to get the first few books.
    2. Anvils: The main reason villagers are considered overpowered is because they give access to unlimited Mending books. Mending could be made a less desirable (but still viable) enchantment by removing the XP cost from anvils. Repairing an item with Mending requires XP; so why should repairing an item with an anvil require both XP AND materials? Players should be encouraged to make the choice between anvils and Mending, based on whether they want to use materials or XP to repair their tools.
    3. Wandering Trader: I like the change that added Enchanted Iron Pickaxes to the wandering trader, but why stop there? Why not let them sell all iron tools? Players who aren't willing to craft & enchant their own tools would have the option to continually buy tools from the trader, accepting the trade-off of them not being fully maxed out. Combine this with the anvil change and they could replenish these tools easily with an iron farm
  • 18
    Registered User commented
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    How will this affect mending villagers we have already traded with?

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    I love the ideas here, but in my opinion locking high level enchants everyone wants like protection and mending behind biome-specific villagers, ESPECIALLY when there’s no village for the swamp and jungle doesn’t feels a bit TOO grindy. Yes, less valuable ones like knockback or respiration being locked behind biomes feels worthwhile, but those really valuable ones feels like a bit too much. Now if there were villages for jungle and swamp then being able to get mending wouldn’t be that bad, but it’s just a thought

  • 350
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    For the first time in 10 years of playing, I thought it was a disgusting spec change.

    The curiosity to go exploring is not created by this change.
    "You have to go on an adventure".
    It turns into a very boring task.

    After the middle of the game, you have to go thousands of blocks away to enchant equipment, one of the basic elements of adventure.
    To find a biome that you don't know where it is....

    This is not an adventure, it is an errand.
    If I lose my equipment, do I have to do it all over again?
    It's just a hassle.

    This change in specifications
    Beginners will find it difficult.
    Experienced people will be bored.

    We should think of other ways.

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    Moving villagers is clunky at the moment and I think that if you made villager transportation easier then that would help out a lot. Using a Lead, holding an item are a bit weird but would be better than the current solution. Making it easier to get them in a boat or minecart would be amazing. I think it would be hilarious if you could put them on a camel or talk to them or something to get them to follow you!

     

    Just something, anything to make this new direction you're taking rely on a mechanic that isn't all too popular at the moment

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    I agree with all the other comments that it's a horrible idea.  While it does seem extraordinarily random and unbalanced to have a novice librarian offer the best trade for the best price, it comes at very great pain of grinding for it. The fact is, there are many aspects of this game that this precisely describes.  I'm not sure how the librarian mechanic is somehow worse than grinding enchantments until you get the combo and level you want, for example. 

    Additionally, while I think it's an interesting idea, it would be half-baked without also overhauling all the villagers to be biome-specific.  Why would just the librarian be changed?  Why wouldn't the cleric offer some biome-specific trades to also represent the village's lore?  Why wouldn't the butcher offer more locally appropriate food, or offer better value for stuff they can't get?

    If the complaint is that librarians are making the enchanting table obsolete, perhaps that's the system that needs an overhaul?  Is there a way to make an enchanting table produce better, more predictable results?  Maybe there's a way to add ingredients to the recipe, or add to the bookcases around it, or fill chiseled bookshelves with particular enchants to improve it's likelihood of producing specific results, or apply to specific items.

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    If you wanna make that change Mojang, then add villages into Jungle and Swamp as well, because it's so annoying to travel villagers into a speciefic biome to get the enchantments you want. Or make it possible for villagers to spawn naturally in places where we now build villages like jungles and swamps

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    Interesting changes, but in my personal opinion, they will make Villagers even more tedious to deal with. They're already quite frustrating to work with, and now we're expected to move them potentially thousands of blocks in order to get the best enchantments, and they aren't even available at the highest level? I personally use villagers as a way to obtain powerful gear so I can focus on and spend more time on being creative.

    If you're hell-bent on making these changes, here are my suggestions (some based on other comments):

    Make all enchantments, including Special ones, possible to obtain at the max level. Villagers born in Ancient Cities should sell Swift Sneak, and those born in Fortresses or Bastions should sell Soul Speed.

    Give us an easier method of transporting Villagers. Let us give them commands to get into Minecarts or Boats, or some other method. Seriously, moving them is so unbearably frustrating already, even with all of them in one place.

    Don't nerf zombification that hard. Instead, nerf the most powerful emerald-farming trades like sticks, rotten flesh, iron ingots etc, but leave the rest alone.

    Add villages to Swamps and Jungles. Goes without saying; if you're going to lock the best enchantments to certain biomes, put villages in those biomes.

    Additionally, make all of them spawn in Superflat biomes regardless of what Biome they're locked to, or even better, give us a game rule, or a config file, to toggle/edit these changes in the final release of 1.20.2.

  • 1
    Registered User commented
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    I understand that we want trading to be more interesting.

    I don't mind the nerf to healing villagers - I think that's understandable.

    Forcing players to go to different biomes to get different books is not acceptable though.

    Perhaps instead only master villagers can sell the "special" books.

    And instead of biomes classing the librarians, you have librarians skilled in a certain skillset - say armour enchants, tool enchants, ocean enchants, or curses.

    That allows the player to know what books they will end up being able to trade when the villager is a master. 

    What levels those books are and such can be left up to game balancing decisions.

    But the biome decision is just awful.

  • 63
    Registered User commented
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    Villagers curing is expansive so making it only a 1 discount is not good because a golden apple is hard to get if no gold and weakness potions can be hard with out blaze powder so let people stack discouts

  • 0
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    The librarian changes makes getting rarer books too tedious and outright unfun.

    Mending is a necessary book in the game and locking it to a rarer biome just makes it awfully painful to ubtain consistantly.

    On top of that, the jungle and swamp biomes not generating villages makes this change even worse. Due to the player needing to transport two villagers to these biomes, and then transport the villager out makes getting these villager trades very time consuming. If a player wanted to set up a villager trading hall, they would have to travel thousands of blocks 3 times, and thats if their villagers doesn't die on the way to the locations.

    This update could also cause a lot of server lag, with players loading so many chunks to move these villagers. Also making these trades biome specific makes the game overly complicated, with newer players who might not pay attention to these news updates having no idea how to get certain books.

    HOWEVER, if this change were to be a gamerule, I could see it being nice for people who want a challenge. Forcing a change like this onto the player base is not a great look, especially since this would change the entire progression of getting a book like mending.

    TL:DR: Librarian changes make the game too hard and confusing especially for newer players. It would change the progression of the game for the worst. It may cause server lag due to chunk loading. It should be an optional gamerule.

    Remember that this is my opinion, you are entitled to your own.

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    capping the special books at level 3 will make them uselss, combining will result is hitting the "too expensive" limit, as well as that moving villagers around will is incredibly tedious and locking high level enchants behind it is only going to cause the players that go for them to waste more time. the concept of biome specific trades is a good one, but it should not be used for something as necessary as enchantments