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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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  • 0
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    I don't really think that this is gonna make the game more "balanced", this is just gonna increase the difficulty for newer players. Additionally, this stretches out the time you spend during the early game which is the part of the game, the fewest players (according to my experience) have fun in, and makes it so much harder to regain all of your gear, in case you loose it. This might be what you are going for, although be warned that this might push the game away from longer ongoing worlds, because dying in inevitable, and it can be VERY unmotivating when you loose all your gear with the current state of villagers, and if the changes to the librarians persist, it might cause people to just give up on an SMP or a World they are currently playing on.

    I personally enjoy the current state of villagers, and I am not here to change anybody's opinion on these changes. Just know that this might be more impactful than you think.

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    I don't like the biome specific trades. The issue with villagers is not that they are overpowered, it is that they are not interesting. Every server absolutely needs a Mending supply for proper endgame, but currently that comes down to cycling through villager trades over and over until you get it, not interesting.

    The biome thing is SLIGHTLY more interesting, but also A LOT more tedious and difficult. Novice players are now very unlikely to ever get it.

    I would prefer some changes to the anvil as a foundation:
    - Remove the "Too expensive" cap, so combining lower level books no longer makes it useless.
    - Remove the dependence on order of enchanting. Base it solely on total number of items that went into it over time, so everyone can understand WHY a certain enchant costs a certain amount of levels.

    At this point you could stop villagers selling anything >1, so found books can be valuable to fill that niche.
    Then we need a better mechanism for encouraging a certain book trade in a villager. I like the "copy a book I found" approach, so exploration becomes really valuable, but you don't have to transport villagers thousands of blocks to build a trading hall.

    I like the zombie-villager curing changes, that was indeed OP.

    I like the wandering trader changes, it always bothered me that we could not sell them stuff. Making those biome dependent would actually make much more sense, they buy local goods and sell goods from far lands.

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    I disagree with the change to librarians the way these worked before gave villagers some sort of use this makes it so villagers wont be used as much by the player base as they will be too expensive and hard to obtain but I think the change to the wandering traders would be welcoming 

  • 1
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    I think villager trades do need to be re-balanced, but I don't think this is the best solution. I don't like the idea of having trades locked to specific biomes, because when the novelty wears off, it will just make the late game more tedious unnecessarily. It doesn't add any difficulty to someone who already has an elytra and end game farms, it just means they will have to take longer to do something they used to be able to do in a fraction of the time.

    I also think that if villagers will no longer trade max level books, something needs to be done about the anvil's level cap. because it will make it almost impossible to get a set of fully enchanted armor. boots for example already require 7 enchantments (depth strider, mending, unbreaking, protection, feather falling, thorns and soul speed).

    These changes will also make the game less accessible to new players because it will add more technical knowledge that they'll need to know, like how to combine enchantments properly and how to get jungle and swamp villagers, since they don't spawn naturally.

  • 0
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    With this change using the enchantment table itself will become more popular than it was. To encourage this even more, I'd suggest dropping the xp costs of combining items in the anvil. Players already paid some xp for the enchantments themselves, need to get lucky with the enchantments and do not get xp like villager trading would give them. The anvil costs add up even higher this way, so lowering those would make the enchantment table even more attractive.

  • 0
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    I think this is a good change, or at least has the right intention. I agree that trading has been super broken ever since 1.14 and it's a good idea to try and balance it out more. I'm also glad that some more important trades are going to be guaranteed so you'll know right away what you're going to get. I was a bit surprised at how harsh it seems to be though? Mending being locked behind a Villager you can't get without breeding or a lot of luck is definitely going to be annoying to some (at least it's a guaranteed trade), and this does make superflat enchanting barely viable at all, but I know superflat is already messed up as is :/ Overall though I think it's a good change.

    Oh and thank the heavens the crossbow and trident trades aren't in anymore, those were so annoying

  • 1
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    I feel like we can all agree that stuffing villagers in 2x1 holes for the rest of their lives to get all enchantments is cruel and overpowered. But after messing about with this, I’m incredibly confident that this is *not* the way to fix this.

    I personally think a much better solution would be for villagers to require some kind of “happiness” or “social” stat that can be fulfilled by for example meeting with other villagers, sleeping interactions with “fun” blocks or mobs such as cats. This way players need to actually put more effort into building good artificial villages to get their trades instead of it being as easy as it is right now. Or as tedious and annoying as this experimental change makes it.

  • 0
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    I agree with changing villager trades but this is not the way to do it. I do agree with the curing changes, but having different trades be biome specific sucks. Maybe make it so that you can only get the good trades from higher level librarians, but do not make it biome specific, and also don't limit the enchants to 3. If you do, then please change anvils to allow combining things without getting "too expensive".

  • 254
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    Please don’t make this an actual feature. In my opinion it would be one of the worst changes in the game.

  • 1
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    Love the idea of Biome depending trades for librarians, but dislikes the fact that the enchantments are unable to reach their maximum level, it just makes enchanting your equipment way more experience expensive to get and unfair for new players and in servers were access to experience farms is limited, also there is the concern about how will this work for other worlds generation other than normal generation since content creator sometimes like to play under this abnormal conditions, about the diamonds since their value it's already low for veteran players and can help for duplicating the new armor trims, but it can give the chance for an early game diamond armor, and in pvp game modes like UHC lead to a hard time for moderators looking for hackers

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    I don't find that this change it adds any enjoyment to the game, only detracts from it. Although getting specific enchantments is easier as there is no need to reroll over all of them, the fact that you are forced to breed each type of villager four times in each biome to get the various enchanted book types just adds extra levels of difficulty to the process. 

    The early game is something that many dislike, as it can be a boring grind to get max gear. It is important to note that there are those who do not feel this way, and just build with weaker equipment. The important thing however, is that the change does not provide any benefit to EITHER group. For those who like to rush end-game gear, the change simply prolongs this process, while for those who enjoy early and mid game, the change just discourages them from trading.

    Transporting villagers is difficult, as anyone who has dealt with them knows. Exploration is part of the game that many enjoy, however forcing it just to obtain a reliable source of gear does not fit with the sandbox theme that should be focused around. 

    Another problem is that the books sold only by master librarians can't be found at their top levels. With the prior use cost of the anvil, these enchantments are useless for creating gear.

    Overall, the changes do not provide any benefit as they only detract from the game. The enchantment trading system does not have to be used anyway. If you find it overpowered, then you can just not use it. 

  • 1
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    First of all, the wandering trader changes are amazing. Giving more use to an otherwise annoying and non useful mob is a good step. I can't wait to be able to get more small dripleaf.

    As for the librarians, I like the idea of different biomes giving different enchants. This encourags exploration and givig a purpose to the unused jungle and swamp villiger types. This also means that the enchanting table will be used more intead of just trading your way through to maxed gear. You can currently enter a village on day 1 of a minecraft world and get out with every tool, weapon and armor fully enchanted. Maybe the villagers selling those need a little nerf too. With the increase of diamond generation, it would be less tedious and would make the armor trims feel less expensive. The removal of trident, crossbow and fishing rod enchantments also make villagers less op, and again, gives the enchanting table a use again.

    There are a few problems tho. Firstly, a lot of players prefer making a single base instead of traveling all over the world. Moving villagers is task nobody likes, and moving them across the world would mean some villager types wouldn't get used. Let us lead them or be tempted by holding an emerals or something.

    Secondly, with less options of books, librarians are more likely offering the same book twich for the same or different prices, and they can even sell lower level enchants for higher prices. 

    Thirdly, getting a master desert villager selling efficiency 3 is not good

  • 1
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    The key word in this article is "some players", not all, not most, some. Villager trading is indeed a bit OP. The change for curing villagers is fine (could be better, like instead of not gaining favor at all just less and less every time) but the librarian changes are too far. Players will explore when they want, this is just going to make peope use villagers way less. It is teadious and makes super flat survival a very painful experience. And taking away trades for tools like the trident, fishing rod, and cross bow is unneeded, you already have to find a trident in the wild and every other tool has their enchantments. A better way to balance it is just to decrease the likelihood of better enchantments (mending, any level 5, etc...), not just remove them from the table.

  • 0
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    I say keep villagers the way they were both the curing and the trading are good for players who want to put the effort into making breeders these changes just make things less rewarding and more tedious 

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    At this point, I would further remove the randomness of the "normal" enchantments too and leave only the level of the enchantment random, but guarantee one of each of the three kinds of normal enchantments. Given that this change makes moving villagers over long distances even more important, it would be nice to address that and have either a QoL or a new mechanic that would allow moving villagers less tedious (mount villagers on camels? Make them follow you with something, like emerald block or cake? etc.).

    I think a secondary function of the wondering trader should be selling a few blocks that are not present in the area where the player is or blocks/items necessary to progress the game. I'm thinking about challenges where the player is restricted in limited areas, but it's also useful in general. Maybe one trade he has could be dedicated to that and be dynamically generated to sell one such block based on chances, but also what's present in the area and in the player inventory. You could be offered a bucket of lava, iron, a block of obsidian, a block of grass or a diamond depending on the circumstances.

  • 0
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    Personally, I feel like this change will ruin the game. I say this because a lot of these biomes for good trades are really rare. Also, this would put a big holt on a big project that a lot of players like to do. 2ndly I think you should still let the wandering trader get a buff. Finally, this change would only be affecting the player who plays for a long time and not the casual player.

  • 0
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    The idea is a great one, and i'd like to see it stay. Its just the thought of executing it is where this gets sour. Because a player has to discover these swamp and jungle villagers (especially swamp) to get a VERY used enchantment, so I'd suggest possibly changing how abandoned villages work? Maybe they change to spawn only in these 2 biomes. They could tie into the new archeology system, and have zombie villagers throughout. This could 1) Reveal that these villager types DO exist to a new player. 2) Allude to the player that they should indeed cure and renovate the village to get honestly a good reward. and 3) Encourage them to use the archeology system in the first place, and maybe use it to decorate their new village! Now, the other thing with this is the wandering trader. I think the direction its going is a very good one, but should go farther. I believe you should be able to sell him more things, or get more emeralds from it. I could honestly see this as being a fun moment of "Oh man! I can get a ton of emeralds right now." especially in the early game. Another few notes, 1) The special books really should be max level, considering it is very difficult to get a master librarian in the first place. 2) If this change stays, it should extend to other villagers too! (Mainly the cartographer and even wandering trader would be perfect for this change) and 3) This would also call for a rework of the anvil and enchanting system as a whole to make sure this balances smoothly.

  • 1
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    I like the changes in general. It's good that the enchanting table now has a purpose again since it's not as easy to get most of the important enchantments through villager trades (only having to find one village and breed villagers isn't much work for how much value enchantments have). But since transporting villagers for long distances is a tedious task having villages generate in all of the necessary biomes would help a lot in that regard. To find other villages in certain biomes maybe a map from a cartographer could help and for Mending (one of the main criticism points I have seen) I feel like if you really need it you can still go fishing. And to remove even more randomness maybe the odds that librarians in the same village sell the same enchantment books could be reduced or changed so that there aren't any duplicate enchantment book trades in one village. 

  • 0
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    i think for strictly survival this change could be implemented well, but as is wouldn't be good.

    since there are no natural jungle or swamp villagers, this forces players to make a technical farm with a tedious entity (twice, mind you) in order to get a fully enchanted armor set. additionally, if you want a centralized trading hub, this means you'd have to commute them back to your home base, which is typically THOUSANDS of blocks away. i think either a different enchant should be hidden behind that requirement, or swamp and jungle villagers should be added as a natural spawn.

    to me, it takes away some of the randomness that allows players who aren't as skilled to acquire the same late game enchants/items that makes it more accessible (i also have this issue with the netherite upgrade in bastions, though a bit less so in that case).

    i do however like that you'd only need seven villagers total as they would consistently have all of the biome specific enchants, no rerolls required (though again, don't love the need to commute them if you want a trading hall). i also LOVE the wandering trader rework, as i think most people just found them annoying. i think balancing them makes them feel a little more as a real part of current minecraft.

  • 0
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    I think the wandering trader changes are a good idea, but locking enchanted books behind villager levels is a step too far if you're also locking some books behind biomes, as it means that the process of obtaining a trade for each book will be far more time consuming and difficult because a villager that has been traded with cannot have their trades cycled and so there is no way to undo duplicate trades without killing the villager, which was the initial reason the trading system was changed in 1.14 if I remember correctly

  • 0
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    My ideas for this

    1. Reduce as much random chance as possible as this has been doing. I think it's best if players can figure out exaclty where and how to get certain trades they want, almost to gaurantee, but for a larger amount of work. Let's say a player really wants a lot of sandstone, so they have to search far and wide for a master craftman in a desert village (maybe villagers naturally spawn as higher ranks). Or another player really needs that Protection IV book for their armor, so they have to search far and wide for the master librarian in the remote acacia village. I think that would inspire a lot more adventure and much less mindless grinding.

    2. Wandering trader: In almost all scenarios the wandering trader is overlooked and unused. I think adding trades that are found in normal villagers would be great, adding to the *wandering* trader character, like a traveling merchant. Maybe every time the wondering trader visits, he brings one or two rare/high value items that are different every time (and really good deals). Also the buying back items is genius.

    3. Getting emeralds: For the longest time getting emeralds was one of the most grindy things to do in the game, resulting in players using glitches for better deals, or making giant farms and villager halls just to get enough emeralds to have anything of value. A natural and strategic method to get emeralds just like diamonds, iron, gold, and copper would be very useful (like caves, bastions, biomes, veins, etc.)

  • 0
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    I really like these changes for the most part, villagers were too overpowered before, and just getting enchants by endlessly placing and destroying lecterns wasn't the best. However I think maximum level unbreaking, efficiency, protection etc should at least be possible to obtain through trading; perhaps if not guaranteeing it, we could have the villagers cycle through higher levels (e.g efficiency 3 to 5) for the special enchantment.

    Alternatively, you would want to either remove/increase the xp limit on anvils, or make it somehow cheaper to use combined books, to make it possible to get max enchants in tandem with other enchants.

    Lots of people will complain about the mending nerf but I think it's such a gamechanging enchantment I think it could potentially associate with an even more unique biome. Having mushroom biome villagers who sell it would incentivise a lot of exploration, or potentially having end villagers who sell it could solidify it as a late-game item (would also technically solve the problem people have brought up regarding superflat worlds). How it is now is still an improvement in my opinion!

  • 0
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    I think the new rule for librarian villagers isn't a good idea. 

    It does help players try and build around the world, but it doesn't help those that are stuck in a single biome. For example, people in super flat or using the single biome world feature as a challenge.

    Also, it doesn't make sense, why do specific librarians not learn more than others. It isn't based on biomes but on knowledge, so more books probably make more sense.

    If you're trying to think of a way on nerfing trading, then don't try and give the overpowered books right away. Like how you made mending the final book in masters would be completely fine, and so are the others.

    For wandering traders, I think they're pretty good, although, I think you should add more stuff for the player, like two-block flowers. It makes sense for the wandering trader to get flowers, why just limit them to one-block flowers or any others for that matter? 

     

  • 1
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    I really like the change to wandering villagers. But as an experienced player, the villager change makes villagers way more tedious, most players cannot play multiple hours and get transporting villagers is so hard already, the game is supposed to be fun, not a grind, this isn't one of those other games that people play to grind out.

  • 0
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    See there is a flaw with this as players could live in biomes that span across many 100s of chunks so doing this trading system will not only have the player not try to look for a village in biomes but instead of trading with villagers at all they could resort to game breaking glitches to dupe important books, see this change shouldnt be discussed any further in the development phase and should just instead be scrapped

  • 0
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    The changes are a little overkill. Also does it take multiple attempts to get the prize enchantment from a master librarian or is it guaranteed? Because if it's guaranteed mending from a master swamp librarian then this isn't a nerf, it's a buff.

  • 237
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    The biome specific book trades seem annoying to get and more random then the old system because lets say the nearest swamp is 10,000 blocks away, no one is gonna travel 10k blocks just to get mending.

  • 1
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    I thought the point of the game was to have infinite possibilities, not limiting the ease of a player and making enchants so petty and hard to get. Especially when you decide to remove 5 and 4 enchantments from the game, and even 3!!! The enchantment table is good but it really isn't if you need to reroll on enchants so much. If you are going to do this update, which i dont recommend as its horrible, remove the enchant cap on books so that we can still make maxed out tools and armor. So what if its too "easy" to get an enchant from a villager, your still consuming time, and forcing us to explore for new biomes just to get the most basic enchantments! Congrats on always finding a way to make your game worse for YOUR community. Might aswell go play terraria at this point. 😒

  • 0
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    I can see this being a generally good idea, with certain caveats.  For this to be really fair for newer players, you need villages in the swamp and jungle.  There's no clue for these players on how to create those villagers.  Also, as pointed out by others, players in a flat world will have a real problem.  Also large biome worlds and other unique worlds.  I also don't know how I feel about there being zero possibility of trading for an Efficiency IV or V book.  Maybe if those could randomly replace the Efficiency III trade?

    As for the wandering trader, it's all good.  This is a great change.  Speaking of, we really need a regular villager who will buy logs.

  • 0
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    Yes, I think Villagers should be nerfed... BUT not by making it more tedious to get their Items. Please don't make their trades dependant on Biomes. It just makes dealing with them even harder and removes the fun.