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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 agree with the fact that the current way trades work is not perfect, but I think that the proposed changes would make the system much grindier, forcing players to transport villagers over long distances just to get access to essential enchantments.

    I would like to propose a solution that rewards players that explore different aspects of the game rather than forcing them to grind.

    This system would work like this:

    1. Villagers no longer get XP from regular trades.
    2. In order to unlock new trades, you need to exhaust specific, one-time only "requests", appearing as trades that do not give emeralds.
    3. Each trade has a corresponding "request" needed to unlock it, and more valuable trades require harder to get items to unlock. In this way permanent access to equipment can be gated behind specific milestones in the game.
    4. For each level, a villager offers more "requests" than the number of trade slots available, allowing the player to influence the final trades a bit more, but still not enough to make it trivial. Once all slots for a certain level are filled the villager levels up and new "requests" appear.
    5. The trades have the same odds, but the "requests" depend on the villager biome, with certain trades easier with certain villagers.
    6. The discount from curing villagers still stacks 5 times, but in order to get it you must also satisfy a set of increasingly difficult, job-specific "requests" that appear after each cure. For example, an armorer might request specific enchanted armor.
  • 0
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    The question one should ask is: which group of players these changes are aimed for? I'll argue that it helps nobody.

    For novice/casual/"normal" players the existing trading system was already too expensive and complex, and I highly doubt your average 7 years old who plays Minecraft 4 hours a week will get to build a villager setup that gives them free fully enchanted armor.

    For anyone who knows what they're doing with the villagers, as long as emeralds are farmable, everything villagers sell is basically free. The only difference is annoyance they'll have to go through to make yet another free set of armor. And this category wants things to be farmable, so, if emeralds would hypothetically become hard to obtain, it will ruin the fun for this category of players.

    But what about the third group - somewhat advanced players who don't like spending their time reading wikis and building contraptions, and wants to discover how to optimize the game in a natural way. Well, this change would give them nothing but bad time, as obtaining specific books now requires to consult a wiki, as finding out how to get, say, a Mending book, just by poking at the game itself will be extremely unlikely, and the lack of Swamp villages doesn't help either.

    Basically, this change makes villagers more painful and more wiki-reliant to work with. I'd argue that the villager trading hall is the real enchanting system, while the ench. table is just an early-game "get lucky" substitute due to its random nature

  • 1
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    I believe wandering traders could use a few more trades. Some examples of new trades are: Sweet Berries, tadpole bucket, powder snow bucket, spyglass, saddle, glow lichen, painting, candle, honeycomb, ink sack, and glow ink sack. Some of these trades should be pretty rare but I believe these would all fit into the game very well.

  • 0
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    Honestly, i am glad this is looked at BUT, i think it makes it too much of a hustle to get enchantments that you want. This would get rid of the normal "trading hall" but would make so the player has to find/build 6 iirc separate villages which is a lot to basically get weaker books. Only after that they have to get a xp farm to even get the books on their tools, while the level cap is still a thing making it WAY harder to fit everything that you need on a piece of equipment. Nerf the libriarians but don't make players go around the world for efficiency 3

  • 192
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    I think this change is not gonna make villagers less op it's just gonna make them more annoying to deal with

  • 0
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    I like that you're fixing the op villager trading system, but perhaps you are going about it the wrong way? I feel like you're making it super grindy, and I don't really want to transport villagers a long distance just so I can get particular enchanted books, not to mention some of them will be unavailable from villagers. Maybe instead of making the books biome specific, make it so that a villager will get one enchantment at the beginning (say sharpness) and when the villager is a novice the enchantment will just be level one, and as you upgrade the villager the level increases, and maybe once the villager gets to max level, it will get one additional enchantment that only has one level, like mending or silk touch. I feel like this will be much more balanced and a lot less grindy than having the enchantments be biome specific, not to mention making it so that all enchantments will still be available to people doing superflat or single biome challenges. I love this game, and I am always excited to see what the new updates are, but if this change is implemented, I just won't update my world, because I hate this change.

  • 0
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    I think the idea of making the librarian villager trades different according to their biome is a cool concept, and I’m glad that trident, crossbow, and fishing rod enchantments are being removed from the villager trades, however I believe that the enchantment books that the villagers trade need to come at the highest level (e.g Fortune 3 and not Fortune 2 or 1) that they can be, as getting the villager to have the desired trades is already difficult enough as it is, and the villagers should be made easier to transport. Also I think it could be awesome if villagers were given different skin textures to allow for a more diverse experience, similarly to how more skins than just Alex and Steve were added. I also believe that this is the perfect opportunity to add jungle and swamp villages, especially considering that bamboo wood was just added to the game, it can make for some cool new village home designs. Also as a sort of side note, in bedrock edition, sometimes zombies can have a difficult time path finding to villagers, because once I was trying to infect a villager right next to a zombie, and the zombie was trying to infect a villager that it was unable to access because it was blocked off, so perhaps it could be fixed so that it tries to attack the most easily accessible villager rather than the closest one to the zombie. Overall, I like the direction that this game is heading!

  • 1
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    This change simply increases the grind needed for max enchanted gear, and not in a fun way. Those who want to get straight to the building process in their world now need to build villages in 2 different biomes?? If you're going to block enchantments behind village types, you should give us the swamp and jungle village types to spawn naturally. Right now it isn't intuitive at all what you need to do to get these enchants from non-existing village types.

  • 1
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    I think the master trades should be max level enchants after the changes to discounts, and splitting of the enchantments to be per-biome.
    I like the biome dependancy however this would be a huge negative for any player on superflat. Maybe giving a gamerule for this might help?
    Removal of entire types of enchantments isnt good for anyone.
    Players should not be punished for putting in the time and effort of collecting villagers, creating a villager farm, infecting then curing villagers for better trades, only to be unable to fully enchant a tool with max enchantments. The ideas brought up in this snapshot are great ideas, but only affect the part of the community that is willing to put time and effort into choosing the enchantments they want to use.

  • 0
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    I really like the idea of the improvement of wandering traders as I think they don’t do as much as they probably should and this is a good change to make them better. However, I don’t like that books from librarians will now be biome specific as I think it would be difficult to get all the books needed and especially a swamp for mending would bring a lot of difficulties with it. Needing a different biome for every essential book would lead to long journeys from base to base to buy a book specific to a biome which could be very far away from your base.

  • 0
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    I like the changes for curing the villager. It's more fair, because players can't abuse the curing system and only need to pay 1 emerald for like 1 mending book. But getting some books depending on biome is a little bit too hard for new players. It could make the game harder for new players and experienced players would hate this change and leave the game completely

  • 0
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    The villager update sounds very bad, the wandering trader change sounds fantastic. but trading with villagers regularly is already tedious and making them even more complicated is unnecessary. As a peaceful mode player, a good amount of my time playing is spent with villagers because they’re the only good way for gaining XP & acquiring certain items. going 1k+ blocks to capture a specific one & then bringing them back over the mountain terrain sounds like a nightmare. if Villagers having more of a backstory sounds super cool but it doesn’t have to make the game more complicated. :(

  • 0
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    I like the special enchantments being at the master level of a villager is a great idea and helps balance trading. I like the idea of spreading out the enchantments amongst different types of villagers but having them be different biomes seems tedious. Moving villagers can be very difficult and time consuming. I don't think adding swamp and jungle village types is the answer though as exploring for those could also get a bit tedious. Maybe there is some other way of diversifying the enchant types that villagers sell. Also, if the level of enchants is going to be capped, I think that the xp cost in an anvil needs to be lowered a little bit. While I do think that it should cost a lot of levels to enchant that way, I think at its current state, it is too expensive. Overall, I think the new system is a great start at making an interesting trading experience.

  • 0
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    I think wandering trader rebalance is great. Also I it would be cool if it had more of trades like these, would make early game a lot more varied.

     

    When it comes to villagers. I am not sure, Villager system is completely overpowered at this point, but I am pretty sure this is not fixing the problem.

     

    Problem lies in a completely broken enchantment system. Let's face it, all of us like being overpowered, however things like mending and anvils completely broke the enchanting out of balance. Doing something like removing the enchanted books for normals enchantments entirely would be a better way. And make it also so you cannot combine enchantments on anvil to get a higher level. (I can already see 50% of players wanting to kill me for this idea)

     

    This may not be the best idea (propably it's not), but enchanting and villager trading is just badly designed from a game balance standpoint and needs some changes. However making something more grindier does not solve the problem. It just makes game less fun.

  • 0
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    I love how the villagers are now different from one biome to another and how you feel forced to go to a biome to have your preferred enchant. I would love more of these with the other types of villagers. Another think is the wandering trader, even tho now have a more interesting pool of things to buy, I would rather want something special something unique that make you excited that he appears. I also love the limit to the amount of times you can cure a villager and get the bonus, and also that bonus in my opinion is too high in this snapshot either. Another thing, the amount of diamond ores is really really excessive.
    Overall giving more personality to the trading system it is always good.

  • 1
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    I do not like this update at all. I think that for a new player this will make it almost impossible to get fully maxed gear. Also this is ONLY hindering new players as people with already maxed gear will not be affected. This will then make the skill gap EVEN LARGER please revert this to the old system.

  • 60
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    I like the idea of each biome getting unique books but as a fan of crossbow and trident, they're already more tedious to use than a sword and bow and now their books not being included in villager trades will make them even more tedious to use. Please include crossbow and trident enchantment books in villager trades!

  • 0
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    if mojang want to even out the villager trade.  keep it as it's is how it is now you can sit for hours braking and placing the the same block to get one or more trade you want from the villagers. try to limit the time you can convert them to 1 time only,  so many vanilla base world like super flat and skyblock and other game types make this task a pain.   think aboute it  in a skyblock world you haw to block out 1000 of block or more to fine one biom to make a mob farm then trap a witch to cure a zombi villager to then trade fore one book too den block and run back to you base too then out age for a diffrent book you need in a diffren biom..
    this will force and make old and new player too stay on the 1.19 update and older just to stay away from the new trade system.   this change and the mob vote fore the last years will kill the love for this game fore alot of players out ther...  

  • 0
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    Villager change is legitimately terrible.  It's an extremely grindy and annoying solution to a non-issue.  The recent updates have already felt like grindy messes and this one is only following that trend.  The wandering trader change is good, but I feel doesn't go far enough.

  • 0
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    I would like to see villagers become less tedious rather than more tedious. Right now the tedium is in rerolling villagers but rerolling along with fully leveling up is much worse. I would like it if some enchantments are locked behind higher level villagers, but only if I don't have to reroll them. If some other librarian already has enchantment X then other villagers will not pick that one. Also, Max level librarians should only trade max level books. Seems bad if my max librarian sells power 1 as his master level trade. 

    I like the curing and wandering trader changes, multiple cures was too powerful and it makes the wandering trader more useful. 

    There are always going to be players who get librarians with all the enchantment trades, and most will get a few very useful enchantment trades. Making this harder is only going to add to the work they will do, rather than discouraging it.  

  • 0
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    As someone who has played Minecraft since a young child, I am not at all a fan of the general direction the game has taken. It is more difficult than ever to experience new features, and the game has become more 'grindy' with every update. How is anybody new to the game supposed to discover hidden villagers with some of the most important enchantments in the game? How is a new player supposed to transfer two villagers potentially thousands of blocks, then know to create a village to obtain these enchantments? Villagers have always needed to be nerfed. However, this may destroy the entire incentive behind using villager mechanics. Cycling through an enchantment table for hours on end, and fishing just became the most effective method yet again. Mojang, I understand you wish to curate a balanced experience, but if it comes at the cost of adding excessively tedious and convoluted features, is it actually worth it? Exploration is fantastic, but not when the reward is nowhere near worth the effort. There has to be a better way. A better way to trade, a better balance for enchantments, and a better way to move villagers from one place to another.

  • 0
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    The biome things is very bad. 

    It just makes the mending process longer, not more fun. It doesn't add any interesting game mechanics, whereas for years we've had featureless profession tables just waiting to be used. (I wouldn't mention the addition of the trimming mechanism, which I think is pretty poor).
     
    It also breaks up the villager halls, which are a great system to set up.
    What's more, forcing exploration is not a good direction to go in.
    1.20 already encourages players to explore the world in search of ruins, but on private servers, the size of the world is a real problem. There's very quickly a very heavy map, so you have to restrict yourself to exploring.
    I'm sure you can find something much better.
  • 22
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    The change is too good but they should change the trade a little more so that the villagers do not sell repeated enchantments, adding new trades to these or something, it would also be good if they rebalance the armor villagers a bit and leave them as in the bedrock version or that depending on the possibility they sell 1 or 2 pieces of diamond armor, and also a little to the farmer villager so that he has trade preferences depending on the biome (such as that the one in the taiga has more preference to trade berries)
  • 0
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    I disagree with the enchanted book nerf, but I do agree with the wandering traders new trades. How bout instead of changing enchanted books for biome specific villagers, stone masons should sell different types of stone depending on what biome they come from (desert villager, sandstone.) Give this some thought

  • 285
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    Personally, I feel that this change is a pain. I don't like the idea of having to check some forum just to find which villager sells mending or protection. Villagers were already a pain to deal with, this change will just make the game tedious and overall more time wasted. If villagers are to overpowered, then I would rather it concern prices and zombie conversion, rather than the trades themselves.

  • 0
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    The changes seem interesting, but I have 2 main concerns:

    1. Locking enchants to certain biomes sounds great at first, but there are situations where people just don't have access to all village biomes. Excluding challenges where the entire world is one biome, like superflats and some skyblocks, sometimes you don't have access to all the biomes on a regular server - one of the ones I'm playing on right now had to expand its world border 3 times just to get a desert. (Another border expansion was required just to get a couple blocks of warm ocean biome, though that's an issue with getting coral, not villagers)

    2. Efficiency and sharpness being sold at master level at only level 3 seems like a ripoff. Most of the time you get efficiency 4 on an enchanted item without trying, so having to buy 4 books (or 2 if you already have eff. 4) just for a common enchant seems a bit cheap for a master level trade. Compare mending or silk touch, which are only one level and thus already max, to efficiency or sharp 3 - it's not even a contest. I do think that 5 out of 7 enchants naturally requiring a higher work penalty to add to tools could be an interesting way to balance them with other sources, but sharp and efficiency 3 feels almost insulting.

    If these are meant as balance changes to villagers, I think they do a decent job. However, I probably wouldn't be looking for structures or using the enchanting table early game for enchants, I'd just use a skulk sensor based fish farm instead.

  • 0
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    Mojang I understand you're trying to diversify the game. Do remember that Minecraft is a game with no plot or real goals and I feel like a lot of people get enjoyment out of just having a fun time with the game and being forced to get enchantments through specific biomes (which are needed for an enjoyable game experience) is just absurd. If players want more challenge, then they should get a datapack or a mod, but I don't think the majority of the player base wants to be running rails or boats to some remote place just so they can get this one enchant. To top it all off, you reduced the level enchants you can find in trades so now you need way more books to even max something which adds to the exp cost of enchanting. Everything else is great, but PLEASE don't do this villager biome specific jumbo

  • 1
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    So, first of all, I LOVE this system that you've added, but there is one flaw that caught my eye. I understand that this system pushes the players to not to abuse villagers and use the other game mechanics to get the enchantments they want, and it was a nice idea to lower the highest enchantment level to force the players to spend xp, rather than abuse villagers and get xp out of nowhere. But, I think that the following enchantments should be obtainable in every biome: Curse Of Vanishing, Curse Of Binding, Frost Walker and Mending. Why? Well because you simply cannot enchant your way out of them. And it isn't really convenient to force players to visit countless structures for hours just to get one item enchanted or breed villagers in a swamp for just a %50 percent chance of getting a swamp villager, maxing it, and then maybe getting the mending book. Also, most of the advanced players don't even know how to obtain swamp villagers, so that'll be a serious challenge for beginners. Plus, if you're doing a challenge, (Let's say Superflat) you can only get the specified enchantments through the villagers. Eitherway, the other biome locks made sense, but these should simply be available in every type of villager, as it opens a lot more ways for someone to play the game differently.

  • 0
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    One of the biggest problems is that if you want to have all the villagers in one place, it's really, really difficult to move them around right now. Getting enough rails, even if you go through the nether, to get from some biomes to wherever your home is is really expensive. Maybe there could be some easier way to move them-- Camels can already hold two players, maybe you can pay a villager to get up on the camel so you can transport them. It's still not too easy to move them around, but it's at least possible without banging your head against the wall.

  • 1
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    The wandering trader change is good and needed, many players found them mostly useless and just wanted them for free leads and cool llamas. The villager changes on the other hand are not positives. Making certain enchantments only available in certain biomes, restricting the max level obtained from trading and then removing the books for some tools most people don't use because they aren't very good without said enchantments isn't fun. I understand that villager trading is easy to exploit and probably does need nerfing in some capacity but this is not the way forward as this doesn't make it more difficult but rather more tedious which takes away what little enjoyment remains of an already tedious feature. I and I'm sure many others do not support these new changes and do not believe they should be developed further in this direction. Furthermore, before any change is made to trades you should realistically be working on making it easier to deal with villagers as creating breeders, trading halls, curing stations etc are all annoying to do (which is another reason why not to make biome specific enchantments due to constructing more of these per biome). Positives however is the nerf to curing. That is definitely a neat feature but rather than do nothing after the first cure I believe it should help less each consecutive cure. So if the first cure did 20, then second is 10, third is 5, fourth is 2, and all remaining are 1.