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!
Post is closed for comments.
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Actually, amendment to my previous comment because I misread a couple things: Master librarians should offer max levels of whatever their masterwork enchantment is. (And/or anvil limits need to be reworked/removed, but I think that needs to happen regardless.) Getting a librarian to maximum just for sharpness three? That's a little too far in the other direction.
I think this is a great step towards a better future, and I'm glad that you all are trying to change the... quite unbalanced gear progression in the game. I think this is a growing pain that the game needs, to move on to a more sandboxy, open ended progression. I'd much love if anvils were given some love (cough repairing is way too punishing right now) and... well, cartographers selling maps to biomes could help here too!
I do dream of a future where "god-gear" is way less necessary, since I do not feel that it has a valid place in minecraft. If the first step is to make it harder to access, then to make it feel less necessary (banish efficiency from existence as a Magic Enchant?)
Then I fully support this
wandering trader trades direction i love a lot! a few more junk items relating to mobs would be nice, maybe for helping peaceful mode players. gunpowder, string etc!
maybe even some -ite stones in the trades!for the wandering trader i think a more fun way to have the playerbase interact with the feature more is to give him more exclusive trades. it doesnt have to be anything overpowered but maybe something like a exclusive armour trim would encourage the player to go an check out his trades rather then to immediately kill him off. maybe he can have multiple different sets that bring the player back after collecting one of them. this also can give man players the chance to experience armour trims who have not cause they been unlicky finding them or just dont know they exsist. its also a better way then switching enchanted iron to enchanted diamond which would make them kind of overpowered
I like the idea of different biomes offering specific trades as its improvement over spamming a lectern shuffling through everything, however some of the master trades don't feel right as its now impossible to get a Efficiency V or Sharp V trade. In addition to that the prices are still random and it would be a pain to level a villager up to max only for the mending trade to be 30+ emeralds. I feel as if this system as is would work better with an improved anvil as working with fortune II or sharpness III books gets very expensive very quickly. Another change could be a way to cycle a villager's trade at each level for chances at different books/prices, either by influence or a way to revert back a level and redo leveling them up. For example maybe curing a villager with a golden carrot as a opposed to an apple would shuffle his current offerings or go back a level. All in all this is a good underlying system, but it could use more player control as to what books and prices come up after the initial level because as tedious as spamming a lectern is having to level one up only to get a super expensive master trade and start all over with a new villager is worse and requires much more effort
I have never built a villager trading hall that wasn't on an SMP. Because villager transportation is too tedious and annoying, even in the current game. 'Tedious' is a word that has been used a LOT in these comments, and with reason. Increasing tedium is not increasing difficulty.
You're asking players to take hours out of their lives to collect iron for rails, construct those railroads across biomes (don't get me started on how awful this would be on a large biome world), find villagers to transport, go through the ordeal of getting them into minecarts since there's no way to direct them, direct the minecarts through biomes (twice because they need to be bred in a swamp biome), construct in area to keep the villagers safe, breed them, wait five minutes for the baby to grow up, and hope that after all that it actually has the trade you want after the time and emeralds leveling it up to master. If it doesn't, you have to go through the leveling again.
That's a lot. At that point I would rather play another game that's more fun, or cheat in the villagers myself. And that's just a lame and boring way to play.
Considering the good books are at master level and are only sold at level III now, this can be tedious. Either removing the too expensive tag for anvils in survival or making these enchantments at least level IV (preferably V) could fix this. Overall a positive change though.
New librarian trades are interesting. However, I see some problems with it:
1. The special master librarian enchantments do not have maximum levels (e.g. they sell Efficiency 3 rather than Eff 5); this makes it much less viable to use books from villagers in making perfect enchanted gear. This is because of the "prior work penalty" in anvils which increases the experience cost of an item whenever you combine an item with another in an anvil. You cannot enchant or repair items that exceed a cost of 40 XP, and having to combine several enchanted books to obtain a maximum level will greatly increase the XP cost of an enchanted item. Either anvil mechanics could be updated (I think Mojang should) or give the master trades max levels.
2. Different books per biome will ruin librarians in certain challenge worlds where there is one or very few biomes (such as flat worlds or worlds with small borders). There could be a way to toggle this new biome trading per world, or there should be a way to customize trades in general (likely through datapacks). Survival in a flat world is a popular challenge and this would make it incredibly tedious to obtain treasure enchantments. Maybe there should be a new method of obtaining treasure enchantments.
I will advise you to focus on new things than changing the old features. In my opinion, the librarian changes are just terrible! I will just get everything from 1.21.1 from librarian trades for books and then update if you do that. However, I like the wandering trader changes.
The librarian change will severely hurt specific challenge worlds such as flat worlds and sky block worlds. Along with this the Wandering Trader has desperately needed more trades that will help aid in the specific survival worlds such as Mycelium and Bamboo. Please think about expanding the Wandering Trader list even further to add more needed items that are difficult to find as well as PLEASE do not follow through with the librarian plans you have, this is a disaster of an idea.
I like these changes except for a few:
Firstly, not being able to get max enchantments from Librarians. Not because I'll have to grind more Experience Levels to use them on an anvil, it's because I won't be able to use them at all since there's a 39 level limit on anvils, it'll be incredibly tedious to calculate or look up the order of which enchantment you need to put to your gear/tools, especially boots and swords since they have so many enchantments. I like the change, but I'd suggest increasing the anvil's limit as well.
Secondly, some enchantments getting unlocked at the last villager level. If the enchantment has a 100% chance of appearing, then I genuinely like it, but if it's luck based, then it'll just make players' lives hell. Just imagine having to spend hundreds, if not thousands, of emeralds to just get a book trade. Though, I'm assuming it's not luck based because of the line:
"Players will have to work towards getting the best trades instead of relying on random chance".
Finally, the biome based trades. Cool idea, giving a reason for different looking villagers and villages, but it will cause a lot of lag on multiplayer servers if you setup villages on seven different locations. And if you decide to transport them, too bad, you need to make an iron farm, and a gold farm to be able to afford making rails to transport them. I'd expand more and give more ideas, but there's a character limit.
In conclusion, these make the game more tedious and grindy, not more fun.
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It would be more fair if let's say you had normal/smaller chance of getting some enchants but had big/100% to get them from specific villagers on specific levels. The non-max level enchants are also not that great, you can get "too expensive" so easily this way. You could still balance it by having bigger odds of getting lower levels.
In my opinion it's a compromise between old and newLibrarian villagers are indeed powerful, and I think the majority of the community understands why this nerf was suggested. However, while the idea of biome exclusive enchantments are interesting, I don’t think this is the best method to balance librarians. Finding villages, transporting villagers, then rerolling trades is already extremely tedious. Taking out the rng but adding in biome exclusivity will make this process much harder overall.
Only allowing villagers to be cured once, which I think was a fair change, is one way to balance trades. Another method could also be to remake the anvil system, which in its current form, does not make any sense. This will incentivise the use of the enchanting table for most enchantments.
However, in my opinion, the best solution would be to take the idea of biome specific enchants, and then make it so that certain villager types have a higher chance to have certain enchants. For example, instead of making mending only available for swamp villagers, you could have it so that while all librarians may have a mending trade, swamp librarians are three times more likely to, with a guaranteed mending trade at master proficiency. This system will give players the choice to make use of the biome specific villagers, and can let them take their situations into account.
As for the wandering trader changes, I still think they are very underwhelming. They’re still lacking some unique feature to make them worth the player’s time.
These great ideas! That is really better than what we have now!
I think this is an interesting direction but it still makes villager trading the same thing, tedious and frustrating gameplay. The fact some of these villagers also sell duplicate trades or books with lower or slightly higher levels with different prices is also annoying and doesn't guaranteed to get the books we want at good prices. Also I understand why making it so we wouldn't get maxed protection IV books from villagers, but anvils are so inconsistent and not user friendly with how combining and levels work I'd suggest fixing that first. I also would love to see more enchantment books added back like looting.
To fix these issues I suggest making all enchants have a base price rather than a varied price so we can always ensure were getting a decent deal, I'd like to see the anvil receive changes, and I would like to see the removal of getting the same book multiple times (this was an issue before but now it's more frequent than ever due to the enchants having a smaller list to choose from)This is hands down my favorite 1.20 change, and that’s coming from someone who builds their entire game progression strategy around villagers.
Villagers and specifically librarians have been so OP for so long that everyone seems to have become numb to how unbalanced it is, mending and other high level enchantments being accessible with just an axe and some books is not fitting for such an essential (and permanent) upgrade to your gear. I would argue that they still need to be nerfed more, with a focus on armor villagers supplying diamond items less readily.
Also the wandering trader changes are a refreshing update, and I like how the diamond distribution seems to be aimed at compensating for the increased need for diamonds in smithing template crafting.
This was absolutely needed, keep up the good work Mojang. Hopefully elytra rebalancing is next… (end update?)
I think the wondering trader is still useless, I think it would become a much more interesting mechanic if any trade the player can buy would have a chance to appear as the price. This way players that settle into a biome can get stuff from other biomes easily. It would also help make the wondering trader feel more real. As if it traded with someone else, in some other place, and then reached the player.
The new enchanments work very interestingly, and I like the idea. Tho I'd hope it was more accessible, having multiple master level enchantment books instead of only 1. More to it, I see players moving villagers to biomes, getting what they need and later moving them back, it would be neat to have a way to get villagers to follow you, so you can migrate them without minecarts. You know how pillagers have a leader with a banner? I think this could be an interesting thing to add for villagers, where players can use a banner of some kind to bring villagers along to a new settlement village in some other biome. This would incentivize players to make little civilizations for villagers in different biomes, and would add well to the already established lore with the pillagers, you've basically hinted the player towards a mechanic like this already!As someone who always takes the time and effort to set up a villager trade hall each map. This feels outright annoying and tedious for no reason when the current system is already tedious. Transporting villagers from a village to where I want them already is a long and perilous journey, that I am thankful I only have to do enough to start breeding. I cannot imagine having want to make that journey at least 8 times more to collect from all over the world, if you’re lucky to not have bad RNG in map generation for those of us that play on maps with world borders where I’ve had some biomes completely missing and had to set up a system that allows us an alternate way to obtain those realm specific items. Once you get the villagers, the process of getting the enchants to show up that you want also takes a huge time sink. I have definitely spent way more time devoted to getting villager trades up and running, when I would rather take that time to start building structures or doing anything else that is more productive than spamming a lecturn or waiting for more bred villagers to try my luck again on a terrible list of trades. As for the cure stacking, I have played on maps with 1 time allowed and repeated curing allowed. The difference makes it so your emerald generation ends up being from 1 source instead of allowing for some flexibility or creativity in what you farm for trades. I do miss having multiple sources to gain emeralds to trade with, leaving all the other options bad.
In regard to librarians, I do not agree with the changes to make their trades biome-specific. For superflat players, this means obtaining all enchanted books will be impossible. In addition, many Minecraft players, superflat or not, rely on villager trading halls, particularly librarians, for enchanted books. Biome-specific trades would make obtaining desired enchantments much trickier. (On a meta level, experienced players prefer enchanted books because it removes the chance of getting undesired enchantments. Most rarely use enchantment tables.)
In regard to Wandering Traders, I agree with the changes to make them more accessible and sell more items. Superflat players will be able to get more resources that they wouldn't be able to otherwise, and it will make the WT's appearance feel more important for non-superflat players. (Personally, I only tend to care about the llamas the WT brings, since I rarely have emeralds to spend.)
(Sorry for the long comment LOL. Tl;dr, I don't like the librarian changes, but I do like the Wandering Trader changes.)
This is a terrible change. Making enchantments biome specific just makes the game more grindy than it already is and much less fun. It screws over old players, and makes it much more complicated for new players. If this does get fully and permanently implemented, it needs to be as a gamerule so that it can be optional.
The new librarian changes you are proposing would be enough to make myself and all my server mates either stop playing entirely or be stuck at the version previous to this nonsense. All you are doing with the complex and complicated to understand changes is pushing people to the internet to research in order to play this game. You should be able to dive into the game and enjoy explore and learn how to play, not spend half of your game session on the Wiki learning how to even do anything in the game. Make the game more friendly to less experienced players, this will not even challenge the top players it will only hurt the ones who are just getting started. All this will do is further push players into needing to use sites such as "chunkbase" to survive.
First time commenting on a Minecraft snapshot and it’s cause I honestly think the Librarian part of this update is awful. It is already incredibly tedious and a grind to setup multiple villagers with the correct items and max trade discounts please don’t make it even more difficult. I don’t want to run around for several in real life days trying to find a specific biome thousands and thousands of blocks away from my homebase and then have to drag a villager from there back to my base if I want all my villager trades to be in the same area, let alone doing that several times over for each trade. This change makes the game even more of a tedious and frustrating grind rather than a fun challenge. In my opinion because a player can easily lose all their good items often in areas also thousands of blocks away and sometimes in spots that are impossible to get back too without the tools you had that it should actually be much easier to get high powered armor and weapons, not more difficult.
Oh this is just awful! Villagers are already an absolute chore to deal with. What if I want enchantments BECAUSE I want to explore? I don't want to explore because I want enchantments, only to end up with a level 3 efficiency book maximum from a master librarian. If this idea is not scrapped, me and I'm sure tons of other people will not be happy, and will not be updating. Please listen to the majority this time. I've been happy with other updates people complained about, but this? I draw the line here. Even if the low-level enchant idea is kept, for the love of God please don't make it biome based. Finding villages in certain biomes (and finding villages at all) is already luck based, as they can be EXTREMELY hard to come by. Also, what about a world with no structures, or single biome worlds? You won't be able to get trades from converted zombie villagers, which the discount wearing off after one trade is also ridiculous. I'd be grateful to a person forever if they saved me from being a zombie. Please reconsider.
The proposed changes to villager trading and discounts are a huge bummer. I'm not alone in having spent countless hours gathering up all the trades I want and curing my over 80 villagers five times each to get good prices. It was by no means easy or cheap to do. This is something where I feel a lot of players will not update their world until a mod is available to roll back these changes if the come to fruition.
I do agree with what Cubfan135 said in that the level cap for anvils should be removed, especially if it becomes necessary to combine books to reach max enchantment books for items.
As for making players visit more biomes by way of locking certain trades to biome-specific villagers, you've already got us exploring a lot more with the addition of armor trims and pottery sherds. This was already successful, and it has been fun. Having to try and find a swamp or jungle just for a specific book trade and then tediously moving villagers to those biomes will be very, very much NOT fun.
As a Java player, I'll likely have the option to circumvent these changes by way of mods, but that leaves Bedrock players hanging and it already can be super frustrating to play on Bedrock. Don't make this worse for them.
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Just no... making me have to transport villagers from all over the world from various biomes is way more unfun than breaking a lectern repeatedly. I want the villagers I need to get books from in one place, close to my base where I'm building. Having them spread out through different biomes, some of which are thousands of blocks away from spawn, is just going to make playing more difficult and not fun. My other option is to find a way to move villagers from the biome I have to breed them in to get the trades I want back to my base. It is already a nightmare to move villagers around.
How about letting us use books from the enchanting table to teach villagers which books we want to buy from them? Give us a way to train the villagers. Like a scribe that duplicates scrolls and books... don't make it biome dependant.
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I understand the change and I did feel that villagers where quite OP I like the idea of villagers having biome centric enchantment books but I dislike the lack of ways you can move said villagers I can see myself going out and finding villagers on their respective biomes and villages but I feel that trying to get them back to my main/starter base will be such pain and time consuming process because is either try to find a village near an ocean and use a boat or have to constantly place and remove work stations for possibly 1000s and 1000s of blocks to have them in a specific place, I don't find it that enticing to have to travel again by foot too for example +5k x or 20k just cuzz I suddenly need more unbreaking 3 now I have to choose to spend tons of time moving villagers or traveling long distances for single books or risk them dying in the nether. in regards to the enchanting books that were removed like crossbow and trident ones I don't get why remove them? To me those are used mostly to fully max out the respective tools/weapons after for example I've found a trident with only riptide or impaling and I want to add more to it, with out those villagers I have to rely on generation rng to give me the book I want on a random chest in the middle of the ocean. In general the changes are a decent idea but until there are better ways to move villagers on the overworld I don't think is a great change nor makes it more enjoyable quite the contrary.
I think these are very positive changes. Players are now encouraged to build up villages in other areas, or at least explore these biomes, in order to obtain some enchantments. The reduction in the levels of the enchanted books offered by the villagers also encourages enchanting, exploring, or usage of the anvil.
However, there are still a few things to note:
- It's great that Mending has been made more tedious to obtain, but repairing at an anvil still must be improved in order to lessen players' reliance on Mending. The fact that the "Too Expensive" cap exists and that unenchanted items cost experience to repair make Mending a must-have. Mending should be a nice reward/buff, not a requirement.
- Players of non-traditional worlds, such as Superflat or Skyblock worlds, are taking a huge hit here. While there are other alternatives to obtaining some enchantments, a few are now off-limits to those players due to their limited access to other biomes. Perhaps some method of creating artificial biomes could serve as a solution?
I'm not a fan of any of this. I understand removing the ability to stack trades - that adds challenge without having to change game play. But I'm a player that loves to build in survival - I don't travel too far and I like to be able to build and defend myself easily when needed so I like to get my gear maxed out so I can focus on the fun parts. To me it feels like maxing out gear while building a base is perfectly challenging as is. It can take me months to gather, breed, and cure villagers, all while building a big trading hall that hooks into my storage system. I don't want to explore 1000s of chunks to find the biomes when lag from world size is already an issue that we all end up facing. The ideas of satellite trading halls all over my world or transporting villagers back to my base from 1000s of blocks away do not sound like fun game play.
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Good changes overall. Anything is better than breaking and placing a lectern for extended periods of time. Is it in the BEST spot right now? Probably not.
I think you should have added better options to obtain enchantments alongside this change making it more difficult to grind them out. If you could get these enchantments by reasonably exploring, then people would naturally prefer that. But, if the quickest return on your investment is still going to be this awkward, biome specific method, then you’re just simply making it more difficult and grind based. Make ancient cities more common and make mending more common in those structures.
I'll add some feedback on the wandering traders since most feedback so far is focused on the librarians.
Wandering trader changes good. Keep those. 👍
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