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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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    if you're going to commit to these terrible changes (except the wandering trader) then please add new villages for the biomes that don't have them, at least.

  • 0
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    I love these changes! The Wandering Trader stuff and the biome dependent book trades are great ideas

  • 0
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    These are some very good rebalancing changes, though I think Mending just needs to be removed from librarian trades completely, while having to max out a villager for it to occur is a great idea, there's still more than enough ways to get tons of emeralds very quickly making this just an annoyance rather than a barrier. Imo as a treasure enchantment it should be just that, it would definitely create a huge incentive to explore the world more.

    Also making certain book trades biome specific is a neat idea, though I think this should be based on the villagers heritage/looks, so a swamp villager/librarian will always have swamp trades, not just when they are physically inside a swamp. that way you still have to find them in the first place but have the freedom to move them to some other place of your liking and prevent the tedium of having to travel there each time you want to trade.

  • 0
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    I think these changes would be alright *only if* the larger enchanting system is reworked alongside them to make things more convenient. The problem lies more with enchanting itself, as enchanting methods besides villagers are tedious and uninteresting to do.

    The Enchanting Table is completely RNG reliant. If there was an enchanting method similar to the Table which allowed you to pick enchantments and their levels freely for a higher XP cost, it would make enchanting significantly less tedious.

    Anvils are also completely broken as far as I'm concerned. The XP cost cap (the "too expensive") and rename cost should be removed outright, and cost scaling could do with softening, to reduce unneeded grind. Repairing an item shouldn't increase the XP cost of further repairs (this would greatly help to balance mending).

    There are many other things to consider as well, such as XP storage, reworking XP levels, and the ability to move enchantments from items to books.

    I also don't think Swamp/Jungle villagers should be used when there are no Swamp/Jungle villages. It's just an unintuitive mechanic.

    With a better enchanting system, librarian trading halls would simply be a lategame convenience, not a necessity for obtaining consistent enchantments, which would greatly balance their place in enchanting and justify a grind for them. Without an enchanting rework, these villager changes only increase grind and make getting specific enchantments consistently an even bigger pain than it is now.

  • 1
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    If you want my take, I think the changes to villagers are pretty bad. Do you want to know why players gravitate towards villagers? Well, I'll tell you, it's NOT because they are "OP", but rather because they make the game less grindy and more consistent.

    The enchantment table has seen several changes over the years, however at its core, it has not changed. It is still "grind for exp to get a random set of enchants that might be good or terrible". Villagers inherently fixed this by giving good access to enchantments that you need in endgame Minecraft. They aren't overshadowing the enchantment table because they are that powerful, they are overshadowing it because it is just that bad.

    Honestly to make an "overpowered" villager setup takes so much time, effort, and resources, that I'd hesitate to call their strength a problem in the first place. Most people complaining about them are the top percentage of players who would have OP gear with or without villagers anyways. Making villagers more tedious and grindy doesn't help anyone, least of all casuals.

    Now if you ask me, I'd say Minecraft needs more challenging endgame content not more tedious endgame content. Add more bosses, end biomes/structures, dimensions. If the current strength of villagers isn't balanced, buff other things to be comparable and add more difficult areas so that they are balanced. Don't make them more tedious, time consuming, and weaker all at the same time, that will just kill their use for casual players.

  • 1
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    While I like this idea in theory, there are already several problems with it:

    - problem 1: swamp and jungle villages need to be added if you go through with this; moving villagers between biomes is horribly annoying - seemingly by design - and gating such important enchantments (like mending) behind that is counterintuitive.
    - problem 2: the enchantment table needs to be reworked; the reason many prefer the grind of a trading hall is because you can *choose* what enchantments you get and their level. The table is far too random to be anything but annoying (not to mention you can't even get treasure enchants).
    - problem 3: the EXP increase on anvils will need to be toned down, preferably removed, and the (quite frankly stupid) upper limit on EXP cost will need to be removed. Grinding out EXP is another reason why I stay far away from the table: it's just too slow and tedious.
    - problem 4: not being able to get the max enchantments from either source (librarians and the table) only exacerbates problem 3 and further increases the horrible tedium.

    A solution to 3 of these problems is: being able to give a librarian an enchanted book and that book becomes their new first (or master) trade. That way we still need to explore for the initial prize, but we can also control where and to what level we get critical features (ie, our own village at our own base).

    Please consider that these issues, if not solved, would SEVERELY impact the quality of the game.

  • 1
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    This just sounds like you're making an already annoying and painful process even MORE annoying and painful, sure the villagers may be "op" but think about how much of our time we put into getting it, it's literal HOURS of my life being put into getting enchants, getting levels, getting emeralds and so on.
    This kinda change is only really good for those that play this game as their job.
    So, if you want this to be a thing, make it so there is like a /gamerule or something to activate it or deactivate.

    I'd be quite happy if getting certain enchants was made easier, have any of you spent time getting enchants?
    Trying to get your armor decent, have an okay weapon?
    It takes a stupid amount of time, just recently I literally spent DAYS, trying to get a few enchants, of any cost, which I seemed to have horrible luck in getting so please do not do this change or once again, make it a /gamerule or something you do before making the world for those that want it.

  • 28
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    I like the idea of biome specific trades but I think that the special trades should be max enchantments.

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    Making certain enchantments appear on certain biomes isn't a change I support. Instead, adding level caps to enchantments would work better. For example, you could remove Protection 4 and make level 3 the max you can get.

  • 1
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    I personally think that this system is a great idea and would bring some real value to the game, but i also think it nerfs trading a bit too much, it would be better, in my opinion, to let them sell the level 5 books, but not always that it can vary between 3 and 5 (for the special trade at the villager master level).

    The trades locked to biomes are a nice idea to get players to travel their world and discover features like the recently added trail ruins (wich are a very nice addition) but sometimes you dont have acces to different biomes like maybe in worlds or servers with a worldborder, and that would make it really hard to get your hands on all of the books possible by trading. I also think you should DEFINITELY add a Jungle Village and a Swamp Village naturally spawning with the "secret" villagers in it. Maybe it would be nice if the trades are locked to biomes, but the "special trades" (master level) sell the special book, AND a random other book (that other villagers from other biomes could sell) also in the same villager as an extra reward for reaching the master level.

    Regarding the wandering trader buff, I love it, since the wandering traders always used to be annoying and walking in the way. Honestly they werent usefull and always spawned in the most annoying places possible, then when you try to kill them they become invisible. I think it is a nice idea to add some actual usefull trades to them, but i still think they don't have enough of a use with these upgrades.

  • 61
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    i'd enjoy if it was a gamerule like "oldVillagerTrades" or something. it'd be off by default, so just incase you prefer the old system you can just toggle it. though maybe that would provide issues

  • 0
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    This feels like a change driven by popular Youtube and streaming players who are what I would call super-users who consistently say things like villager trading is overpowered.

    Many players struggle to be able to do any villager trading at all, so making it prohibitively hard seems like the wrong way to go.

    I understand that mojang wants to make everyone happy but what will happen is that they will make this more challenging for most users but the player groups like Hermitcraft and Scicraft will just have some new OP farm to get around these new limits that will just have them saying that it is still too easy and OP.

  • 108
    Registered User commented
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    i i dont't know mate, this is not it

  • 0
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    I like the idea of having biome dependant enchantments, though the praticality and intuitive aspect I see problems with. I still believe mending should be found, not bought. Mending should be the loot in mid-level and high-level structures like mineshafts, stronghold, ancient cities etc. With good chances the harder the structure is.

    If the idea of biome dependant enchatments is becoming a thing, the regular / new  player needs to know how, without the list we need to find in a wiki. Perhaps learning the player to breed villagers that will unlock new trades is a more interesting way.

  • 0
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    I think this is a good way to balance the librarians but I do think that they should sell higher levels of max books then they sell currently or anvils need increase on the "too expensive" level (or just to be completely removed) as those kinda ruin this change abit but still a pretty decent change (Also new villager transportation ways would be nice too)
    As for the Wandering Trader changes, I think that these are great changes to them especially buying logs and the changes should absolutely be implemented to the game

  • 0
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    If you plan to do this, add lava buckets to the wandering trader's list it comes up way to often that it is unobtainable without version manipulation in superflat, also just locking the rarer book trades to master level is a better idea, as it makes those trades more accessible without leaving them in the first book pool. 

  • 1
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    I don't mind the wandering trader changes, those seem okay, but the villager changes are awful. Without a way to quickly travel throughout the world it would be extremely tedious to get to wherever your villagers are, basically forcing you to either walk/ride an animal to each biome, which could be really far, or have to speedrun the dragon to get an elytra. No one would be able to just build a base they really love and move villagers nearby. This doesn't make the game more fun, it makes me not want to play. I get wanting to increase the need/want to explore, but this isn't it. The curing is a little annoying on its own, I'm sure there's a better way to balance it. Maybe not being able to get everything down to 1 emerald, if you really wanted to change it, but sometimes 1 cure is still expensive. However combined with the changes to trades it's really bad.

  • 0
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    This change will probably get rid of a lot of the player base, if not get serious hate from the people that stay. Also I don't think mending is particularly easy to get in the first place because you have to find a village or zombie villager which both are luck based.

  • 1
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    This is a bad change to trades, getting the trades you want already is tedious enough, adding biome requirements to this AND having to combine a lot of books for the max level just makes it unfair and sometimes inaccesible for everyone.

  • 0
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    Biome-specific enchants for librarians are a good change, it encourages exploration and will halt the eternal villager-torture a bit, though it's a bit unintuitive to have specific trades for jungles and swamps as they don't have natural villages. Librarians would also become a bit repetitive, so maybe add some enchants to multiple biomes, as to not have only 3 different enchants in each biome.

    Fixing the cure-multiplication glitch seems a bit harsh, it was indeed too OP, but it was a good end-goal and took a decent amount of time anyways. Maybe nerf it so you can't dupe emeralds via buying bookshelves for 1E and selling the 3 books for 1E each, and make each trade have a lower bound so you can't pull prices down to 1 sell-item.

    Diamond ores seem too common now, maybe turn their rates down a little. 

    I appreciate you guys thinking of people with low bandwidth, :thumbs_up:

    Wooo yeah that's what i'm talking about. So many datapack additions, we finally have proper randomization, returning, and variables, the coding will never stop, i'm coding an entire universe in Minecraft now and you can't stop me.

  • 169
    Registered User commented
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    This change makes it, so player have to make like, five different trading halls. Just getting enchantments through the enchantment table is practically impossible, because of the 40 level anvil cap (the too expensive! message). This change nerfed enchanting so hard, it's worse than when it was introduced years and years ago.

  • 1
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    This change feels to drastic and makes it too tedious and difficult, a better solution in my opinion would be to make certain enchants (Unbreaking 3, Mending, Fortune 3, etc) Master level only but you are guaranteed one of these enchants once the villager becomes a Masfee and lower level enchants can be lower level of the Master only trades (Such as unbreaking 1/2 or fortune 1/2) and other enchants. Having it biome locked makes it so much more work massively complicating people who just want their books, the idea of curing having a cool down (Once you cure it and lower prices you cannot cure to lower prices further until it’s prices have once again gone to its normal price)

  • 141
    Registered User commented
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    nah keep it how it is

  • 1
    Registered User commented
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    I love this change! I do feel like mending should be more of a challenge to obtain still, but I think this is a great step in the right direction. Especially with the wandering trader changes!

  • 1
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    Getting rarer books already takes long enough. This is also totally devastating for worlds with only one Biome nearby, my main world at the moment is just desert for thousands of blocks and it would take hours to transport all the villagers back and forward. Please mojang don't add this villager trading is difficult enough at the moment there is no need to make it more difficult

  • 1
    Registered User commented
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    Villagers needed the nerf b/c enchantment tables and loot enchantments have been mostly useless for some time, but some thoughts.

    I like the consistency of getting certain trades but if this change was to decrease villager cycling and the work necessary to get enchantments it straight up doesn't. Now whatever effort it took to get the trades you want with villagers is replaced by getting those villagers to the right biomes, which is even more tedious than breaking and replacing the workstation. And to top it all off you still have to cycle the villagers for better prices and levels of the first few enchantments.

    I like villagers not giving the highest level enchant and honestly if that was the only change I wouldn't mind so much, but if your going to do this you should buff enchantment tables to actually be able to give the highest level enchantments.

  • 0
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    I love the change in wandering traders! The change in librarians, not so much. It would be interesting to have the option, but if this becomes a feature we would have to go to different biomes to trade, build villages in swamps and jungles. I don't know about you, but moving villagers is not the most fun! It's true that we could go the explore and Enchant table method, but it would be nice to have the option

  • 0
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    Big win with the wandering trader. For the longest time he was just a source of leads or nautilus shells for most players, so it's nice to see his trades expanded. Being able to sell him items also fixes one of the biggest problems the wandering trader had: In the past by the time you had disposable emeralds you would also have all the items he would sell you. One thing I would like to still see from the wandering trader is bamboo added to his trading table.

    As for the librarians, I can't say this is the best way forward.
    You can no longer get maximum level for certain enchantments. For many technical players the most beautiful part of Minecraft is the strive for perfection. The greatest part of working on a trading hall is the ability to finally obtain all the enchantments you need quickly. This is no longer possible even through hard work. This WOULD be much less of an issue if the anvil level cap was removed, although even then all you'd be accomplishing is encouraging players to afk more at their enderman and gold farms.


    I personally don't mind the biome requirement, though I imagine it makes trading more tedious for someone who's not keen on either exploring thousands of blocks or pre-rolling seeds before starting a new world. It also very questionably REQUIRES the player to both move villagers, which is infamously tedious, and build villager breeders, which require technical knowledge. This change DOES NOT make trading less overpowered. It just makes it more obscure.

  • 0
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    I approve of the changes to the Wandering Trader; It's universally beneficial for any and all players, in any and all scenarios.

    However, the Librarian's biome limitation is what I consider a poor choice. It effectively halts equipment progression in scenarios where players are not playing in the "default" worldgen, such as Single Biome, or Superflat, or even any possible modded situations.

    And as others have mentioned here in these posts, the enchantment progression system introduced by this change also conflicts with the Anvil's "XP Limit" in a pretty severe and negative way. Either having this "XP Limit" raised to a new higher level, or removed entirely, would be the best course of action if this new progression system is to be seriously considered.

  • 0
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    The updates to wandering traders look very positive for general gameplay, a very useful addition for players would be the addition of a trade for lava buckets which would help people who are having trouble -or simply unable due to world settings- obtaining lava
    A small change but a valuable one