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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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  • 4
    Registered User commented
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    Villagers are headaches to deal with anyways you don't need to make them more bigger headaches and librarians already give curses why make them more useless they're late game and already got nerfed already don't need to do it anymore bring villages to swamps and mooshroom biomes

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    OK! I understand the wish to make changes... In some respects I am all for it... BUT the rarity of some biomes makes the game FAR HARDER for many!!!

    It would be better if as well as rebalancing the Trading, The Enchantment Tables were also rebalanced in some way... 

    Right now, It is IMPOSSIBLE to enchant Tools via an Enchantment table - You must use a Book... One fix that may help is allowing Players to Enchant actual Items that will then be given a Random Enchantment base on the Item placed in the Table! That to me would be far fairer... Of course they could then use a Grind Stone and re-enchant to get lets say Mending... So make it so that you can only enchant ONCE PER ITEM!

    Honestly, I collect that much Lapis Lazuli and the way things are right now I never use it... So yeah, The Trades do need rebalance... But the random nature of enchanting via the Table doesn't help! People will always DEFAULT to finding the villager's to get the best trades as the Enchantment table is really kid of pathetic! 

    You cannot rebalance Villager Trades and IGNORE the Enchantment table... They need to be done together! Maybe you could make it so Enchanting requires a X Amount of Bookcases in X Position to get certain enchantments... Make it more of a Puzzle... Heck, Make it that you can use The Chiselled Bookshelves with Books in certain Orders to get better enchantments... 

    Villager Trades being Nerfed alone - Not a great fix! You ned to fix BOTH!

  • 2
    Registered User commented
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    Please give wandering trader lava bucket as extra trade option.

    This will add so much extra to flat worlds and normal worlds where the player for some reason can't find lava.

    Hugs and kisses.

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    Minecraft is supposed to be a sandbox game right? You can play it however you want to, hard or easy depends on your wish.

    These ideas are literally forcing players to play hard while there are tons of casual players who clearly do not want to spend this much time on just trading halls.

    1. Villager transportation is hard;
    2. Locking enchantments in specific biomes is going to cause a huge trouble especially because swamps usually spawn thousands of blocks away from spawn and if you have a weak device you will most likely crash in the middle of the gameplay;
    3. It is not like rolling lecterns instantly gives you mending, it takes a while so it is not "too easy" to get mending;

    Maybe instead of completely removing enchantments from librarians and locking enchantments, we can make those enchantments more expensive.

    [Raid farms does give you emeralds but they are hard to make so it is worth increasing the expenses]

    To the "Librarians are overpowered" party:
    If librarians are "too overpowered" to you then I think you should avoid librarians and try exploring for mending? Stop spamming "librarians are overpowered" and pressurise mojang to change this. Not all players want to play hard, many of us are casual.

  • 2
    Registered User commented
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    A lot of other systems need work before these changes like transporting villagers and a need to mending because it destroys the fact of making more gear as it will always stay at full durability if you have an exp farm

  • 1
    Registered User commented
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    The idea of this update has potential, but the current things you've implemented don't work well at all. All it does is make the game an unnecessary hassle for the few people who actually go out of their way to get librarians for trading. Also whatever, changes you want to make can't be biome specific or else you'd be screwing single biome and superflat world players. I'd suggest pushing back this idea and reworking if for a bigger update. This update would introduce a jungle/swamp village and the new balancing chnages. These changes would include allowing players to pick what enchantment they'd want. The first choices would be less powerful enchantments with each level up of the villager, offering even more powerful enchantments then before. Until max level were things like proction 4, mending, fortune 3, etc. Would be. Whatever happens though if you guys can't come up with a better system then you currently have dont even bother releasing it. All you'll do is negatively affect a large portion or majority of players who actually use villager trading.

  • 1
    Registered User commented
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    Just nerf fletchers. I don't think 32 sticks equals a emerald. This became a farm. You can nerf this. Instead add better trades for fletchers. Buff for debuff.

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    I like the idea of the change and don't mind Mending being rare or need real work to obtain. The issue I have with Mending it that it highlights the problem with repairing and how ineffective it is.

    It can be cheaper to make entirely new enchanted gear and you can't repair forever so the concept of anvil repairs basically doesn't get used, with or without Mending. You can't repair forever and it takes unreasonable amounts of xp before becoming too expensive anyway whereas Mending doesn't get more expensive or less efficient over time.
    Mending is so good because it's the only reasonable way to get long lasting gear. Even without Mending I never bothered to hunt Phantoms to repair an Elytra and would just use it less, being able to keep repairing it makes Mending unnecessary but still requirs you to get more materials to maintain gear.
    Even having Mending on half of your items means you grind a lot less so Mending still provides QOL and lets you spend more time exploring, especially since late game gear has good durability anyway. The issue is that without Mending it it bound to break and not be able to be repaired without getting rid of enchantments or just making a new one.

    Making villager trades biome specific and having to move them for reliable long term trades it's excessively tedious, but it's along the right lines. Being able to affect the villager trades will be an improvement, maybe items from specific biomes or something.

    I think revising repairing is a priority

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    I hated this change from the start. it makes getting mending really hard and the challenge feels unnecessary. the wandering trader changes on the other hand are great. in an SMP server getting maxed gear is almost not an option because you have to find a swamp (and all other biomes needed) to get semi-decent enchantments. Most of the time bimoes are destroyed or they have bases there already. I think the community agrees this change is not the answer. While this change might sound like a good idea on the surface, the more I think about it, the more it seems misguided.

  • 1
    Registered User commented
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    To balance this update slightly I have a proposal.
    Let's keep it the way Mojang says above but let's add a trade with master librarians.
    This trade is to copy a enchanted book.

    This means Mojang gets their way that forces us to explore new biomes and build villages there.
    But as soon as you get one book of what you want then you can leave this village and go back to base and get your master librarian to make a copy of this book.
    This means as long as you keep one copy of this book then you don't need to go back to this new temporary village, and no need to transport villagers across vast areas.

    Let's make sure the librarians can only copy books that is from a different biome so that we don't get a crazy duplication system.

    Perhaps the trade should be one book, one pen (stick and coal) and some emeralds.

    I believe this could balance the update slightly.

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    Make villager zombies become a random biome villager once healed. This would save superflat players and make the grind more bearable. Personally, I love villagers from different biomes having different uses.

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    Seems to be two main issues that people bring up with the new method. Moving Villagers over long distances and biome locking enchantments.
    One way to fix both is make an biome specific item that can be transferred easier and also sold by the wandering trader. My suggestion is to update the bell and make unique versions for each village type. Any villager born within a certain proximity of the unique bell will retain the characteristics of the bell type. If the bell was spawn naturally, the librarians will be able to sell full enchanted books. But if the bell was moved, only slightly reduced enchanted books will be available. Bells for non-village types like swamp and jungle could be found in current structures like abandoned villages, jungle temples, and witch huts. Or better yet new village types be introduced.

    It would encourage players to travel to get the unique bells. The difference in naturally spawn and placed bells will reward people who explore and really on finding villagers in the wild. Moving an item is lot easier than moving an villager over 1000 blocks.

    By allowing the wandering trader to sell the unique bells, you can fix the one biome issue on superflat worlds and let them have access to all enchantments.

    The whole mechanic of 'retrieve structure or biome-specific item to enchance something else' fits perfectly in the trails and tails lore.
    It even could be used in the following ways:
    * ocean monument item to unlock trident enchantments
    * pillager outposts to unlock crossbow enchantments

    Since biome specific mechanics playing is being introduced, the cartographer and wandering traders needs to be updated to sell maps with different biome village locations..

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    With minecraft i always think of effort for reward. I agree that currently villagers offer massive rewards for very little effort. However having enough resources to cure villagers over and over does require a good amount of effort especially for younger and newer players. I like the idea of having to get villagers from different biomes, even and especially locking the most op books from biomes without default villages. That’s exactly the sort of hidden mechanic that made me love minecraft and builds community by people sharing those secrets.

    I do want to say nerfing villagers and librarians too much could lead to earlier burn out. Villagers soften the pain of catastrophic deaths due to void or lava. Even with a nice set up in the late game it will take a player an hr or more to get armor and tools back to where they were. Lengthening this will change that calculus on if i want to keep playing.

    Again i love the biome linked trades so long as they can be moved after trades locked, but its the appropriate challenge for the reward. Encouraging exploration, mastery of mob movement across vast distances and dimensions.

    One suggestion is that villagers should have to sleep even briefly before their trades unlocked. Having them in a 1 block cell is pretty sad and a bed would make those cells bigger.

  • 1
    Registered User commented
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    Probably players will be too lazy to look for inhabitants by biomes, especially jungles and swamps, but if you want to make a common way like an enchantment, then this is a good idea

  • 0
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    For this change, why not let the player decide if they want to turn it on/off on the world settings screen, and give players the chance to turn it on BY THEMSELVES. I personally really hate the changes, and most likely (as they are) will not play them, then use a mod to revert them back to begin with (being on java). however it won't be that simple for players on bedrock. 

    - Edit

    Personally if this was a change where I could pick it (or others) whenever they want it would be overall more liked.

  • 1
    Registered User commented
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    Not opposed to the change. I believe trades like mending are very easy to acquire and making it more difficult makes sense. But moving villagers and breeding them in biomes far away, can be very trivial due to the lack of a reliable or easy way to transport them.
    That said, I still think that the mending trade (and other overpowered trades) should be trickier to unlock. For example, a secret trade of the librarian villager unlocked only after giving them a certain item (said item could be a drop/loot e.g from woodland mansions).

    I really like the trades being fixed based on certain conditions, reducing the RNG factor with replacing work stations. I think that this could also be used to more professions apart from the librarians.

  • 1
    Registered User commented
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    I very much like this villager trading system idea.  I think it lines up very well with the trails and tales theme of the last update.  This is my suggestions:

    1. Make villages in all biomes before you implement changes in traders

    2.  For Librarian's - make their best trade the highest level of that specific trade such as - Unbreaking 3, Depth Strider 3, Feather Falling 5, Protection (all types) 4, Respiration 3, Sharpness 5, Impaling 5, Power 5, Efficiency 5, etc.

    3. Make changes in the other villagers as well. It would be interesting if all plains farmers only traded wheat (and their villages only had wheat growing) and wheat products such as bread and cakes.  Desert farmers could trade cactus.  Jungle farmers watermelon.  Meadow and Grove farmers carrots and beets.  Something along those lines.  Do the same for the Armorer, Butcher, Cartographer, Cleric, Fisherman, Fletcher, Leatherworker, Mason, Shepherd, and Tool smith.

    4.  Make some villagers specific to specific biomes and not found in others (once again in line with trails and tales theme).

    5.  With the wondering trader - add items (like stone and cobble stone) that would be useful in a flat world.

    6. Lastly, update the flat world spawn so that all the biomes generate naturally (to include a "dry" ocean that the player would have to add water to).  It will be only three layers of grass but the changes in grass color will indicate which biome you are in.  

     

  • 1
    Registered User commented
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    This should either be made as an option when you first generate a world for this change to take place so that it is optional because the community has been so split and any other decision is going to upset about half of the community, or this should not be implemented at all and should instead be given on the minecraft mod pages as an option to add through modding. If instead you were to implement it with no option and force those of us who don't like it to download a mod, that would make it so that we would be masking a built in function instead of adding another, not usually what mods do and would take more processing power.

     

    Make it optional or make it a mod.

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    I believe a simple solution would be to lock Mending as a level 5 trade for all librarians while locking high-level trades such as Protection IV and Efficiency V to level 4 and 5 librarians. Locking trades to specific biomes creates issues for players without access to many biomes, as well as superflat world players. 

    The wandering trader should be much more generous with emeralds, the current strategy for most players to acquire emeralds early-game is to convert a village to fletchers and trade them sticks, but this could be changed by allowing the wandering trader to buy more items from the player.

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    I could care less, we should just get new village biome types so we can get more special enchants l, maybe we could get new village biomes in the mesa or the deep dark, or the mushroom island, we just should get more village biomes.

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    Don't know how to feel about the villagers update but I liked how you made the wondering trader useful. It was like a running joke that the wondering trader is useless and just annoying. Glad you guys are trying to fix it.
    PS: I've noticed that there are some better trades for wondering traders than villagers. Like how you need 9 wheat (one hay block) instead of 20 and I think it's fair because you can only trade with them once or twice.
    One last thing, I think it will be cool if wondering traders have different prices depending on the biome. That way rear biomes will get you better prices.

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    This new system is going to make it impossible to get most books if you are playing in a single biome world or in a multiplayer server where you are limited to build in a plot of land, for example skyblock and oneblock. Without being able to get all the books in one location a lot of people would quit these servers and playing a biome only world will become insufferable. 

    Aren`t villagers already annoying enough to deal with, and require a long and tedious process to cure, including nether items, dealing with zombies, minecarts or boats, why does it need to become harder?

  • 1
    Registered User commented
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    I really like the idea of changing the current villager mechanics, I think the old system was very outdated and I am surprised that we have not seen anything like this before, however I dont think this is the way of going about it. The idea of this update was to change how players grind to get the trades they want, making villagers have biome specific trades. I thought this was a good idea at first but then I remembered that not every biome has a village meaning you would have to take two villagers to one of those biomes and breed them to get the villager type you want and some biomes may spawn thousands of blocks away from a village, if you were to add this update I think you would need to make villager transport easier, at the moment most players use boats or minecarts; boats take time to travel on land and minecarts are very expensive, mabe you could make mobs able to ride the camel, this would buff the rare mob and bring it more use. Also I think some of the master trades are a bit too underpowered and should be the top level for their enchantment group. I think if you were to add this update it should be apart of the next big update possibly adding villages to the biomes that dont have them already and upgrading the ones that do. 

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    If the issue is a novice librarian selling top level enchanted books, remove the enchanted book trade from the novice level. This removes the re-roll mechanic, as the librarian’s trade table is now locked before the first enchanted book is revealed. Additionally, the “high value” enchanted books could be reserved for only master level. Thus, a player has to completely level up a librarian in order to see if the desired book is available.

    This increases the cost to get a max level trading hall, but still rewards those who are willing to do the grind, and doesn’t cause issues for super flat worlds.

    Regarding zombie discounts, keep the current system, but instead of permanent discounts, have the discounts expire over time. This increases the cost of this mechanic, but gives players the ability to design novel systems to maintain these discounts if desired.

  • 1
    Registered User commented
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    I know I'm late to the conversation but I'd like to add my 2 cents.

     

    I feel that the changes being asserted are for making things difficult in the game for difficulty's sake. It seems like the ones who are wanting these changes are those who have played the game for many years and are yearning for new challenges to keep the game interesting for them. While this is an acceptable desire, I believe it creates a detriment and hindrance to new players, especially if they can look back at games of old, such as I have, and find many enjoyable options now missing. For myself, I've watched play in worlds of 1.16 and 1.18 and started playing in 1.19, but I do not desire to go to 1.20 due to radical changes that are in the works.

     

    As such, I would like to pose the question/idea of, instead of making hard changes that affect all, can there not be options in the Game Rules section of the world generation that can toggle on/off and scale the effects of the offered Villager changes - both trading and curing? I feel that opening up the game for greater versatility in world creation would benefit  both single player and SMPs with a variable diversity in world-setting challenges.

     

    Some quick examples might be:

     

    Check box for Diversify Book availability by Biom

    Sub selection could offer checks for either book types, Mending, or Book level i.e. IV or V,  Bioms to exclude from distribution type, or modify the distribution based on occurrence percentage in the world.

     

    Thank you for reading.

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    If you want to nerf librarians, why not make them require multiple of lower level books for higher level books. This would be different from anvils because it doesn't need to be the same book. I'm certain tying it to biomes is wrong. Maybe you instead breed librarians to get better librarians? As it is, I tend to kill babies with lava buckets because they have worse trades than cured wild zombie villagers. Fix infanticide first.

  • 2
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    Librarian trade change make annoyance.

      I agree that current librarian trade allow survive player to acquire good enchant book so easily. But librarian change in 23w31a is expected to bring annoyance to both experienced and green-hand players. reasons that I think so is

    1. It make experienced players have sense of loss. Players have been already accustomed to trading with current librarian since 1.14 update in 2019. Change in 23w31a force experienced players to do chore for enchanted books valued less than current version. If Mojang really want to nerf enchanted books trading, It is better not to change at least Max level which can be acquire by trading.

    2. It is so much difficult for green-hand player. there is no information available in game. They can not get information about what biome is needed for enchanted books they want.

    3. Villager is hard to control. It requires players to trade in various biome where even village structures not spawn. It means they need move villager from biome they spawn in to other biomes (swamp or jungle) or transfer cured zombie villager from such biome to players’ home. It is very hard and annoying even for experienced players to ship villager. 

    Effort to balance feature in game is desirable because excessively easy game is not fun. But Minecraft already have many interesting contents besides villager trading. In my opinion, if Mojang want to balancing in-game feature, Mojang have better adjust only new or recently updated feature.

  • 0
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    i kinda wish the villagers from an imported world (xbox 360 -> xbox one edition -> xbox one better together edition) should have been left as their 360 trade styles instead of being updated to the current styles …

  • 1
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    The Novice Librarian selling mending tier 1 is cheesy and problem, but locking the trade to biome specific villagers introduces a far larger problem when it comes to actually having a biome and making some sort of transportation network. Making mending books a final trade along with a few other high value enchantment books like infinity and silk touch instead of a novice trade would make more sense instead of relying on a biome lottery.

    The changes to the wondering trader are nice but he is still not nearly as useful unless you are in skyblock. Maybe if there was a way to get him to spawn more consistently like a block that can be made early game when he is most useful (maybe one that uses Copper to craft).

  • 1
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    I think the Villager Trading Update is a good thing. But it will be frustrating to walk over 1000 of blocks to just find a swamp biom and you still need to bring 2 Villager there and bread them. That´s a "lot of work" for someone who just want to enjoy the evening while playing Singleplayer.

    My idea would be a small rework on the Swamp / Witch Hut.
    -Make the hut just a tiny bit bigger and add some small details
    -Add some kind of cage where a Swamp-Villager got trapped by the "motherwitch".
     After you kill the motherwitch a small raid starts, like the Pillager raid, just with normal mobs
     Defeating them will free the Swamp-Villagers (maybe some rare additional item drops like a new Trim?)   and give you a discount once you give them a job.