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27

The Merchant (bonus: balanced locked chests)

When a wandering trader has a deal you like, you can buy a couple of items off of him and he will be sold out and gone by the next day. I'd like to see a way to keep him around (but not too easily!).
  1. Trade for at least a couple of emeralds...
  2. Give him a place to sleep...
  3. Give him a vault... (more info later)
...and you get a Merchant!
 
 
The Merchant
 
Merchants are a new, unique villager type:
  • Unemployed villagers cannot become merchants, it has to be a wandering trader
  • Merchants no longer have the ability to go invisible at night
  • Merchants do not unlock more trades, instead they will always keep the trades that they had as a wandering trader
  • Merchants restock at a vault
 
Vaults
 
Alongside the fletching and smithing table, the vault is the last new workstation added to minecraft:
  • A vault has a storage of 3x3 (same as a dispenser)
  • A vault is crafted with 7 iron ingots in a leggings shape, a shulker shell in the middle and a gold ingot at the bottom
  • A vault will hold it's content upon being broken (hence the shulker shell)
  • Hoppers/droppers cannot interact with a vault
  • A vault is as tough as a block of obsidian
  • When accessing a vault, the player gets the option to lock it. You can enter 3 digits which will be required to be entered the next time you want to access it. While accessing it the code can be changed at any time.
 
Let me go a little more in-depth about vaults to you, because locked chests have been suggested since forever and they've always been controversial for both balancing and gameplay reasons. The main problems with locked chests were that they would often be too good, or that you could just break them. Vaults solve both issues. A vault only has 9 slots and can only be crafted in the end-game. Breaking a vault will not drop its contents. The only way to access the content is with the code.
 
This code is very deliberately 3 digits, because with a bit of effort, anyone can brute force a 3-digit code in under 10 minutes. That means that 1. raiding a base in vanilla is still very much possible, just harder, and 2. forgetting the code (or losing the key as it would be in other suggestions) is only a minor problem and you will not lose your items.
 
In singleplayer, the vault would simply be a cool decoration (and a way to get the Merchant of course).
 
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5 Comments

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  • 1
    Registered User commented
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    This is a very well thought out idea! I love it. As you explained it solves the locked chests discussion perfectly. And it enslaves the wandering trader which is awesome! I hope this gets more votes. I would love to see this implemented into the game

  • 2
    Registered User commented
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    Merchants should have the ability to unlock new trades, but only by interacting with villagers. They should also keep their ability to turn invisible, and wander larger distances from their workstation than normal villagers, Merchants will also interact with pillagers, witches, and wandering traders. Having a merchant will classify your home as a village in terms of raids, and the merchant will increase the likelihood that witches, pillager patrols, and wandering traders will spawn. The witches and pillagers spawning near a merchant will be neutral.(they came to trade, not fight)

    The vault should have more storage capacity, and a merchant should claim its vault. (so you can't use it) The merchant may also trade anything it had in its vault for emeralds, and trade emeralds for things it doesn't. (in addition to it's wandering trader trades)

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    JUST GET A MOD👎!

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    I'd absolutely love to see this, since I like terraforming, but the gathering of dirt is difficult and annoying, plus it ruins another part of my worlds that I really want to be nice. Having a merchant with a podzol trade would be just splendid, even if it's a bit slow. Actually I just got an idea to maybe add a gardener villager, but i'll take what I can get :)

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    I love the idea of this. Its a fair bit of work to get this villager, but having blue ice trades late game really helps as that stuff is STUPIDLY expensive to craft. Along with other nice trades they tend to have