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Minecraft is about gathering items and the right tools to go from mere survival to thriving in its sandbox world. While players can take the difficult route and simply try to discover all the rare and useful items in the wild, a more efficient method is to simply trade in the items they need by interacting with villagers.
Villagers come with different jobs, which means they have different trades. Players should be familiar with two types of trades: Emerald trades, which allow players to easily obtain emeralds without having to mine them in mountain biomes, and “Loot” trades, which allow players to Use emeralds and other items to purchase various valuable items from villagers. This may include enchanted books or maps of Woodland Mansions. With that cleared up, let’s take a look at the better Minecraft village trades.
Most trades can only be made a certain number of times before the villager runs out of stock. The villager will resupply a maximum of twice per day by interacting with their labor block, so make sure they can access their labor block at all times. The more a player trades, the better the prices will also be, so players may notice that the trade prices shown here will change over time as villagers take a liking to the player.
ten Cleric – 3 gold for 1 emerald
Priests spawn in villages where a brewing stand is available. Most of their professions are not very interesting and players will usually use clerics to trade emeralds, which are among the most important professions in the game.
Clerics have an interesting exchange for an emerald that only requires 3 gold from the player. Considering that players can farm Nether Gold quite easily and that outside of piglin trades gold doesn’t have much use in Minecraft, it’s a decent trade to make when trying to grow emeralds.
9 Mason – 12 Nether Quartz for 1 Emerald
The mason will spawn in any village that has a stonemason. Masons are fantastic villagers to trade with for those looking for special blocks, but most of their trades are actually best ignored in favor of this Emerald trade alone.
Masons will trade 12 Nether Quartz for 1 Emerald. If players are lucky and get a nice Nether Wastes biome spawn upon entering the Nether, they can mine a bunch of Nether Quartz for XP, then exchange the Quartz for Emeralds at a Mason.
8 Fisherman – 20 cords for 1 emerald
Fishermen will require a village to have a barrel for them to spawn. Their trades are a little more niche, but one of them stands out: 20 strings for 1 Emerald.
It’s a more expensive trade than some of the others listed here, but players who have access to a spider farm will be at a huge advantage. If players come across a mine shaft with spider spawners, they must save those spider spawners for a spider farm, which they can use to get an infinite chain, as well as infinite XP.
seven Fletcher – 32 sticks for 1 emerald
Tailplanes will spawn in a village with a Tailplane Table, which is one of the only working blocks in the game that still has no function for the player. The Fletchers will sell special arrows, which can be potentially great, but their emerald trade isn’t bad either.
32 sticks are relatively easy for most players to gather, especially if they have access to a forested area in Minecraft. Those with less forest around them can start a tree farm early in the game and collect as much wood for that stick trade.
6 Farmer – 20 wheat for 1 emerald
The advantage of farming villagers is that they can be found in just about every village. Farmers will need to have a composter at their disposal to be able to do their job properly, and they also come with some good trades.
Their trade of 20 Wheat for 1 Emerald is something to consider as most players will probably set up massive crop farms anyway and have a lot of leftovers after feeding their farm animals. Almost all Minecraft the player will eventually be able to afford this trade, and players can even use crops found in villages to contribute to this trade.
5 Wandering Merchant – 5 emeralds for 1 nautilus shell
Outside of villages, players may occasionally encounter the Wandering Trader, who will appear on the player after a few days. The Traveling Merchant doesn’t exactly sell big treasures, his inventory is usually filled with rare plants and blocks mostly for decoration.
That said, players looking to create an underwater base looking to craft a Conduit will find its exchange of 5 Emeralds for 1 Nautilus Shell extremely useful. Nautilus Shells are very difficult to farm, as it takes a lot of luck to fish them out of water, so being able to trade them with the Wandering Trader is a big relief.
4 Cartographer – 14 Emeralds and Compass for the Woodland Manor Map
Another extremely rare item players should trade in is a Woodland Mansion map, found in the Cartographer’s inventory once it’s been upgraded with a few traders. The first map he offers actually leads to an Ocean Monument, which can also be a decent trade, although these underwater dungeons are much easier to find naturally than Woodland Mansions, so saving emeralds for this last trade.
Players will need 14 emeralds and a compass for this trade. Although the map shows the nearest Woodland Mansion, players shouldn’t expect it to be a short trip. These structures can sometimes be over 10,000 blocks away, making them nearly impossible to reach quickly from the Overworld. By traveling through the Nether in the approximate direction of the mansion, players will reduce their travel time provided they can find safe passage.
When it comes to the best emerald crafts in Minecraftthere are three villagers that players must visit: the armorer (blast furnace required), the blacksmith (forge table required), and the blacksmith (grindstone required).
Their base Tier 1 trade of 15 Coal for 1 Emerald is easily the best trade in the game when players are looking to fatten their pockets with more Emeralds to afford further trades. The good thing is that there are three different villagers with this identical trade, so players can simply create the required job blocks and assign these jobs to villagers in a village that does not have these three jobs.
Once the player has traded enough with the three previously mentioned villagers, another trade will unlock which is also quite interesting but a bit more expensive. Players can exchange 4 Iron Ingots for 1 Emerald at a Gunsmith, Armorer, or Blacksmith.
Some might say this is a terrible trade because in the late game the value and usefulness of iron actually increases once diamonds become an abundant source through enchantments like Fortune III. However, iron is extremely easy to mine, while diamond remains unmineable. Players can farm iron golems to get all the iron they need for this handy emerald trade.
1 Librarian – 5-64 emeralds and book for 1 enchanted book
Although emerald crafts are extremely vital to Minecraft players, these aren’t the best trades in the game. The most important villager to trade with is actually the Librarian, who will appear as long as a desk is available in a village. Librarians specialize in enchanted books, and at level 1 they can have any enchantment or level available for trade.
The price of this trade can vary greatly, up to 64 emeralds even. That said, players can re-roll this profession by breaking the desk and replacing it, until they find a profession they like. It’s the only reliable way to get the rarest enchantment in the game, called Mending.
Minecraft is available on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, Android, iOS and many other platforms.
Some images included were taken from the game when using the Faithless resource pack.