Last updated: 25 June 2026

The Complete Minecraft Villager Trading Guide: Emeralds, Professions & Discounts

Villager trading is Minecraft's most powerful economy system — a well-run trading hall can hand you Mending books, diamond gear, and infinite emeralds without ever setting foot in a dangerous structure. The system rewards players who understand professions, trade tiers, restocking, and the single best trick in the game: curing a zombie villager for near-permanent, rock-bottom prices.

01Emeralds: the currency of villager trading

Emeralds are the universal currency for all villager trades. You spend them to buy goods (enchanted books, gear, food) and you earn them by selling raw materials back to villagers. Most trades run in both directions — a Farmer buys 20 wheat and gives you 1 emerald, then turns around and sells you a golden carrot for a few emeralds.

The fastest early-game emerald farms work through Farmer villagers. A Novice Farmer accepts 20 wheat or 26 potatoes per emerald, and a single large farm can generate dozens of emeralds per day with almost no active effort. Other reliable sources include:

• Fletcher — buys sticks (32 sticks per emerald at Novice). Sticks are trivial to mass-produce from wood.
• Librarian — buys paper (24 paper per emerald). Pair with a sugar cane farm for hands-off income.
• Cleric — buys rotten flesh (32 per emerald). A mob farm generates rotten flesh automatically.
• Armorer / Weaponsmith / Toolsmith — buy coal, iron ingots, and flint at various tiers.

Emeralds do not have other crafting uses, so treat them purely as trading tokens. Stack up a chest full before you try to buy expensive enchanted books.

02Assigning professions via workstations

A villager's profession is determined by which job site block (workstation) they claim. Any unemployed adult villager — shown by a plain brown robe with no badge — will automatically walk to and claim the nearest unclaimed workstation within a certain range. Place the block and step back; the villager will find it within seconds.

The full workstation-to-profession table:

Important: once you complete even a single trade with a villager, their profession is locked permanently. If you want to reroll a trade (for example, hunting a Librarian who offers Mending), you must break and replace the workstation before trading. After the first trade, no amount of workstation swapping will change the offers.

03Leveling up trade tiers

Every villager has five trade levels: Novice, Apprentice, Journeyman, Expert, and Master. You can see the current level by the badge on a villager's belt — stone for Novice, iron for Apprentice, gold for Journeyman, emerald for Expert, and diamond for Master. Each level unlocks up to two new trade slots and generally better items.

Leveling happens automatically as you trade. Each completed trade gives the villager experience, and the experience thresholds are:

1. Novice — 0 XP (starting level, 2 trade slots unlocked)
2. Apprentice — 10 XP total (2 more slots)
3. Journeyman — 70 XP total (2 more slots)
4. Expert — 150 XP total (2 more slots)
5. Master — 250 XP total (final 2 slots, all trades now available)

The most efficient way to level a villager quickly is to cycle through all available trades every restock cycle. Each trade (buy or sell) counts toward the XP bar. A villager that sells you an enchanted book and also buys paper from you gains XP from both interactions in the same session.

04Restocking: how and when trades refresh

Every trade has a maximum daily usage limit — once hit, the trade slot turns greyed-out and shows a red X. Villagers restore their daily limits by returning to their job site block during working hours. In Java Edition, a villager restocks up to twice per in-game day: once in the morning and once in the afternoon. Bedrock Edition follows similar timing but also requires a linked bed to restock.

For restocking to work reliably, a few conditions must be met:

• The villager's claimed workstation must be accessible — not blocked by solid blocks.
• The workstation must be within the villager's pathing range (they need to physically walk to it).
• The villager needs a valid bed; without sleeping they may not complete a full daily cycle.
• The villager should not be trapped in a permanent sleeping or panic state.

If your villagers stop restocking, check that the workstation hasn't been accidentally removed or blocked, and that each villager has a unique bed assigned. A common trading hall mistake is using a single large room where multiple villagers fight over the same beds and workstations.

05Hero of the Village discount

Defeating a raid — triggered by entering a village with the Bad Omen status effect — rewards you with the Hero of the Village effect. While active, this status reduces trade prices across all villagers in that village. The base discount is roughly 30% of each trade's base price, and it scales upward with each additional level of the effect (up to level 5 from a full raid victory).

Hero of the Village lasts 40 in-game minutes (40,000 ticks at 1.0 speed). During that window:

• Prices you pay in emeralds drop substantially on all trade slots.
• Prices are calculated fresh from the base cost, so a Mending book that normally costs 30+ emeralds might cost under 10.
• The effect does not stack with itself, but it does add on top of discounts from zombie-villager curing.
• Villagers in the affected village may also throw free gifts at you as a thank-you.

Bad Omen is obtained by killing a Pillager Patrol captain — the raid captain carrying an ominous banner. Note that in Java Edition 1.21+, Bad Omen was split into two separate effects (Bad Omen and Raid Omen) to allow more control, but the outcome is the same: entering a village starts a raid.

06Cure a zombie villager for permanent huge discounts

The single most impactful trick in Minecraft's economy is curing a zombie villager. A cured villager applies a permanent "major positive" trade discount to all of their offers — most trades drop to just 1 emerald after curing. Do this with your Librarian before you buy Mending books and the cost becomes trivial.

The curing process step by step:

1. Find a zombie villager. They spawn naturally at night in villages (about 5% of zombies are zombie villagers), in zombie villages, or inside igloo basements. They look like villagers but with a grey-green zombie skin.
2. Weaken them. Throw a Splash Potion of Weakness at the zombie villager. The weakness effect will show as a cloud of dark swirling particles. You can brew this using a Fermented Spider Eye + Water Bottle in a Brewing Stand with Blaze Powder as fuel.
3. Feed a Golden Apple. Right-click (or use) a regular Golden Apple on the weakened zombie villager. You'll hear a hissing/sizzling sound and the villager will begin shaking and emitting red particle effects.
4. Wait 3–5 minutes. The conversion takes between 3 and 5 minutes in standard conditions. You can speed it up by placing iron bars and beds within a 9×9×9 cube around them — each structure accelerates the conversion slightly.
5. Trade once to lock profession. After conversion, the villager will have randomised trades. Make one trade to permanently lock their profession and pricing.

The discount from curing is permanent and does not decay over time. However, as of Java Edition 1.20.2, curing the same villager a second time gives no additional discount — the gossip reputation is capped. If you want multiple discounted villagers, cure multiple different zombie villagers, not the same one twice.

The Librarian is the most valuable target for curing. At Novice level, a Librarian already offers one enchanted book — the enchantment is random, but you can reroll it by breaking and replacing the Lectern before making any trade. Keep rerolling until you get Mending, then make one trade to lock it in. Combined with the zombie-cure discount, your Mending book will cost 1 emerald instead of the usual 20–36.