Minecraft: The List - Episode 6

Today is a very special episode of The List! Instead of focusing on 10 ideas, we instead focus on the singular topic of Villager Trading. Villager Trading has been a topic of some debate in recent years. Mojang introduced the extremely controversial villager trading experiment in 2023 and hasn't changed much since. In this video, I present a better alternative to the current villager trading experiment. One that gates books behind emeralds instead of biomes and which also still gives high level books (two of the main criticisms of the experimental version). I also share some thoughts on zombie villager curing, Hero of the Village, Anvil, and Enchanting table usage as it relates to Villager Trading. I hope you enjoy.

Follow me on Twitter so you never miss a video!

#Minecraft #Thelist #cubfan135

[cubfan]

I listened to a LOT of your feedback and feedback from throughout the Minecraft community on Mojang's Villager Trading Experiment. I saw that people were dissatisfied with the current trading system but also disliked the Experimental Trading systems even more. So I set out to come up with a better system.
The primary criticisms I heard about the Experimental Trading changes were that:
1) Max enchantments weren't available
2) Many enchantments were just straight up removed (like all Crossbow, Trident, and Fishing enchantments)
3) Swamp and Jungle villagers weren't naturally in the game (and yet still had some of the best enchantments making it pivotal for new players to somehow discover them on their own)
4) Moving villagers to biomes was WAY too hard.
I spent a long time thinking about it and I am finally at a point where I am confident that my villager trading idea addresses all the major concerns that players had with the trading experiment while improving upon the current system. Please let me know your thoughts and consider sharing this video if you enjoyed.

[MQZON]

To encourage more diverse playstyles (specifically exploration), one change I would add to this is to replace some of the bookshelves in the librarian house village structure with chiseled ones which contain randomized books from a weighted loot table. That way, players who don't want to grind have another option for finding rare books, non-renewably.

[Timmzy]

The problem with villager rebalance experiment is that (so far) it has only focused on Librarians, which yes do need to change but when was the last time you remember trading with a Butcher, Shepherd etc?
They need to look at these trades too and make it so they’re kinda worth having and trading with, getting precisely ONE chicken means you have a farm and no longer need to trade with a butcher, bad profession needs something more like the ability to do their job perhaps?
Give a butcher an axe, they now have the ability to slaughter a pig/cow etc until that axe dies, not before attempting to breed 2 pigs (with carrots given to them from farmers), once 3 or more adult pigs are within 16 blocks then that’s when they attempt to slaughter.
Give a Shepherd some shears and they roam the village sheep pen shearing to their hearts content.
Give a fisherman a rod and let them catch fish (no treasure or junk, player only for these).
If Mojang are gonna do villagers again, then rebalance ALL types, give more than just farmers their jobs to do and make the village feel alive instead of just existing for the player to exploit

[SemiHypercube]

Regardless of any changes to villager trading, Minecraft's durability/enchanting issue wouldn't really be solved without removing that anvil work penalty, or at least significantly nerfing the penalty

[ClemTheClemening]

The anvil work penalty needs to be removed from levelling up enchantments too. Currently, if you combine lower level enchants to get higher level ones, you reduce the amount of enchants you can put on one item, which is the biggest reason why players refuse to settle for buying low level books from villagers.

[skztr]

I think an important goal that Mojang has which you omitted was: wanting to avoid villager death camps. If you've spent a long time trading with villagers, unlocked their master trade, and it turns out that their 'best' trade is worthless after all, there needs to be some use for them other than killing them. Some benefit to keeping them around.

Examples could include:

- Villagers of the same profession 'collaborate' somehow, so that their prices are lowered
- When a villager unlocks a trade, it is less-likely to be a trade that already exists in the same village (so keeping the bad trades around is still a good thing)
- Allow them to change professions somehow, and a villager which changes professions after being a master of another profession will have better trades or faster unlocks of any profession they didn't previously have. Or maybe switching back-and-forth between professions will allow them to unlock new trades of any level they got to in a previous profession, with some bonus applied (eg: a once-journeyman-fletcher is more likely to get fire aspect in the journeyman slot; a once-master fletcher is more likely to get infinity in the master slot; a librarian who sold sharpness is more likely to become a blacksmith who can trade sharpness swords)

tl;dr: the main point is that Mojang needs to give *some* benefit to keeping around fully unlocked villagers whose trades you don't want. Make it so that it's worthwhile and useful to have villagers who don't serve exactly the purpose you were hoping for. That's the main thing they were trying to avoid with the currently-awful method of resetting trades, and that's what needs to be addressed in any new system

[miolaika]

they need to just move the "too expensive" part of anvils
it prevents items from being constantly repaired and its the reason people only want the max level book, because if you combine lower level enchants than you can likely run into the too expensive and not be able to add anything else to your tools

[pathagenic]

I hope someone from Mojang is watching this list series, seriously. There's been a steady uproar about how bad villager trading is, but this is the first workable, common-sense solution I've seen anyone come up with!

[bungercolumbus]

One thing I can 100% agree with is the work penalty from the anvil. This will make people depend way less on mending. Mending would just be something you need in order to not deprive yourself of resources as fast. Mending would be something you need when you have late game gear you want to repair easily.

[MrBrineplays_]

The contrast between players with farms and players without farms is insane. While players with farms can just get a resource easily because of how much they have, players without farms struggle because of how hard it is to get. Making villager trading just makes farms (or just abused mechanics and exploits) even more necessary. Increasing emeralds for example just makes raid farms more favorable.

In my years of playing, I always felt it was too grindy to get emeralds. I would have to spend hours just to get the right enchantments from villagers. And even before that, I have to set up a villager trading hall. I just give up making that halfway in and just use the enchanting table instead since it's much easier to set up + better enchantments than villagers. The only villager I need is the mending villager.

I propose making mending more accessible through fishing. Mending should also be in woodland mansions, at least 1 or 2 mending books there. Mending should also have 2 levels, one that is much easier to get, and one that is harder to get. Level 1 will be worse than our current mending, and level 2 is gonna be our current mending. This makes mending worth getting since even a level 1 mending is enough to get players started. Mending 2 is only needed if you use your armor and tools so much. Maybe you're digging a mountain or something.

[michaelo]

one cool idea i saw was a datapack that makes it so villagers will only trade the book that you place on the lecturn, as if they were making copies. so you still have to go and find a mending book in a structure or enchant your way to an efficiency 5 book, but once you've done the work then you can have an easy supply.

i like this because it would probably be too much effort to do this for all books, so players would prioritise which enchants they want the most. it also links the two systems of enchanting and villagers together, making you use both rather than just one or the other

[andrewschnatter]

My critique of a lot of your changes on your list series is the vast majority of us don't have the time to play the game 8 hours a day as our job and don't want our creativity and experience locked behind a time sink. There needs to be balance not just adding additional steps and time because it does the opposite of what you're intending it'll keep people from wanting to play for an hour or 2 and instead play something else where u feel like you're accomplishing something and not just chipping away at a menial task.

[drakellich]

This was an insanely in-depth episode, and I honestly can't agree more with your points, especially the bit with Hero of the Village. I hope some peeps at mojang would actually consider these ideas.

[rekrap]

If there was a petition to sign for these changes I’d totally sign it. Love the thoughts of this series

[RhaegarsGhost]

i would like to see rare spawns of villager vocation centers, for example a monastery for clerics or a grand library for librarians, a big mountain forge, a large ranch etc

[venomslayer]

Please keep this series going. The way in which you break down and justify the balancing that you propose is always very clear and makes sense from various viewpoints, and yes, not a lot of people would enjoy having to grind more for the best enchantments, but this would definitely help to make the game more balanced and reinstall a sense of progress without breaking trading as a whole

[Zinoba_]

I think villager trading exposes the huge rift between the part of the community that builds farms vs that doesn't. I have watched minecraft content for over a decade and occasionally play. I know what crazy farms are possible and how they roughly work, yet I don't have a big desire to build them. I'm also not very skilled at the game lol
I know that I'm making my own life harder here, but I think there's a lot of (younger) players who play this way?

I once tried to make a villager trading hall, mainly to try it out and get some of the books. Here are some roadblocks that made this take a long time and great effort, that you might have not considered bc of your different playstyle:

1. getting emeralds
- resources such as carrots, pumpkins etc take time to get
- basic farms also sometimes require resources like slimeballs that are hard to get
- levelling up a villager takes a pretty long time and many resources this way
- no raid farms
- this continues to be relevant throughout the whole playthrough I've found

2. Curing
- might be a skill issue but this is also not that easy to set up
- golden apples are not that free in large quantities

3. Other stuff
- XP. HUUUGE one. Enchanting and anviling is a thing you have to grind for for a long time. Even Mending isn't even that OP without a mob grinder!
- I remember specifically grinding for books/lecterns longer than I expected


Now, could all of this be a skill issue? Sure. But I think it warrants a discussion of WHO Mojang is developing this game for. We've seen the stats on how many players don't even reach shulker boxes/elytra. Those players will also be unlikely to deeply engage with villagers. I don't expect them to cater the game around me, a very casual player that doesn't play often. For top level players such as yourself the villager issues are obvious and your solution makes sense. For new casual players, a lot of this could put them off engaging with villagers at all. I think Mojang really can't win here.

[Frostyflytrap]

What I really appreciate about your ideas in the list (especially here) is that you don't overly rely on adding entirely new features and instead of swap around things that already exist while still making a huge impact on its effects.

Very interesting changes you've proposed here, I hope someone creates a mod or datapack do we can test what it feels like in practice.

And speaking of which, my only personal wish for Mojang to add to the list is to let us be able to customize almost absolutely everything only using datapacks. The latest snapshots have all been great steps in the right direction and I wish for them to continue with their technical efforts despite how they often go unnoticed due to how un-flashy they are.

[hencethebeetroot]

The big problem is that low-level books are entirely unviable if your goal is a max-level tool. Combining two Unbrk IIs for a Unbrk III makes that book actively damaging to apply to your tool, because you’re then risking hitting Too Expensive before it’s done. Nerfing villager trading isn’t solving the problem, it’s patching up a symptom - right now, optimized trading halls are the only way to consistently obtain max-level books. The solution is to reduce reliance on max-level books.

I suggest that “prior work” and “too expensive” are outright removed, and any anvil operation is dependent only on the number of enchantments on the final tool / book. For example, adding a mundane level 1 enchant to a tool costs two or three levels, while adding a level 5 or Mending to a tool that already holds numerous enchantments could cost upwards of 40 - a good exp farm can easily keep up with these rates. This makes it so that more powerful tools are more difficult to add to, but never impossible. This also makes it so that things like renaming and repairing unenchanted tools are completely free - and I see no problem with this. However, repairing an enchanted tool may still be expensive on the exp front, encouraging - but never forcing - mending. An exception should probably be made to make renaming only cost one level regardless of the item’s enchantments.

[XerolOplan]

I would just add one thing to the weighting, and that's making it less likely to roll a book that another villager in the same village already offers. Reduce it by 50% (multiplicative) for each villager that offers the same book.

In addition to the anvil changes already mentioned, I'd also make it cheaper to tier up books in the anvil (only for identical books, not for tiering up enchantments on items). The three levels you spent to get an unbreaking III book from two unbreaking IIs is the same as you'd spend rolling for a level 30 enchant on a tool directly, which of course doesn't give you unbreaking III all the time but it happens quite a lot. Not to mention the stacking combination penalty - it's going to be more expensive to put that combined unbreaking III onto a tool than to put a 'natural' unbreaking III book on it.

I think if you wanted to make the single smallest possible change to help balance the current system, remove bookshelf trades. Being able to get infinite free books just as easily as you can get emeralds is part of the problem, and making emeralds harder to obtain isn't going to happen. If you'd have to get your own paper and leather for every book (or find some bookshelves naturally spawned in the world, which isn't a lot) then that takes some of the edge off an infinite number of books being obtainable. It wouldn't slow anyone down in the late game, but adds an extra step to getting lots of early game enchanted books.