Top 10 Villager Trades You Should Unlock First

Updated on 19 October 2026: prices, trade levels and zombie curing facts checked and corrected, overview of all 13 professions and FAQ added.

Anyone who has tried building a villager trading hall knows that you do not need all of them in the game. What you do need are a few specific villagers who give you real value, emeralds, enchantments, food, tools, and gear, without wasting your time or resources.

So, we have created this guide that lists the best profession to focus on in your trading hall to get the best trades.

Here is everything you need to know:

Villager #1: Fletcher

If you ask the most experienced players which villager they get first, it’s not the Librarian. It’s actually the Fletcher, because before you can buy books or tools, you need emeralds. And no other villager turns basic junk into emeralds faster than this guy.

All you need to set up this villager is a Fletcher Table. You don’t even have to go mining to trade with him; they literally trade sticks.

Here is how you can set him up:

Job Site Block: Fletching Table

Recipe: 2 Flint + 4 Planks

Just place it near an unemployed villager (brown robe) and wait for him to accept the profession. If his first trade isn’t sticks → emeralds, break the fletching table and place it again until you get that trade.

There are multiple reasons why you should set up a Fletcher as your first villager:

• You can easily get 1 emerald by trading 32 sticks.
• Sticks are easily available by chopping down trees.
• You can acquire arrow trades, bows, crossbows, and, at the Master level, tipped arrows.
• Emerald trade unlocks instantly at the Novice level; no need to level him up first.

Let’s look at the trades this villager has to offer:

These are not all the trades you might get, but some of the best ones out there. Trades might also vary depending on person to person, but overall, this is what you can expect.

Villager #2: Librarian

If the Fletcher gives you emeralds, the Librarian gives you power. This is the villager that replaces enchanting tables, removes RNG, and gives you direct access to the most important books in the entire game, for just a few emeralds, if you do it right.

Here are every reason you need a Librarian:

• You can get Mending, Unbreaking III, Fortune III, Silk Touch, Protection IV, Sharpness V, and more, without using a single XP level on an enchantment table.
• Their trades are infinite and renewable, unlike enchantment tables.
• You control exactly which enchantment you want (by resetting trades).
• They also trade Bookshelves, Paper, Glass, Lanterns, Compass, Clock, etc.

Some of the best enchantments you can get from the Librarians are Mending, Unbreaking III, Silk Touch, Fortune, and many more. You don’t need all these from a single villager; you need multiple Librarians, each locked to a single key book.

Let’s see the steps to get the enchantments you need:

1. Place a Lectern next to an unemployed villager.
2. Right-click to check the enchantment trade.
3. If it isn’t what you want, simply break the Lectern and place it again.
4. Repeat until you see the desired enchantment.
5. Buy 1 book from them to lock the trade permanently.

When it comes to trade, multiple gold-tier trades can give you an infinite number of emeralds with limited resources.

You can follow a few tips as well to make this process a bit more efficient.

• A cured Librarian (zombie → villager) sells Mending and other books much cheaper, often for just a few emeralds.
• Always pair Librarians with a Sugarcane Farm → Paper → Emeralds → Enchanted Books.
• Keep one chest or shulker full of enchanted books, organized by tool/armor types.
• If you need every enchantment, 6–8 optimized Librarians are enough for the entire game.

Villager #3: Farmer

Farmers are probably the best source of emeralds in the game. This is why you need to have at least one villager in your trading hall that can give you a constant supply of it.

A Farmer only needs one workstation, a Composter, and he trades the crops you already grow naturally: wheat, carrots, potatoes, pumpkins, and melons. You don’t need fancy automation at first; even a small manual crop farm is enough to start generating emeralds quickly.

Let’s first see why these farmers are important:

• You can easily trade crops such as potatoes, carrots, etc., for emeralds.
• At the Master level, you can even get multiple Golden Carrots by trading emeralds.
• Easiest passive emerald farm when combined with Villager Crop Farming (auto).
• Farmer villagers auto-harvest crops and replant if given seeds/carrots/potatoes.
• They can fully feed you forever, which means no more hunting animals or cooking food manually.

When you first get a Farmer, the trades that matter most are the simple crop-to-emerald ones: wheat, carrots, and potatoes. These are easy to farm even in the early game, so you can start making emeralds almost immediately without needing rare resources or complex setups.

As you progress into mid-game, pumpkin and melon trades become far more valuable. If you set up even a basic pumpkin or melon farm, the profit is massive because just six pumpkins or four melons (the full block, not slices) can be traded for an emerald, and this can be repeated endlessly.

Once the Farmer reaches the Master level, they unlock the Golden Carrot trade, and this is where things get really useful. Golden Carrots are one of the best food items in Minecraft, with high saturation, no cooking required, and perfect for long mining sessions, Nether trips, and general survival.

Villager #4: Cleric

This villager is incredibly useful for one main reason: you no longer need to hunt Endermen to beat the game. An Expert-level Cleric sells Ender Pearls for emeralds, which makes progressing to The End much easier, especially in Hardcore or peaceful worlds where mob drops are risky or limited.

However, they aren’t just meant to trade you Ender Pearls; you can also get items such as Glowstone, Redstone, and Lapis.

Here are a few more things the Cleric is useful for:

• Turns rotten flesh from mob farms into emeralds
• Sells Glowstone, Redstone and Lapis (without going to the Nether early) and buys Nether Wart
• At the Master level, trades Bottles o’ Enchanting, buyable XP for repairing Mending tools
• Easy to set up, just place a Brewing Stand

Some of the best trades you can get from this villager are:

The best part about these trades is that you can set up Nether Wart farms or even Gold farms to get Emeralds. And then later use these Emeralds to get Ender Pearls, and might no longer need to look for Endermen for the same.

Furthermore, if you cure the Cleric (zombie → villager), Ender Pearls can drop to 1 emerald each, which makes preparing for the End incredibly fast.

Villager #5: Armorer

The armorer is here to take you one step ahead in the game and spare you from mining for diamonds altogether. With just emeralds, which by now you’re already generating through Farmers or Fletchers, you can buy full enchanted Diamond Armor legally and repeatedly.

By setting up an armorer villager, you can get some exclusive items like Diamond Chestplate, Leggings, Boots, and Helmets, all by simply trading emeralds. And if you’ve cured the Armorer using the zombie method, diamond armor gets much cheaper, often just a few emeralds per piece.

Let’s check out some of the trades:

There are a few tips you can follow that might give you more benefits:

• Set up two Armorers, one may give better enchantments
• Cure them once after zombifying → the diamond armor trades get much cheaper
• Buy multiple helmets or chestplates, combine them on an anvil for Protection IV + Unbreaking III, then add Mending with a book from a Librarian (villagers never sell armor with Mending)
• Now you have armor that rarely breaks

Overall, we can say that having an armorer in your trading hall might be an excellent option, especially going into the Nether, Ancient Cities / Deep Dark, The End / Ender Dragon fight, and anything past Level 50.

Villager #6: Toolsmith

Instead of wasting hours mining for your first diamond pickaxe or worrying about losing your only Fortune tool to lava, a fully-leveled Toolsmith simply lets you buy diamond tools with emeralds, over and over again.

Let’s look at the reason you truly need Toolsmith in your trading hall:

• You can unlock every essential diamond tool → pickaxe, axe, shovel, hoe
• Tools can come with built-in enchantments (random): Efficiency, Unbreaking, Silk Touch, Fortune, etc.
• You can skip iron progression entirely, i.e., go from stone tools to acquiring diamond tools using just emeralds.
• Pair Toolsmith with Mending & Unbreaking III, and your tools become permanent.
• If zombified & cured? The enchanted diamond pickaxe (normally 18–32 emeralds) gets much cheaper.

The trades that you most definitely would want to get from this villager are mentioned below.

The best part about having a Toolsmith in your trading hall is that you can entirely choose to skip mining diamonds, which can be highly tedious. You can easily get fully enchanted diamond gear before entering the Nether or fighting the Ender Dragon.

Villager #7: Weaponsmith

Similar to Toolsmith and Armorer, you also have a Weaponsmith that serves similar purposes to the others. You can get access to diamond weapons without having to worry about crafting swords from scratch.

For combat-focused players or Hardcore survivors, this villager is the difference between barely surviving a night and confidently walking into a Nether fortress or Woodland Mansion.

Let’s look at all the reasons why Weaponsmith makes a huge difference:

• These villagers sell an enchanted Diamond Axe at the Expert level and an enchanted Diamond Sword at the Master level.
• The weapons might sometimes come with random enchantments (Sharpness, Smite, Unbreaking, Knockback)
• The weaponsmiths can be zombified and cured for much cheaper diamond weapons.
• Lets you skip the iron weapon progression entirely.
• The Diamond Axe can be stronger than the sword in Java PvP (crit + 9 attack damage)
• Helps prepare for bosses: Wither, Ender Dragon, Warden, Piglin Bastions

To get a weaponsmith, you need to first craft a Grindstone and place it next to a villager. The villager then adopts the profession if it hasn’t worked or traded yet. Furthermore, you can also break and replace the Grindstone to reroll trades (until they lock in).

Here are some of the trades that are totally worth it:

You stop crafting swords and axes altogether and instead buy, combine, and upgrade them into the exact weapons you want, Sharpness V, Smite V, Sweeping Edge, Netherite, whatever your playstyle needs.

Once your Weaponsmith is locked in and cured for discounts, your combat progression is sorted. Now it’s time to focus on exploration and rare structures, and that’s where the next villager comes in.

Villager #8: Cartographer

Next up, we have the Cartographer. This is the only villager who sells you maps that lead directly to some of the rarest and most dangerous structures in the game,  without needing to wander thousands of blocks hoping to find them randomly.

A cartographer may not be as important as a farmer or even a Librarian, but when you progress in the game and are looking to explore some structures like Woodland Mansions and Ocean Monument, they always come in handy when finding a map.

Let’s see why they are worth finding:

• They sell Woodland Explorer Maps to help locate Woodland Mansions (Totem of Undying source).
• Cartographers also sell Ocean Explorer Maps to help you locate Ocean Monuments (Prismarine, Sponges, Guardians)
• You can find some easy emerald trades early game → Paper & Glass Pane → Emeralds.
• Perfect villager to pair with a sugar cane farm or automated glass smelting setup
• Allows structure discovery in Hardcore without risky blind exploration

To get a Cartographer is pretty easy. Simply craft and place a Cartography Table next to an unemployed villager. You can also fully rotate trades until you get good starting trades (paper or glass pane trade is best).

Some of the best trades you can find with them are:

The best trade you can get from this villager is a map for the structure without a doubt. However, if you are not there yet in the game, the Cartographer is still an amazing source to get Emeralds by trading paper with them.

You will simply have to automate a Sugarcane farm to create paper, and you might have an infinite amount of Emeralds at your disposal. These villagers may not be your first choice for a villager, but overall, they do the job pretty well when it comes to trading for Emeralds in a much efficient manner.

Villager #9: Mason (Stone Mason)

Another underrated villager in the game because he doesn’t sell enchantments or weapons. However, if you care about mass emerald generation, building blocks, terracotta, quartz, or decorative stone, this villager becomes incredibly valuable.

What makes the Mason special is simple: he buys clay balls, stone, granite, andesite, diorite and Nether Quartz, most of which can either be farmed easily or generated infinitely. So instead of mining diamonds or trading crops forever, you can literally smelt cobblestone → sell stone → get emeralds.

Let’s look at how a Mason can be useful:

• Lets you trade clay balls, stone and Nether Quartz for emeralds
• Works perfectly with automatic cobblestone or stone generators
• Gives access to Glazed Terracotta, Bricks, Polished Stone, Quartz Blocks, perfect for builders
• Almost zero effort emerald farming, no crops, no combat involved
• Stone is infinite. Clay is renewable through swamp biomes or dripstone mud → clay farms.

To set up a Mason, you need to craft a Stonecutter and place it near an unemployed villager. This will turn that villager into a Stone Mason. Keep trading with him to level him up and get better trades.

Here are some of the trades you can get from the mason:

The Mason may not be a combat or enchantment villager, but if you care about emerald farming, aesthetic builds, quartz, or terracotta, he’s one of the best villagers to add to your trading hall. He turns stone into emeralds, saves you from mining quartz in the Nether, and makes large-scale building far easier.

Villager #10: Shepherd

The Shepherd isn’t as “essential” as a Librarian or Armorer, but in a properly planned trading hall, he’s incredibly useful, especially if you’re into building, banners, beds for villager breeding, or just want yet another renewable way to farm emeralds without mining or fighting mobs.

What makes the Shepherd stand out is that he buys wool, a material that is extremely easy to farm: one sheep + shears = infinite wool.

Combine this with a simple sheep farm or auto-shear setup, and you’ll generate emeralds while doing nothing. And unlike farming crops, this doesn’t even require replanting.

Let’s look at everything you can use a Shepherd for:

• Trades wool for emeralds, the easiest passive emerald farm in the game
• Shepherds buy white, brown, black or gray wool
• They are great for bed-making (Netherite mining, villager breeders, speedrunning the End)
• You can buy colored wool, carpets, beds and banners, and sell him your spare dyes.
• Works really well with automatic sheep shearing farms.

Start by crafting a Loom and then place it near an unemployed villager. They then turn into a Shepherd. Here are some of the trades you can get from them:

Overall, this is an excellent source to generate infinite emeralds for you. There are plenty of sheep out there, and once you set up a proper farm, there will be an infinite source of wool in the process.

Furthermore, Shepherds can help you get instant access to every carpet color and banners in every color. You do not need to rely on different items in the game to dye carpets or even wool.

Minecraft Villager Trades by Profession

In Minecraft, villagers trade items for emeralds. An unemployed villager takes a profession by claiming a job site block (for example, a Lectern makes a Librarian). There are 13 professions, each with its own trade pool. Trading levels a villager up from Novice to Master, and every new level unlocks new trades. Nitwits and baby villagers never trade.

Villager professions and job site blocks

Prices are the Java Edition base prices before discounts or demand changes. A villager does not get every trade on this list: in Java Edition each level picks up to two trades at random from its pool, Bedrock Edition uses fixed trade slots.

Note on the “Villager Trade Rebalance” experiment: if you turn this experiment on, Librarians sell enchanted books based on the biome of their village. The top book (for example Mending from swamp villagers) only appears at Master level. In a normal world without the experiment, any Librarian can offer any tradable enchantment.

How villager trading levels work

• Every villager has five levels: Novice, Apprentice, Journeyman, Expert and Master. The badge on its robe shows the level: stone, iron, gold, emerald, diamond.
• Each trade fills the villager’s experience bar. It needs 10 villager XP for Apprentice, 70 for Journeyman, 150 for Expert and 250 for Master.
• Each level-up unlocks new trades and keeps the old ones. In Java Edition a villager has at most 10 trades, two new ones per level.
• You also get 3–6 experience orbs for every trade, plus 5 more when the villager levels up.
• Every trade has limited stock. When it shows a red X, the villager restocks by working at its job site block, up to twice per day. In Bedrock Edition the villager also needs a bed.
• The first trade locks the profession and all offers permanently. Before that, you can still reroll its trades (see FAQ below).

FAQ: Minecraft villager trades

How do you reset villager trades?

Only before you trade with the villager. Break its job site block and place it again; a Novice villager that has not traded yet loses its job and takes the block again with new offers. Once you have traded with a villager even once, its trades are locked forever.

How do you get better villager trades?

Reroll the job site block until the trade you want appears, then trade once to lock it in. Cure a zombie villager for a permanent discount. Only the first cure gives a discount, since Java 1.20.2 and Bedrock 1.20.30. Defeat a raid for Hero of the Village (30 % off; in Java Edition up to 55 % at level V, Bedrock Edition only has level I). Avoid buying out the same trade over and over, because high demand raises the price after the next restock.

Why won’t a villager trade with me?

It is either unemployed (no job site block), a Nitwit, a baby, or the trade is out of stock (red X). Give it a free job site block, or let it work at its block so it restocks. In Bedrock Edition it also needs a bed.

What job site block does each villager need?

Armorer: Blast Furnace. Butcher: Smoker. Cartographer: Cartography Table. Cleric: Brewing Stand. Farmer: Composter. Fisherman: Barrel. Fletcher: Fletching Table. Leatherworker: Cauldron. Librarian: Lectern. Mason: Stonecutter. Shepherd: Loom. Toolsmith: Smithing Table. Weaponsmith: Grindstone.

How to Reduce Villager Prices (Curing & Trading Hacks)

Once you’ve set up your trading hall and unlocked the right villagers, the next step is making trades as cheaply as possible. You might notice some diamond tools cost 18–20 emeralds, or enchanted books cost 30+ emeralds.

If you just started, the above prices make sense, and you simply need to keep trading with them to level them up. However, in the long term, is it not necessary?

With a few tricks, you can cut the price of most trades sharply, often to just a few emeralds, and cheap trades like Ender Pearls can drop to 1 emerald. Two main mechanics make this possible:

Zombie Villager Curing Discount System

This is the most powerful and reliable way to reduce villager trade prices in Minecraft. Here's how it works:

1. You let a zombie infect a villager. You must ensure the zombie can actually attack villagers (don’t give the zombie weapons or armor, or it might kill them instead).
2. The infected villager becomes a Zombie Villager.
3. You cure them using: Splash Potion of Weakness + Golden Apple (right-click on the weakened zombie villager).
4. After about 3–5 minutes, the villager is cured.
5. That specific villager now gives you a permanent trade discount as a “thank you.”

Since Java 1.20.2 and Bedrock 1.20.30, a villager only gives you this big, permanent discount the first time you cure it. Infecting and curing the same villager again does not lower its prices any further.

Hero of the Village Effect

We have another way to help you get better discounts from the trades mentioned above. If you successfully defeat a Pillager Raid in a village, you earn an effect called “Hero of the Village.”

• Duration: 40 minutes
• Discount: 30 %; in Java Edition up to 55 % at level V (Bedrock Edition only has level I)
• During this time, villagers give you cheaper trades, and some will even throw free items at you.
• The discount isn’t as strong as zombie-curing but still useful.

However, unlike curing, this effect wears off, so it’s not a permanent solution.

A single cure makes many of the best trades much cheaper. How far a price drops depends on the trade:

• Enchanted diamond pickaxe and chestplate: much cheaper, often just a few emeralds
• Mending book: much cheaper, depending on its original price
• Ender Pearl: can drop to 1 emerald
• Pumpkins: can drop to 1 pumpkin per emerald

Curing the same villager again won’t lower its prices any further, so cure each important trader once and use Hero of the Village when you need an extra discount.

Use Villager Trading Wisely

Once you have played the game enough, you will understand the importance of each of these villagers and how they are so much more than NPCs. You are no longer mining endlessly for diamonds or killing Endermen for Ender pearls.

These villagers are perfect for all the scenarios that looked difficult at first. And if you are worried about trades being expensive, zombie curing might help offer discounts and make trades much more efficient.

So if you’re building a world you want to keep for a long time, start your trading hall early. Focus on the essentials first, cure your villagers, unlock the right trades, and let them work for you.