Updated to 1.20
Trading can be incredibly handy in Minecraft. It allows you to get some items which would take you ages to obtain, like certain Enchanted Books for example. The probem is that sometimes you find the Villager that you needed, but they don’t have the trade that you were looking for. Is this going to stop you? Of course not!
Today we are here to see how trading works in Minecraft, how to reset trades and how to re-enable out of stock trades. Let’s start!
How trading works
When you right-click on a Villager (not considering Unemployed Villagers, which will only make a noise in response to you clicking on them) you will be able to trade with them through this window:
Villagers will either give you various items in exchange of Emeralds or give you Emeralds in exchange of various items. The availabe trades will depend on the Villager’s profession, which will depend itself on the profession block associated with that Villager. You will often see the profession block of a Villager inside their house.
The professions (and their respective profession blocks) are:
- Armorer – Blast Furnace
- Blacksmith – Grindstone
- Butcher – Smoker
- Cartographer – Cartography Table
- Cleric – Brewing Stand
- Farmer – Composter (see more in How to make a Villager turn into a Farmer in Minecraft?)
- Fisherman – Barrel
- Fletcher – Fletching Table
- Librarian – Lectern
- Leatherworker – Cauldron
- Masons – Stonecutter
- Shepherd – Loom
- Toolsmith – Smithing Table
Every time that you complete a trade with a Villager, they will get experience:
Every time that their experience bar is full, they will level up. A Villager always starts as a Novice, and by leveling up they can become:
- Apprentice
- Journeyman
- Expert
- Master
Every level will unlock new trades. You can see all the available trades here.
How to reset trades
With resetting a trade we are not talking about being able to trade again an unavailable item:
To see how to re-enable those trades, check the paragraph below.
Note: everything explained in this paragraph will only apply to Villagers that you haven’t traded with. If you do any trade with a Villager, you will never be able to reset their trades.
Keep also in mind that some trades are only available after the Villager reaches a certain level. This means that if for example you want to have the Emerald->enchanted Diamond Sword trade from a Blacksmith, you will need to level them up to Master level. Resetting their trades will not help you obtaining that particular trade.
To reset Villagers trades you first need to find their profession block. Once you find it, destroy it. After destroying a profession block, the Villager who was using that block will lose their profession and regress to an Unemployed Villager.
Now you can either:
- change that Villager’s profession. To do so, you just need to place next to them a different profession block
- reset the Villager’s trades. To do so, place the same profession block next to them
You can reset a Villager’s trades as many times as you want. Resetting trades is particularly helpful when you want to get certain enchantments, as explained here.
How to re-enable out of stock trades
You can do every trade option that you see offered by a Villager a certain maximum amount of times. When you reach that amount of times, you will see a red cross on that particular trade option and you will not be able to do that trade again.
This happens when the item offered by that trade goes out of stock.
To have that item be available again, you have to wait for the Villager to restock. A Villager goes to their profession block to restock all their offers: this is important, because if a Villager doesn’t have a profession block, this Villager will never be able to restock.
Villagers usually restock twice every in-game day. See more in How long does it take for Villagers to restock?.
Restocking depends on random ticks, so you can have your Villagers restock more quickly by changing the random ticks speed.
You will need to use the commands to change the random tick speed. To use commands you will need to have cheats allowed in your Minecraft world. If cheats are not allowed in your world, there is a workaround. You can check here how to still use cheats in that Minecraft world.
If cheats are allowed, you will need to change the random tick speed from 3 (the default random tick speed) to a higher value.
For example, for setting the speed to 1000, you’ll need to type:
/gamerule randomTickSpeed 1000.
Changin the random tick speed works for making anything grow faster, so crops like Sugar Cane and even animals like Turtles for example. You can also set the Random Tick Speed to 0 to make everything stop from growing., it is one of the 4 ways to freeze time in Minecraft.
Keep in mind that every time that an anavailable item gets restocked, its price will increase. So you should try to wait for the Villager to restock before running out of a particular item.
Conclusions
To reset a Villager trades you need to find their profession block, break it and replace it with another block of the same kind. Then you will see new trades available. Remember to do this before completing any trade with that Villager, otherwise it will not be possible to reset the trades. Thank you very much for reading the article this far and I hope I’ll see you again around here. See you and take care!
