The wandering trader
Normally a nuisance you kill for the llama leads. Here, it is the village’s only link to the outside world.
Put emeralds in an empty shelf slot and that becomes a standing order to buy the missing item. When a trader passes through, the villager walks over, trades, and brings the goods back and puts them into his shelf.
This closes the gaps in a self-sufficient village. The trader sells:
| Iron and copper | As raw ore for the armorer, and as ingots for the toolsmith and the weaponsmith. Whichever of the two it brings is its own choice, so a village that trades a few times ends up with a mix |
|---|---|
| Sticks and string | For the fisherman, the fletcher and the two smiths |
| Flint | For the fletcher’s arrows |
| Rotten flesh | For the cleric’s exchange |
Fuel is your village’s own job — grow bamboo — and the trader sells no gold, stone, planks, diamond or dye. A villager who makes something always gets there first, so these only ever fill in for a profession your village does not have yet.
- The trader must not supply weapons, armor, tools or enchanted books. Just the ingredients or raw materials for the villagers to continue their crafts.
- The trader shall check the villager’s shelf and try to give them all the items they need within budget to resume working. If two items are needed for example the trader must not spend all the emeralds on one item only unless the budget does not allow.
- If a producer villager could supply the item instead, it always wins — emeralds are a fallback. The producer replaces the emeralds in the shelf with the item and deposits the emeralds into his inventory (which one is determined by priorities in the Logistics section).
- Where more than one thing would do, the trader picks one at random, and only one. An armorer asking for ore gets whichever ore this trader happens to bring, not the cheapest one every time; a toolsmith asking for metal gets iron or copper, never both, since it has one shelf slot to keep metal in.
- Traders despawn, so this is a top-up, not a supply line.
- The trader supplies villagers with items beyond the vanilla trades (prices are configurable). This does not affect the trades with the player though.
- Excess emeralds are deposited into the villager’s surplus inventory to go back to permanent inventory.
- The trader only buys what a villager actually needs to work. An optional extra — planks on an armorer for shields, dye on a leatherworker — stays yours to put on the shelf yourself, so emeralds in that slot buy nothing.