The Wandering Trader: 97 offers, but it will only buy from you 12 times
91 of its 97 trades cost emeralds and just 6 earn them — and every one of those six is capped at 2 uses. It is the largest trade list in the game and almost entirely one-directional.
The Wandering Trader has the largest single trade list in Minecraft — 97 offers, more than any villager profession, more than Shepherd's 86. It is also the most one-sided. Counted from Mojang's shipped trade data for 26.2, the same data the browser on this page reads.
No tiers at all
Every villager has five levels and unlocks trades as it works. The Wandering Trader has one pool — all 97 offers sit at the same level, and it never levels up. What it shows you when it arrives is what it has.
That is why its list feels random: it is not a progression, it is a sample.
91 ways to spend, 6 ways to earn
- 91 trades cost emeralds.
- 6 trades give emeralds.
That is a ratio of roughly 15:1, against the ordinary villager economy's 2.5:1 (207 buying against 81 selling). The Wandering Trader is not a way to make money. It is a way to spend it on things that are otherwise annoying to travel for — saplings, coral, dyes, exotic logs.
The six selling trades are all capped at 2
Every one of the six emerald-earning trades has a maximum of 2 uses:
| you give | you get |
|---|---|
| Baked Potato ×4 | 1 emerald |
| Hay Block | 1 emerald |
| Potion | 1 emerald |
| Fermented Spider Eye | 3 emeralds |
| Milk Bucket | 2 emeralds |
| Water Bucket | 2 emeralds |
Six trades × two uses means a single Wandering Trader will buy from you at most twelve times, and only if it happens to be offering all six. Do not build an economy on it.
Restock limits are far more varied than a villager's
An ordinary villager's trades take one of only three max-use values. The Wandering Trader's take eight: 0, 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 12, with 12 the most common (36 trades) and 8 next (18).
So "how many can I buy" genuinely depends on the offer here in a way it does not with a normal villager, and the cheap bulk trades are not automatically the generous ones.
What it is actually for
Read the list and the design is obvious: it exists to sell you biome-locked renewables without making you travel. Logs from trees that grow nowhere near you, coral from a reef you have not found, saplings, dyes, mushrooms. Sixteen of its offers are a single emerald for a stack-sized bundle of one log type or mushroom.
That is a good deal when you need one and a waste when you do not, which is the whole trade list in one sentence.