Trading with villagers in Minecraft has become one of the most important parts of the game. Not only can you get rare emeralds, you can then exchange them for valuable items! Each villager can take on a different profession and offers unique deals you can take advantage of. While some are better than others, you should look at all trades in detail. There are some great ways to get gear, enchantments, and weapons more easily. We’ve put together the best options for every villager type—both the top trades to spend emeralds and to earn them.
For more villager guides, check these out:
- (Minecraft Villager Trading: Permanent Discounts with Zombie Curing)
- (How to Build a Villager Trading Post: Get Valuable Items Through Trading)
Minecraft Villager Farmer: Best trades with the Composter
Emeralds → Golden Carrots: Golden carrots are one of the best foods in Minecraft, but growing carrots and surrounding them with gold nuggets takes time and effort. That makes this trade unbeatable!
Potatoes → Emeralds: An easy way to farm emeralds with an automatic potato farm and use them for other trades. Potatoes often drop in multiples, so you’ll quickly stock up several stacks.
Librarian: Enchanted books and Mending trades
Emeralds + Book → Enchanted Book: Arguably the best trade in the entire game. Librarians can sell nearly all enchantments. Most importantly, Mending to repair your tools with XP. You can get these at the novice level, so you can reset their first offer until the book you want shows up.
Paper → Emeralds: With a large sugar cane farm, this trade is extremely profitable (Minecraft Sugarcane Farm Guide: How to Build an Automatic Sugarcane Farm for Unlimited Paper and Sugar) .
Fisherman: Fishing trades and fast emeralds
Emeralds → Enchanted Fishing Rod: Fishing is often overlooked, but it can yield handy items like enchanted books. Use “Luck of the Sea” and you’re good to go!
String → Emeralds: String is easy to gather from spiders or cave spiders, especially in mineshafts. This trade will net you plenty of emeralds.
Cleric: Ender pearls and gold for emeralds
Emeralds → Ender Pearls: Clerics have many good trades, but Ender Pearls are our top pick. They’re extremely useful and hard to get consistently without a Nether farm.
Gold Ingots → Emeralds: Gold isn’t as rare as you might think and is fairly niche outside this trade. Build a gold farm in the Nether to profit from this exchange (Minecraft gold farm: build an advanced gold and XP farm) .
Leatherworker: Dye leather armor and trade leather for emeralds
Emeralds → Leather Armor: Not the strongest profession, but useful for leather armor in various colors. Not essential, though.
Leather → Emeralds: Very practical if you keep lots of cows. Hoglins and other rideable mobs like horses can also drop leather.
Weaponsmith and Toolsmith: Enchanted tools and iron trades
Emeralds → Enchanted Tools: Enchanted gear is once again the best option here. You’ll save both levels and diamonds.
Iron Ingots → Emeralds: With an iron farm that spawns and kills iron golems, this trade is a breeze and can fund tons of other deals.
Cartographer: Explorer maps and glass pane trades
Emeralds → Explorer Maps: These maps lead you to rare treasures or structures in your world. You can get maps for Woodland Mansions, Ocean Monuments, or Trial Chambers.
Glass Panes → Emeralds: Paper is great here too, but for variety you can trade glass panes. Craft them from just 6 glass blocks and get 16 panes—making this trade quite lucrative!
Mason and Stonemason: Blocks of Quartz and stone for emeralds
Emeralds → Block of Quartz: Quartz is common in the Nether or via Piglin bartering, but still tedious to farm. If you like building with the white block, trading with the Mason is one of your best options.
Stone → Emeralds: With a pickaxe and “Silk Touch”, this trade is a cakewalk and yields plenty of emeralds. You can also build a stone generator to farm stone effortlessly.
Butcher: Rabbit stew and dried kelp block for emeralds
Emeralds → Rabbit Stew: It’s an elaborate recipe, but it’s also the best food in the game (besides cake). A great way to keep your hunger bar topped up.
Dried Kelp Block → Emeralds: Kelp can be auto-farmed very easily, which makes this trade so convenient.
Armorer: Best enchanted armor and coal trades
Emeralds → Enchanted Armor: Armor can cost a lot of diamonds and levels. To skip that, we recommend this trade. You can gear up quickly and upgrade to Netherite later.
Coal → Emeralds: Coal may not seem great at first, but in the later game it’s excellent if you have more than enough. With a “Fortune III” pickaxe, you can get up to 4 coal from one ore block.
Fletcher: Enchanted bow and sticks for emeralds
Emeralds → Enchanted Bow or Crossbow: Both are essential for ranged combat and get even better with enchantments (Minecraft Ranged Combat Guide: Bow, Crossbow & Trident) .
Sticks → Emeralds: One of the best trades in the game since you can get sticks simply by chopping trees for wood. We recommend using this trade always.
Shepherd: Colored wool and wool farm for emeralds
Emeralds → Colored Wool: Handy if you don’t want to dye wool yourself or you’re short on dyes. Generally, the Shepherd is better for earning emeralds than spending them.
White Wool → Emeralds: With a wool farm, this is one of the best ways to get lots of emeralds quickly and easily (Minecraft Wool Farm Guide: Easily Farm Automatic Wool in All Colors) .
Weaponsmith: Enchanted sword and flint trades
Emeralds → Enchanted Sword: Trade your emeralds for a sword with good enchantments without enchanting it yourself.
Flint → Emeralds: You can trade iron ingots here too, but flint can be just as profitable. Use a “Fortune III” shovel on gravel, and you’ll be swimming in flint.
Conclusion: Use villager trades to farm emeralds and secure top items
A trading hall should include several of the most important trades to make the most of this feature. While some offers are fairly useless, others can make you rich, letting you stockpile emeralds for even better deals. You’ll also save resources like diamonds and levels on enchanted armor and weapons.
Rent one of our Minecraft servers and dive right into trading. With this guide, you can focus on the best deals early in the game—or share it with your group so everyone knows the top options.
