Minecraft Villager Trading: Permanent Discounts with Zombie Curing

Trading is one of the most useful features in Minecraft and can help you get very valuable items quickly and easily. That’s why many players look for a village early in the game and move the villagers into their own trading hall (How to Build a Villager Trading Post: Get Valuable Items Through Trading) .

But what if you could do even more with villagers? Some offers are probably too expensive for you too – and you want discounts. Thanks to several game mechanics, that’s possible. In this guide, we’ll show you how to use zombified villagers and a curing station to secure permanently better deals.

Villager trading discounts in Minecraft: How they work

Villager trades depend on several factors. First, offers are randomly chosen from a pool of trades, so you won’t always get what you want. When rolling a new villager, use the appropriate job site block (e.g., Lectern for the Librarian, Composter for the Farmer), break it, and place it again to reroll the trades — do this before you trade with them for the first time. Even at this stage, you can get different prices or better options.

Once you’ve traded with a villager at least once, you can earn additional discounts. There are three mechanics that affect prices. Important: Only the required item gets discounted — you don’t receive more emeralds; you simply pay less.

Three ways to better villager prices: Gossip, raid bonus, and zombie curing

1. Gossip (gossip system): In a village, residents “gossip” with each other. If you’ve traded with some and you always treat them well, they’ll share their positive opinion of you with others. If you hit or kill villagers, that can lead to more expensive trades. For gossip to spread, villagers need line of sight — you can enable that in a trading hall as well.

2. Raid bonus (Hero of the Village): After successfully defeating a raid, you gain the Hero of the Village effect for about 40 minutes. Its level varies with raid difficulty. The effect applies to all villager trades, not just in the village you defended. If you want to use the temporary discount and farm items at the same time, our guide can help: (Building a Minecraft Raid Farm: Farm Infinite Totems & Emeralds) .

3. Cure zombie villagers (permanent discounts): The only reliable permanent method is curing a zombie villager. You can learn the mechanic in an igloo with a hidden basement: cure with a Potion of Weakness and a Golden Apple. Zombie villagers spawn naturally, or you can let a zombie attack a villager to convert them — and then cure them. This is where an automatic curing station helps.

Build a curing station for zombie villagers: Lock in permanent discounts

Letting villagers be zombified on purpose and then curing them sounds macabre — but it works brilliantly for large, lasting discounts. You can do this with new villagers or with already rolled ones (the latter is ideal so you can make their good trades cheaper on purpose). You can also repeat the cure multiple times to increase the discount.

Pro tip: Play on Hard difficulty. Only there is there a 100% chance that a villager hit by a zombie becomes a zombie villager. On lower difficulties, the zombie is more likely to kill the villager — which you definitely want to avoid.

Step-by-step guide: Build a curing station in Minecraft

1. Ensure supply: build a villager breeder
   To always have enough villagers, use a nearby village or build a small villager breeder. The basics: there must be enough beds. Use two villagers, give them food (e.g., bread), and place more than two beds nearby. If you need a new resident, transport them by rail about 48 blocks away to free up their bed again.

2. Set up the work bay: piston mechanism for safe conversion
   Build the workstation for one villager (expandable later). Dig a trench for the zombie tunnel; add a two-block side chamber for the villager. Place a piston in the floor with redstone dust in front so you can raise and lower the villager. Place a trapdoor behind the piston and before the zombie tunnel, with a full block above it. Put the villager onto the piston via minecart, raise them, and place the job site block on the redstone.

3. Secure the zombie: prevent despawn, add sun protection
   Capture a zombie and guide it into the tunnel behind the workstations. Ideally, find a zombie that can pick up items, or give it a name tag — that way it won’t despawn. Add a roof so it doesn’t burn during the day.

4. Convert and cure: Potion of Weakness + Golden Apple
   Set the difficulty to Hard, lower the villager with the piston, and let the zombie hit them. As soon as they become a zombie villager, raise the piston again and cure them with a splash Potion of Weakness and a Golden Apple. After a few minutes, the curing finishes — now you benefit from the discounts!

Extra tips for top prices:

• Cure the same villager multiple times to increase the discount further.
• Isolate villagers individually so gossip doesn’t unintentionally lead to higher or inconsistent prices.
• Combine curing with Hero of the Village for maximum (temporary + permanent) price cuts.

Conclusion: Cheaper villager trades thanks to zombie curing

Villager trading is extremely powerful — and even more lucrative when you cure zombified villagers. With a simple curing station, you automate the process and lock in permanent discounts on your favorite trades. Integrate the station into your trading hall and enjoy long-term low prices and more emeralds.

Want to optimize this as a team? Rent a Minecraft server and build a massive villager trading area together — everyone benefits from the cheap offers and can exchange key resources: Rent a Minecraft server now.