The cheapest Mending in the game costs one emerald. You get there by placing a lectern next to an unemployed villager, checking its book trade, breaking the lectern if it is wrong, and repeating until Mending appears — then curing that villager from a zombie to lock in a permanent discount.
Mending cannot be obtained from an enchanting table at all. Trading is the only reliable source, which makes this the single most valuable villager technique in the game.
How professions work
An unemployed villager claims a job site block within range and takes the matching profession. Break the block and it becomes unemployed again, and its trades reset — as long as it has not yet traded with you.
| Profession | Job site block | Notable trades |
|---|---|---|
| Librarian | Lectern | Enchanted books, name tags, bookshelves |
| Farmer | Composter | Buys crops, sells bread and golden carrots |
| Fletcher | Fletching table | Buys sticks, sells bows and arrows |
| Cleric | Brewing stand | Buys rotten flesh, sells ender pearls |
| Armourer | Blast furnace | Sells enchanted diamond armour |
| Toolsmith | Smithing table | Sells enchanted diamond tools |
| Weaponsmith | Grindstone | Sells enchanted diamond swords |
| Butcher | Smoker | Buys meat, sells cooked food |
| Cartographer | Cartography table | Explorer maps for mansions and monuments |
| Mason | Stonecutter | Sells quartz, terracotta, stone bricks |
| Shepherd | Loom | Buys wool, sells beds and dyed wool |
| Fisherman | Barrel | Buys string, sells enchanted fishing rods |
| Leatherworker | Cauldron | Buys leather, sells saddles |
Two rules matter more than the rest:
- Once a villager trades with you, its profession is locked forever. Do not click "trade" until you see the offer you want.
- A villager with no bed and no job site will not restock. Give every trading villager a bed and keep its job block in place.
Rerolling a librarian for Mending
- Cure or breed an unemployed villager, or break the job block of an existing librarian before ever trading with it.
- Place a lectern within about 2 blocks. The villager claims it within a few seconds and becomes a librarian.
- Open the trade window and look at the enchanted book offer. Do not trade.
- If it is not Mending, break the lectern, wait for the villager to become unemployed, and place it again.
- Repeat until Mending appears.
This is fast — a reroll takes about ten seconds — and it works because the trades are regenerated each time the villager takes the profession. Building a small cell with a villager, a lectern and a spare lectern in hand makes it mechanical.
The raw Mending price is typically somewhere between 10 and 40 emeralds, because treasure enchantments cost double. That is where curing comes in.
Curing a zombie villager for the discount
Curing a zombie villager gives that villager a large, permanent price reduction on everything it sells. Cure the same villager repeatedly and the discount deepens until most single-item trades cost 1 emerald.
You need:
- A Splash Potion of Weakness — brewed from a water bottle plus a fermented spider eye, then gunpowder
- A golden apple — 8 gold ingots around an apple
The procedure:
- Trap the zombie villager somewhere safe — a 1×2 hole with a trapdoor, or behind iron bars. Shade it or it burns at dawn.
- Throw the splash Potion of Weakness at it.
- Feed it the golden apple. It will shake and emit red particles.
- Wait 3 to 5 minutes. Placing beds and iron bars nearby shortens this considerably.
- It becomes a villager with its trades intact and heavily discounted.
To make your own zombie villagers deliberately: on Hard difficulty, every villager killed by a zombie converts rather than dying. On Normal it is a 50% chance. Many players keep a small "conversion chamber" with a captured zombie and a villager breeder feeding it.
The combined technique — reroll a librarian to Mending, let a zombie convert it, cure it — produces a villager selling Mending books for 1 emerald, restocking twice a day.
Generating emeralds
The cheapest emerald sources, roughly in order:
- Fletcher: 32 sticks for 1 emerald. Sticks come from planks, planks from logs. This is the highest emerald-per-effort trade in the game.
- Librarian: 24 paper for 1 emerald. Pairs perfectly with a sugar cane farm.
- Farmer: around 20 wheat, or similar quantities of carrots, potatoes and beetroot, for 1 emerald.
- Cleric: 32 rotten flesh for 1 emerald, which turns a mob farm's junk output into currency.
- Shepherd: 18 wool for 1 emerald, trivially renewable with sheep.
A single farmer and a single fletcher, fed by a wheat farm and a tree farm, will keep you in emeralds indefinitely.
Levelling villagers up
Villagers gain trading experience and unlock tiers: Novice, Apprentice, Journeyman, Expert, Master. Higher tiers unlock the good trades — a Master-level librarian sells the strongest book selection, a Master toolsmith sells enchanted diamond pickaxes.
Trading anything with a villager grants it experience, so the fastest way to level one is to repeatedly buy and sell its cheapest trade. Villagers restock at their job site up to twice per in-game day, and a villager that cannot reach its job block never restocks.
Prices also respond to demand: buying the same item many times in a row raises its price temporarily. It decays back over time, and the cured-villager discount overwhelms it entirely.
Building a trading hall
The essentials, whatever the aesthetics:
- One cell per villager, each with a bed, a job site block, and a way for you to reach the trade window
- Villagers confined so they cannot swap job blocks with each other
- The cells lit and sealed, since a raid or a wandering zombie can wipe out weeks of work
- An iron golem or two inside the walls
- A separate breeding area with beds and a food supply, feeding new villagers in
Breeding requires beds and food: 3 bread, or 12 carrots, potatoes or beetroot in a villager's inventory makes it willing. Two willing villagers with an unclaimed bed in range produce a baby.
Frequently asked questions
Why will my villager not restock?
It cannot reach its job site block, or it has no job site at all. A villager restocks by working at its block up to twice per in-game day. Check that the block is within a couple of blocks, unobstructed, and not claimed by a different villager. A villager without a bed will also behave oddly and may wander.
Can I reroll a villager's trades after trading with it?
No. The first completed trade locks the profession permanently, and breaking the job block afterwards does not reset it. Look at the offers, close the window, and only trade when you see what you want. This is the mistake that costs people hours.
How many times can I cure the same villager?
As many times as you can convert and cure it. Each cure deepens the discount, and after two or three the prices bottom out at 1 emerald for most single-item trades. The limit is practical, not mechanical: converting requires a zombie and Hard difficulty (or luck on Normal), and each cure takes several minutes.
Do villager prices go up if I trade a lot?
Yes, temporarily. Heavy buying raises the price of that specific trade through the demand mechanic, and it decays over the following in-game days. A cured villager's discount is far larger than any demand penalty, so a cured trading hall is effectively immune to this.
Is Mending really worth all this effort?
Yes. Mending converts experience directly into durability at 2 points per experience, which takes a tool permanently off the anvil repair treadmill and away from the "Too Expensive" limit. A single Mending book on a diamond pickaxe saves more iron, diamonds and levels over a world's lifetime than any other enchantment.
