How to make Minecraft villager trading hall in 2024

Minecraft villager trading halls are incredibly powerful builds. You can trade sticks, melons, rotten flesh, and string for emeralds, which can then be traded for enchanted diamond gear, tipped arrows, name tags, and enchanted books within these structures. Being able to turn abundant resources into these powerful items means that these builds are almost essential to long-term survival.

Detailed below are tips for making a simple and expandable Minecraft villager trading hall that's able to guarantee you access to the best trades in the game at the lowest prices.

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How to make a Minecraft villager trading hall for the best prices

1) Dig a zombie pit

A tuff and diorite zombie pit (Image via Mojang)

While it might seem strange, the first thing you'll want to do when building a Minecraft villager trading hall is dig out a pit for a zombie. The trades that villagers offer to you will be much more generous after they have been cured of zombification. This means having a method of reliably re-zombifying villagers is essential for getting the best possible trading prices.

This pit will be the length of the trading hall, so make it longer if you want more room for Minecraft villagers. Each trading pod is three blocks across, so keep that in mind when determining how big of a zombie pit you want to make.

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2) Add in the Redstone

Where to place the Redstone to properly power the pistons (Image via Mojang)

Once you've built the zombie chamber, it's time to move on to the simple Minecraft Redstone featured in this trading hall. Place a solid block in the leftmost block in the pit, with Redstone dust on top of it and an upward-facing piston next to it. Then, crouch and place a block directly above this Redstone dust, and put a lever on it. Skip a block and repeat this process for as many trading pods you want.

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3) Build the trading pods

The exteriors of the trading halls (Image via Mojang)

Flip the levers to extend the pistons. This will show you where the villagers will stand within the Minecraft villager trading hall. Add walls surrounding these pistons, but make sure to use a slab on the side of the wall over the zombie pit. This extra half-block gap will give the future zombie an easier time hitting the villagers, making re zombification possible.

The design of these walls is totally up to your preference. The example trading hall used some of the new tuff blocks added in Minecraft 1.21. When finishing up the trading pods, make sure to fully cover the zombie pit to prevent the hostile mob from burning in the light of the sun.

Make sure to add a Minecraft trapdoor, or other moveable block, to the upper level of the front of each trading pod. This will allow you to stop the villagers from escaping while breaking the workstations to reset trades.

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4) Add the villagers and zombie

The villagers in their trading pods (Image via Mojang)

The final step before your Minecraft villager trading hall is finished is to add the villagers and zombies. The easiest way to do this would be to use a boat to get villagers near the pods. Then, place down blocks so that the only place for them to move is onto the Minecraft pistons. Break the boats and wait.

Close the trapdoors or move the moveable blocks from the previous step whenever you see a villager move into the right spot, and eventually, they will all end up in their pods.

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5) Decorate the build

An example of a potential exterior for the trading hall (Image via Mojang)

Your Minecraft villager trading hall is technically already done, making this step optional. While there's a certain industrial vibe to leaving the essentials of the build exposed, decorating it is a great way to help it blend in with the surrounding environment and structures.

As with the walls of the trading hall, the design of the exterior is totally up to your preference, but a Minecraft store design might be a good fit to reference the trades found within. That being said, there is no shortage of villager trading halls to draw inspiration from when it comes to the exterior of the build.