New Minecraft wandering trader trades: Finally useful or still a letdown?

Mojang recently brought major changes to wandering trader in Minecraft snapshots and beta/preview versions, with the change to be released in the next game drop. For many years, wandering trader's prices and trade lists have remained the same, with only a few new items being added to every update. In the next game drop, however, Mojang decided to make major price and trade list changes.

An argument can be made that Minecraft's wandering trader now has much better trades.

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Minecraft improved wandering trader's trades for their next game drop

Wandering traders can now buy items

Wandering traders can now buy simple items for emeralds (Image via Mojang Studios || Sportskeeda Gaming)

In the upcoming game drop, wandering traders will finally be able to buy some items for emeralds. Mojang released the patch notes for snapshot 25w07a and beta/preview 1.21.70.23, where they showcased what items wandering traders will be able to buy.

Wandering traders will soon be able to buy the following items:

• Water bucket - 2 emeralds
• Water bottle - 1 emerald
• Milk bucket - 2 emeralds
• Fermented spider eye - 3 emeralds
• 4 Baked potatoes - 1 emerald
• Hay bale - 1 emerald

This is arguably the best chance the wandering trader has received in quite some time. Whenever wandering traders spawned near a player, they mostly had unimpressive items to sell. Furthermore, they never bought anything for players to have a chance to earn some emeralds.

This will now change very soon with the upcoming game drop. Players will be able to offer simple items like water bottles or buckets to earn some extra emeralds. This can particularly be useful for newer players who have not yet set up villager trading halls.

The hay bale trade can even beat the popular farmer-villager trade. While farmers take around 20 wheat for a single emerald, wandering traders will now take only nine wheat for one emerald.

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Slight price slashes for special trades

Minecraft has slashed some wandering trader trade prices (Image via Mojang Studios || Sportskeeda Gaming)

Apart from adding new buying trades to wandering traders, Mojang also decided to reduce the prices of some special trades that these mobs offer. They reduced the price of some items while increasing the amount of others offered by the wandering trader.

Here are some of the major price changes on special items:

Before:

• 1 Gunpowder - 1 emerald
• 1 Packed ice - 3 emeralds
• 1 Bucket of pufferfish - 5 emeralds
• 1 Bucket of tropical fish - 5 emeralds

After:

• 4 gunpowder - 1 emerald
• 1 Packed ice - 1 emerald
• 1 Bucket of pufferfish - 3 emeralds
• 1 Bucket of tropical fish - 3 emeralds

With these price changes, the special trades offered by the mob feel much more realistic and acceptable.

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Conclusion

Though there are several new wandering trader trades that will soon arrive in Minecraft, these few changes mentioned above have improved the wandering trader's usefulness in the game.

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