Why trading enchanted books in Minecraft can be a nightmare

Librarians are a variant of Minecraft villagers who can trade enchantments in the form of enchanted books. Their first two trades consist of an enchanted book, which they will sell for a few emeralds, and a regular book. Hence, they are one of the most popular villagers in the game since players can receive every single enchantment from them, except a few treasure ones like soul speed, swift sneak, etc.

However, getting the exact enchanted book from librarians is not the easiest task. An argument can be made that trading with a librarian can sometimes be quite frustrating and time-consuming. Also, Mojang's future plans for the villager trading system might worsen the experience.

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Ways in which getting enchanted book trades Minecraft can feel like a chore

Reshuffling villager trades for a specific trade takes a long time

Reshuffling trade lists can be quite tedious (Image via Sportskeeda Gaming || Mojang Studios)

Over the years, Minecraft players have discovered how to change the first two trades of each professional villager. Only the first two trades can be reshuffled since once players trade with a villager, their trade list gets locked.

The trick to reshuffling trade lists of villagers is to break their job site block, turn them into unemployed villagers, and then place the job site again to recruit them. Since the villager gets unemployed and then re-employed, their first two trades get shuffled.

This trick is most frequently used by librarian villagers to get the desired enchanted book in the first two trades.

Though it is a great trick to get the exact trade players want, the shuffle is completely random. This means that players can be stuck for several hours, trying to get the desired trade from a professional villager.

The more trades a villager has in its first level, the more time it can take for players to get the desired trade. Hence, getting the exact enchanted book from a librarian is time-consuming, even though the process of shuffling the trade list is easy. There are chances that players need to break and replace lectern blocks countless times to get the exact enchanted book they want.

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Gradual arrival of the villager trade rebalance system can make enchanted book trades more difficult

Librarians from different biomes will sell different enchanted books (Image via Sportskeeda Gaming || Mojang Studios)

In August 2023, Mojang introduced a new villager trading system — villager trade rebalance. It was added as an experimental feature in the game.

This system brought major changes to trades done by librarians, cartographers, armorers, and wandering traders. Since librarians are the most popular, players were most interested in how their trades changed.

In the new trade rebalance system, librarians from a certain biome type offered certain enchanted books only. If players want a specific enchanted book, they will first need to find or breed a villager in a specific biome and then employ them as a librarian. Finally, they will need to repeatedly break and place a lectern for that villager till they receive the desired enchanted book.

This means that librarians will not be able to offer all enchanted books regardless of their biome origin.

Though this change has not arrived in official Minecraft stable versions, there is a chance that it might arrive soon. Since Mojang will soon be bringing cartographer trade changes based on their rebalance system in an upcoming game drop, the chances of librarian changes arriving increase dramatically.

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