Guides & Cheat Sheets / Villager Trading Caps
Villager Trading Caps
Why prices creep up the more you trade, why curing one villager doesn't discount the rest of the village, and how low a price can actually go.
Demand — why repeat trades get pricier
Every trade tracks its own demand iDemand is per trade slot, not per villager — buying out one trade doesn't raise the price of a different trade from the same villager. value, separately from reputation. Demand starts negative (roughly twice the number of that trade's stock) and climbs by one each time you buy it. Once demand turns positive, the price of that specific trade starts rising. Villagers restock their trades roughly twice a day, which also recalculates demand based on how much of the previous stock actually sold — buy out a trade completely and the price will be noticeably higher next time it restocks.
Curing — a permanent discount, but only for that one villager
Curing a zombie villager grants permanent major positive reputation — worth a real, lasting discount on that villager's prices, and unlike regular trading reputation (which decays over time), this one doesn't fade.
The detail that catches people out: this reputation bonus is attached to the individual villager you cured, not the village as a whole. Villagers do gossip and spread some reputation effects to each other when they're near one another, but the "cured" bonus is specifically too strong to be shared this way — it stays locked to that one villager. Curing five zombie villagers in the same village gets you five individually discounted villagers, not one discount that applies to everyone.
Practically: if you want a whole village of good prices, you need to find and cure multiple zombie villagers (or breed and wait for zombie attacks to convert some), not just one.
Hero of the Village — separate, and it stacks on top
Hero of the Village (from defending a raid) is a completely different discount that applies to every villager in the village at once, for the duration of the effect. It cuts prices by a flat 30% at level I, plus another 6.25% per level above that — up to roughly 55% off at level V. It's calculated separately from reputation/curing and then applied on top, so a cured villager during an active Hero of the Village effect gets both discounts at once.
The floor — how low can a price actually go?
No amount of discount can push a trade's price below 1 item. Demand can still raise prices well past the stack size in theory, but the discount side always has a hard floor — you will never trade an emerald for a fully-enchanted book at a price of zero, however much reputation or Hero of the Village stacking you bring to the table.