Librarian in Minecraft

First, you will need to locate a villager. You can do this through two methods, either finding a village or curing a zombie villager. While finding a village is more about luck and speed of travel, curing a zombie villager is a more involved process. They both come with their own benefits and detriments so consider which process you would rather complete.

Method 1: To cure a Zombie Villager

To cure a zombie villager, you will need a splash potion of weakness and a golden apple. You can craft a golden apple with a regular apple and 8 golden ingots. Find apples by breaking oak tree leaves and find golden ingots either underground or crafting them with gold nuggets.

To make a splash potion of weakness you will need a brewing stand, blaze powder, water bottle, and a fermented spider eye. To make a fermented spider eye you will need a brown mushroom, sugar, and a spider eye.

Place the fermented spider eye in a brewing stand with a water bottle to make a potion of weakness. This is one of the few potions that does not require making an awkward potion first.

Once your potions of weakness are done brewing, you can turn them into splash potions of weakness by adding gunpowder. This will allow you to hit the zombie villager with the weakness effect.

Now all that is left is to track down a zombie villager. There is about a 5% chance for any zombie that spawns to be a zombie villager. You could also get a zombie to convert a regular villager into a zombie villager, but this seems to defeat the purpose. This will provide you with better trades in terms of cost, but if the goal is to get a villager, there is no need to convert a regular villager is there?

Regardless, once you have found a zombie villager lead him somewhere you can keep him contained. Throw the splash potion of weakness at it and then feed the zombie villager a golden apple while it still has the weakness effect. The curing process takes about 3-5 minutes and you should hear a thunderbolt sound effect when it is done correctly.

You can tell if the zombie villager is inflicted with weakness by the red swirls surrounding it. After you feed it a golden apple and wait 3-5 minutes, it should convert into a regular villager.

Once you have cured the villager, you can change his profession to a librarian by placing a lectern nearby. Do not trade with the villager if you want him to change his profession. Once you trade with the villager his profession becomes locked even if you break his Jobsite block. Also, ensure that no other job site blocks are placed nearby to make the process smoother. If they do pick a nearby Jobsite block you will have to break the specific block they are assigned to and place a lectern close by if you want a librarian.

His trades will be discounted as he is thankful that you cured him of zombification. While this method is more involved than finding a regular village, it does come with the perks of discounted trades, choosing the villager’s location, and removing the frustration of having dozens of Jobsite blocks around.

Another thing to consider with the zombie villager method is you will need to have certain villager aspects around to ensure that the villager changes their profession. First, you need to ensure they are not a nitwit (check their clothes and if it is green you will need to start over), next they will need to claim a nearby bed, and finally, they need their specific job site block in order to select a profession.

Method 2: Finding a village

Of course, you can just find a village if that is easier than converting a zombie villager. You will have to deal with the frustration of them running around as well as ensuring they select the correct job site block. They will also only trade at full price, or even more if you are new to the village.

In this particular case, we were able to corral a villager into a fenced area and place a lectern nearby to convert him into a librarian. It did take breaking a lot of nearby composters as this villager was passionate about farming. This also caused the problem of other farmers assigning themselves to the lectern instead. Either trap that specific villager or add just enough Jobsite blocks for everyone else, except for the villager you want to become a librarian.

If you have access to many librarians, you can pay to have one that will buy paper for emeralds. Paper can be made from sugarcane, which if you are diligent about farming, can always be converted into emeralds.

Eventually, the trade may change its costs to include more or less paper depending on your relationship with the village as well as the number of trades conducted. You can always wait for the price of paper to go up or down to fit your margins. Eventually, the librarian will run out of demand for paper, locking the trade. You can either trade other items with him or wait a few in-game days for the trade to be unlocked again.

Of course, the most important thing to look out for are the enchanted books. Some librarians will offer an enchanted book at level one or unlock stronger, better enchantments at later levels.

This can be instrumental in getting a fully enchanted set of weapons, armor, and tools. If you did not know, the Mending I enchantment cannot be found through an enchantment table. You have to find it through treasure loot. Luckily, you can find a villager who offers a Mending book as a trade option.

This is one of the best trade offers you can possibly get as you will eventually want the Mending enchantment on just about every piece of equipment you have. You can also look for other desirable enchantments like Protection IV or Protection III (to make into Protection IV).

If you want to reroll a librarian’s inventory, make sure they have not been traded with and break their lectern and replace it. Doing so will cause the villager to lose their librarian profession for a moment, but after they claim the lectern as their job site block, they will have a new inventory of trades. This can be done as many times as you want until you get the book you want.

Remember that once you trade with them, their profession will become locked, so if you want different enchanted books after you find a trade you like, you will need a new librarian.

Another desirable trade is to get Unbreaking III or Unbreaking II (to make it into Unbreaking III).

Unbreaking is compatible with just about every piece of equipment in the game. Making a tool, weapon, or armor have 4x their regular durability is certainly something that every perfect set of enchanted equipment needs.

Since librarians can offer just about any enchanted book, any book that you find desirable can be a good trade.

Congratulations, you now know how to use a librarian’s trade offers to your benefit. Librarians are one of the best professions to get for your villagers as they can provide enchantments that take hours, even days, of grinding to obtain.

There are dozens of enchantments available in Minecraft, and having an indefinite source of a desirable enchantment can help you throughout every stage of the game. While the process can be a source of frustration, the alternative is rolling the dice with enchantment tables and fishing. Knowing the ins and outs of the librarian profession can save you hours of time.