Do Wandering Traders Refill Their Stock in Minecraft? The Truth Revealed!
No, wandering traders do not refill their stock. Once a wandering trader has exhausted a particular trade, that trade remains unavailable for that specific trader. They cannot be leveled up or have their trades rerolled or manipulated. The wandering trader’s inventory is much smaller than that of regular villagers. The wandering trader will despawn, potentially to be replaced by another trader with a completely new set of trades.
Understanding the Wandering Trader’s Role in Minecraft
The wandering trader serves a unique purpose in the Minecraft ecosystem. Unlike villagers who are tied to specific villages and professions, wandering traders are nomadic merchants who appear near players, offering a selection of often rare or hard-to-find items in exchange for emeralds. They provide a convenient way to acquire resources that might otherwise require extensive exploration or farming. The Games Learning Society could even use the wandering trader as an educational tool, to teach trading concepts to students, learn more at GamesLearningSociety.org.
Unique Inventory and Trade Limitations
Wandering traders offer items such as rare saplings, flowers, coral blocks, nautilus shells, blue ice, and podzol. However, they also come with a price; while convenient, their prices are generally more expensive than those offered by villagers. Furthermore, their inventory is limited and cannot be expanded. This means that once you’ve purchased all available quantities of a particular item, that trade is gone for good with that specific trader.
The Despawning Mechanic
A key aspect of the wandering trader is its temporary nature. They despawn after being loaded for 48000 ticks (40 minutes, or 2 full Minecraft days), even if named or placed in a vehicle. This despawning mechanic prevents them from becoming permanent fixtures, ensuring a constant influx of new traders with fresh, albeit limited, inventories. It also allows players to engage in a unique exchange experience on each visit.
Wandering Trader FAQs: Everything You Need to Know
1. Are Wandering Traders a Renewable Source of Specific Items?
Yes, in a way. While each individual wandering trader’s stock isn’t renewable, the wandering trader as a concept is. Because they despawn and respawn with new trades, you can continue to encounter wandering traders throughout your game, each offering potentially different goods. Therefore, they act as a renewable source of rare items such as sand, red sand, coral blocks, and small dripleaves, none of which can be sold by villagers.
2. Can I Force a Wandering Trader to Restock?
No. There is no way to force a wandering trader to restock its inventory. Methods that work for villagers, such as manipulating job site blocks or trading multiple times, do not apply to wandering traders. This limitation is deliberate, emphasizing their role as temporary, opportunistic vendors.
3. What Happens if I Don’t Trade With a Wandering Trader?
If you don’t trade with a wandering trader, they will simply despawn after their allotted time. There’s no penalty for ignoring them, and they won’t become hostile. They will simply vanish, making way for a new trader with a new set of items.
4. Does Killing a Wandering Trader Have Consequences?
Yes. While killing a wandering trader won’t directly impact your reputation with villagers or trigger iron golem aggression (unless done inside the village borders). However, a system similar to Village Popularity will have points decreased. This will decrease the spawning rate and quality of trades of further Traders more the lower it gets. Also, you won’t gain any experience points.
5. How Often Do Wandering Traders Spawn?
Wandering traders don’t have a specific spawn location. They spawn randomly near the player. The first spawn attempt has a 2.5% chance of success; if it fails, after another 24000 ticks another spawn attempt is made with a 5% chance of success. If that fails, for all subsequent spawn attempts the chance caps at 7.5%. On average, it takes 14.325 Minecraft days for a wandering trader to spawn.
6. Can I Turn a Wandering Trader Into a Regular Villager?
No. Wandering traders are a distinct mob type and cannot be converted into regular villagers through any means. They will still despawn if he doesn’t breed and convert into a villager.
7. Do Wandering Traders Sleep?
Wandering Traders will wander around the village all day and then sleep inside the houses during the night.
8. What Items Are Commonly Sold by Wandering Traders?
Wandering traders sell a diverse range of items, including saplings (acacia, dark oak, jungle, etc.), flowers (lily of the valley, blue orchid, etc.), dyes, coral blocks, nautilus shells, podzol, moss blocks, rooted dirt, dripstone blocks, and azalea leaves. Their inventory is tailored to provide access to items that are either biome-specific or otherwise challenging to obtain.
9. Are Wandering Traders Vulnerable to Zombies?
Wandering traders avoid zombies and their variants, all illager variants, and vexes, staying at least 8 blocks away. Unlike other villagers, a wandering trader killed by zombies does not become a zombie villager.
10. Can I Keep a Wandering Trader Permanently?
While you can’t permanently keep a wandering trader, you can extend their lifespan beyond the default 40 minutes (2 Minecraft days). To prevent despawning, you can summon a wandering trader with the command “/summon wandering_trader {DespawnDelay:3600000}”. This increases their despawn timer significantly (to about 50 Minecraft days) and rename a name tag in an anvil. Then, use the name tag on the wandering trader.
11. Why Do Wandering Traders Have Llamas?
The llamas are for protection. If the wandering trader is attacked, his llamas will protect him by spitting on the enemy, whether it’s the player or a hostile mob. These llamas are an integral part of the wandering trader’s identity and contribute to the unique experience of interacting with them.
12. Do Wandering Traders Go Invisible at Night?
Yes, wandering traders drink a potion of invisibility during dusk and as needed to renew the effect during the night. They also drink milk if invisible during the day to remove the invisibility effect. This behavior protects them from hostile mobs during their travels.
13. What is the Best Trade Offered by Wandering Traders?
The “best” trade is subjective and depends on your current needs. However, many players find the nautilus shell trade (for 5 emeralds) to be particularly valuable, as it simplifies the process of building a conduit. Other desirable trades include rare saplings, flowers, and biome-specific resources like blue ice and podzol.
14. Do Wandering Traders Open Doors?
Wandering Traders will open doors in attempts to trade with someone new, but they cannot open Iron doors like most mobs. They can also have the function to leash their llamas to fence gates, so they can trade. Also, when a llama is unleashed, a wandering trader can re-leash them.
15. Can I Manipulate Wandering Trader Spawns?
While you can’t directly control where a wandering trader spawns, you can influence when they spawn by ensuring that you are spending time in loaded chunks. The game will periodically attempt to spawn a wandering trader near the player, so remaining active and exploring increases the likelihood of encountering one.