I've just started playing on the most recent snapshots for 1.8 lately. Having heard that villager trading was improved and "more useful" I wanted to try it out. I, however, have come across some questions that google fails to answer for me.
Foremost, I'm confused about how Mojang thinks the offers are "more useful," and where the improvements are.
Prior to these snapshots, if you had emeralds you had a wealth of options to trade for - given you had them unlocked. You had trades for all of the pieces of diamond armor, diamond tools of all types, and many other things
Now it seems like its easier to get emeralds, and easier to unlock trades, but that there is far less worth trading for. It also seems totally arbitrary what was left out. I have a couple of examples;
I can still trade for a diamond chestplate. but there is no option to trade for diamond leggings, boots, or helmets. Similar goes for leather, you can still trade for leather tunics and leather pants. But helmets and boots are missing for some reason.
When it comes to diamond tools, you still have access to swords, axes, and pickaxes, but you randomly lack access to shovels and hoes. Shouldn't the tool smith trade me diamond shovels and hoes?
On top of all of this, I now have to locate more villagers to get access to all the trades I want. This is actually, with the nerfs to villager breeding, even harder then unlocking trades was previously. There is also the problem of it not being clear how to "reset" locked trades. Sometimes unlocking a trade seems completely random.
So I'm failing to see the improvement here. You give me more options for aquiring emeralds, but you take away many of the options for spending them. And what's been removed seems totally arbitrary. As of now, it seems even less worth the effort. Trading is still cumbersome and tedious, and the payoff is far less. I'm very confused why Mojang described offers as "more useful" in the snapshot changes when it seems to be the opposite.
(Also, I don't mind it being nerfed if that's what they feel needed to happen. I do mind them not calling it what it is.)
I'll give you the whole "they arbitrarily left stuff out" bit. It doesn't make sense.
Quirks of the new breeding... I still want to see how that pans out, but I'm similarly unimpressed. I'd prefer for there to be a breeding gauge rather than a yes/no, so that when I trade with a villager a dozen times it's willing to mate 6 times - provided the other conditions are met. Also, I find that the breed-mode doesn't last quite long enough for them to path to each other and mate, and that their pathing seems off so that they will... bump up against any other villager rather than finding a willing partner - literally watched two willing villagers turned away from each other, each pushing into unwilling ones...
However, since you only need to do one trade of a given tier to get the next one, it's easier to unlock trades. That speeds up getting to trading for good stuff significantly in my experience. Similarly, it seems that once you've locked out a trade, any other trade will unlock it. This allows you to farm two crops and simply do the worse trade whenever you lock out the better one - thus making it far easier in my experience to actually get back to your baseline trades. As a result, what I find is that it's now easy to trade piles of produce and get a pretty fair set of gear. Further, it doesn't take a lot of librarians to rack up the books to make that decent gear into some pretty impressive stuff.
My present experiment goes like this:
Start new game with seed chosen for having near-ish villages.
Run to one with a moderate (~10) population.
Remove two layers from floor of large building.
Remove doors from outer buildings inward towards the trap-building so villagers all go there.
Begin trading/breeding villagers.
I'm actually somewhat enjoying it, and I've done little else in that game.
That's a pity about the Diamond armour. I'd looked into villager trading when another question came up on Melons. It looks like they're completely re-thinking villagers. I didn't find them to be very useful before, so hopefully this new approach will eventually make villagers worth protecting.
I like the changes with villagers in 1.8, I'm looking forward to seeing how they move forward with this.
Trading has "improved" in the same way that boat controls were "improved" not long ago. (In other words it wasn't improved at all and boats are still horribly broken)
With the further changes to villagers in 14w04a, this could indicate similar changes in the future. It'd be nice to have them each do something visible in the world; I wasn't to keen on an entire village of merchants.
I'm not expecting to see Builder or Miner villagers, but a little more 'life' simulated though it is, could mean that one day I might build a few houses, rather than just looting them on my way through...
Delymyth is correct the new "Cleric" villager is more useful then ever. With redstone, Lapis, and glowstone for trade, as well as buying my zombie flesh, they are truly very useful.
And Incubilord also points out that getting to the best trades a villager has to offer takes mere minutes unlike the long annoying process of before. This is, of course, assuming you can find or breed the correct type of villager.
Both of these are indeed improvements. I still am confused about how they decided what to leave out and what to put in. Had they removed diamond pickaxes, it'd be more clear. As they would have removed the most powerful of the trades. But to be honest, I'm not sure just making all the diamond stuff come enchanted isnt a big enough nerf to infinite diamond gear as it is. It's a pain in the butt to trade for two of everything and have to clear the enchantment with a crafting table. :/
And they don't buy beef (according to the wiki), but they buy leather and products made with leather. God I'm going to have to throw away SO much beef.
And they don't buy beef (according to the wiki), but they buy leather and products made with leather. God I'm going to have to throw away SO much beef.
Or you could, you know, eat the beef. It's the best food item in the game (except golden apples and carrots) except for how much trouble it is to breed for it. If you're going to be breeding and killing cows anyway, why not keep their delicious meats?
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Every time you post a question without first consulting the wiki, I die a little inside.
Or you could, you know, eat the beef. It's the best food item in the game (except golden apples and carrots) except for how much trouble it is to breed for it. If you're going to be breeding and killing cows anyway, why not keep their delicious meats?
Kind of hard to eat all that beef when you have two chest loads of it already. I chuck a ton of excess beef in the fire after I cook it.
It's strange they would take out beef trading and leave in trading in wheat, paper, and chickens. Beef is a much slower way of getting emeralds and selling beef really served only to find a use for the vast quantities of beef you build up in the process of generating all the leather you need for books and items frames. So there's not a game play purpose in changing it; it's basically just a cosmetic change; and the change is bad because it adds an annoying principle - that beef is worthless and has to be wasted.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
So there's not a game play purpose in changing it; it's basically just a cosmetic change; and the change is bad because it adds an annoying principle - that beef is worthless and has to be wasted.
Very well stated -- and to respond to what others have said, I still plan on eating beef, and feeding it to my dogs, probably exclusively. But I will still throw mountains and mountains of it away.
Well, diamond gear can still be crafted... That is... If you go mine diamonds...
Otherwise, iron tools can still be ok if enchanted... Too bad that enchanting now requires lapis (which can be mined, although villagers sell them too).
Yes obviously diamond gear can be crafted. I would rather trade emeralds for diamond gear instead of using diamonds, hence my comment on getting the perfect librarian which is now useless.
Yes obviously diamond gear can be crafted. I would rather trade emeralds for diamond gear instead of using diamonds, hence my comment on getting the perfect librarian which is now useless.
I don't understand why getting a 'perfect librarian' is now useless. I never traded much before this snapshot as it just took too much time to work through all the trades and then realizing the villager isn't 'perfect' then rinse and repeating. Now you can unlock their trades more easily and spend more time actually playing the game.
I have two librarians and can easily get 40 emeralds in no time. Any upper tier trade now seems to unlock the lower tier trades, such as paper for emeralds, as does just passing time doing other stuff. I don't see any problem with not be able to exploit villager trading for the best gear at little to no work. So what if you only get a diamond chestplate instead of full diamond armor. Just mix iron and diamond armor, it's still good esp when enchanted, which is now cheaper and easier to get what you want. I see this as good balancing system to keep the game fun and exciting, without OPing players.
I don't understand why getting a 'perfect librarian' is now useless. I never traded much before this snapshot as it just took too much time to work through all the trades and then realizing the villager isn't 'perfect' then rinse and repeating. Now you can unlock their trades more easily and spend more time actually playing the game.
I have two librarians and can easily get 40 emeralds in no time. Any upper tier trade now seems to unlock the lower tier trades, such as paper for emeralds, as does just passing time doing other stuff. I don't see any problem with not be able to exploit villager trading for the best gear at little to no work. So what if you only get a diamond chestplate instead of full diamond armor. Just mix iron and diamond armor, it's still good esp when enchanted, which is now cheaper and easier to get what you want. I see this as good balancing system to keep the game fun and exciting, without OPing players.
A perfect librarian does not exist anymore. Period. You no longer have to trade the last locked slot to unlock other trades. They all have the same trades. (which is the paper trade fist) You can not get paper for the last trade anymore. So once the paper trade gets locked (after you receive about 30 emeralds) to unlock the paper trade again you have to do other trades. Which are Trading books, written books, or terrible trades which defeat the purpose because they require trading emeralds for enchanted books which are already much cheaper (requires lapis) and easy to get hence the new enchanting system. So you need to trade a bunch of books and written books to get the paper trade again. Which is a pain and a huge inconvenience compared to before. This will deter me from using a part of the game that I used to use a lot, but may attract others that didn't use it. When you say "to no work" what do you think a huge sugar cane farm is. Not a fun job. You are correct and I'll just use iron chest pieces. I just can't stand how they don't last long with only unbreaking 3 on hard.
Foremost, I'm confused about how Mojang thinks the offers are "more useful," and where the improvements are.
Prior to these snapshots, if you had emeralds you had a wealth of options to trade for - given you had them unlocked. You had trades for all of the pieces of diamond armor, diamond tools of all types, and many other things
Now it seems like its easier to get emeralds, and easier to unlock trades, but that there is far less worth trading for. It also seems totally arbitrary what was left out. I have a couple of examples;
I can still trade for a diamond chestplate. but there is no option to trade for diamond leggings, boots, or helmets. Similar goes for leather, you can still trade for leather tunics and leather pants. But helmets and boots are missing for some reason.
When it comes to diamond tools, you still have access to swords, axes, and pickaxes, but you randomly lack access to shovels and hoes. Shouldn't the tool smith trade me diamond shovels and hoes?
On top of all of this, I now have to locate more villagers to get access to all the trades I want. This is actually, with the nerfs to villager breeding, even harder then unlocking trades was previously. There is also the problem of it not being clear how to "reset" locked trades. Sometimes unlocking a trade seems completely random.
So I'm failing to see the improvement here. You give me more options for aquiring emeralds, but you take away many of the options for spending them. And what's been removed seems totally arbitrary. As of now, it seems even less worth the effort. Trading is still cumbersome and tedious, and the payoff is far less. I'm very confused why Mojang described offers as "more useful" in the snapshot changes when it seems to be the opposite.
(Also, I don't mind it being nerfed if that's what they feel needed to happen. I do mind them not calling it what it is.)
Quirks of the new breeding... I still want to see how that pans out, but I'm similarly unimpressed. I'd prefer for there to be a breeding gauge rather than a yes/no, so that when I trade with a villager a dozen times it's willing to mate 6 times - provided the other conditions are met. Also, I find that the breed-mode doesn't last quite long enough for them to path to each other and mate, and that their pathing seems off so that they will... bump up against any other villager rather than finding a willing partner - literally watched two willing villagers turned away from each other, each pushing into unwilling ones...
However, since you only need to do one trade of a given tier to get the next one, it's easier to unlock trades. That speeds up getting to trading for good stuff significantly in my experience. Similarly, it seems that once you've locked out a trade, any other trade will unlock it. This allows you to farm two crops and simply do the worse trade whenever you lock out the better one - thus making it far easier in my experience to actually get back to your baseline trades. As a result, what I find is that it's now easy to trade piles of produce and get a pretty fair set of gear. Further, it doesn't take a lot of librarians to rack up the books to make that decent gear into some pretty impressive stuff.
My present experiment goes like this:
Start new game with seed chosen for having near-ish villages.
Run to one with a moderate (~10) population.
Remove two layers from floor of large building.
Remove doors from outer buildings inward towards the trap-building so villagers all go there.
Begin trading/breeding villagers.
I'm actually somewhat enjoying it, and I've done little else in that game.
I like the changes with villagers in 1.8, I'm looking forward to seeing how they move forward with this.
I'm not expecting to see Builder or Miner villagers, but a little more 'life' simulated though it is, could mean that one day I might build a few houses, rather than just looting them on my way through...
Delymyth is correct the new "Cleric" villager is more useful then ever. With redstone, Lapis, and glowstone for trade, as well as buying my zombie flesh, they are truly very useful.
And Incubilord also points out that getting to the best trades a villager has to offer takes mere minutes unlike the long annoying process of before. This is, of course, assuming you can find or breed the correct type of villager.
Both of these are indeed improvements. I still am confused about how they decided what to leave out and what to put in. Had they removed diamond pickaxes, it'd be more clear. As they would have removed the most powerful of the trades. But to be honest, I'm not sure just making all the diamond stuff come enchanted isnt a big enough nerf to infinite diamond gear as it is. It's a pain in the butt to trade for two of everything and have to clear the enchantment with a crafting table. :/
Probably because they figure we have farms for XP anyway, which contradicts their hatred for farms.
Or you could, you know, eat the beef. It's the best food item in the game (except golden apples and carrots) except for how much trouble it is to breed for it. If you're going to be breeding and killing cows anyway, why not keep their delicious meats?
Kind of hard to eat all that beef when you have two chest loads of it already. I chuck a ton of excess beef in the fire after I cook it.
Venit, quessit, induravit.
Then it's too bad I despise them then.
Venit, quessit, induravit.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Very well stated -- and to respond to what others have said, I still plan on eating beef, and feeding it to my dogs, probably exclusively. But I will still throw mountains and mountains of it away.
Yes obviously diamond gear can be crafted. I would rather trade emeralds for diamond gear instead of using diamonds, hence my comment on getting the perfect librarian which is now useless.
I don't understand why getting a 'perfect librarian' is now useless. I never traded much before this snapshot as it just took too much time to work through all the trades and then realizing the villager isn't 'perfect' then rinse and repeating. Now you can unlock their trades more easily and spend more time actually playing the game.
I have two librarians and can easily get 40 emeralds in no time. Any upper tier trade now seems to unlock the lower tier trades, such as paper for emeralds, as does just passing time doing other stuff. I don't see any problem with not be able to exploit villager trading for the best gear at little to no work. So what if you only get a diamond chestplate instead of full diamond armor. Just mix iron and diamond armor, it's still good esp when enchanted, which is now cheaper and easier to get what you want. I see this as good balancing system to keep the game fun and exciting, without OPing players.
A perfect librarian does not exist anymore. Period. You no longer have to trade the last locked slot to unlock other trades. They all have the same trades. (which is the paper trade fist) You can not get paper for the last trade anymore. So once the paper trade gets locked (after you receive about 30 emeralds) to unlock the paper trade again you have to do other trades. Which are Trading books, written books, or terrible trades which defeat the purpose because they require trading emeralds for enchanted books which are already much cheaper (requires lapis) and easy to get hence the new enchanting system. So you need to trade a bunch of books and written books to get the paper trade again. Which is a pain and a huge inconvenience compared to before. This will deter me from using a part of the game that I used to use a lot, but may attract others that didn't use it. When you say "to no work" what do you think a huge sugar cane farm is. Not a fun job. You are correct and I'll just use iron chest pieces. I just can't stand how they don't last long with only unbreaking 3 on hard.