A Minecraft villager trading hall is a row of single-villager cells where every villager has a workstation in reach, can be traded with from outside, and can be rerolled, cured or discarded without chasing anyone around a village. Build it as three parts (input, storage, output), put the right workstation in each cell, reroll the trades before you trade once, then cure the villagers you keep for permanent discounts. The same plan works in Java and Bedrock, with a few rule differences covered below. Details checked November 13, 2026 UTC against Mojang’s patch notes and the Fandom Minecraft wiki.
Table of Contents
Quick answer: what a good hall needs
- One villager per cell. The wiki’s tutorial splits a hall into input (villagers arrive, usually from a breeder), storage (cells you keep) and output (a way to discard bad villagers).
- The matching workstation in every cell, within the villager’s reach, so it can restock. Villagers resupply locked trades up to twice a day by working at their job site block.
- Reroll before the first trade. Break and replace the workstation until the offer you want appears, then trade once to lock it in for good.
- Cure the keepers. A zombie villager cured with Weakness plus a golden apple gives you a permanent discount, as long as the villager has a profession.
- Protect the cells from zombies and lightning. A lightning strike within 3 to 4 blocks turns a villager into a witch.
A villager offering an emerald next to a wandering trader and llama, from Mojang's Bedrock Preview 1.20.30 post. Image: Mojang Studios
Villager trading hall design: input, storage, output
The Fandom wiki’s trading hall tutorial describes every design as the same three jobs, however fancy it looks.
Input: where the villagers come from
Most halls are fed by a villager breeder, because moving villagers out of a real village is a lot of effort. The wiki says more advanced halls add areas to reroll trades and to zombify and cure villagers, and a fully automatic design has to close a cell behind the villager that enters and open the next one.
Storage: the cells
Each villager you keep sits in its own cell until a better one comes along. The wiki lists three requirements: you must be able to reach the villager to trade, it must be safe from zombies, lightning and other harm, and it needs a workstation nearby so it can restock. On Java, zombies and their relatives seek out villagers from about 35 to 52.5 blocks away depending on regional difficulty (16 blocks on Bedrock), so a roofed, doored, lit hall is not optional if you play on Normal or Hard.
Output: getting rid of bad villagers
You need a way to remove a villager and open the cell for the next one. The wiki advises against killing discarded villagers by hand because it lowers your popularity, which can make a village’s iron golems hostile. Better options it lists: store them for an iron golem farm (see our Minecraft iron farm guide), move them into a village or put them to work in farms and breeders.
Workstation layout: which block makes which villager
A villager’s profession comes from the job site block it claims. Put one of these in each cell (Java names; Bedrock calls the Mason a Stone Mason):
| Workstation | Profession |
|---|---|
| Blast Furnace | Armorer |
| Smoker | Butcher |
| Cartography Table | Cartographer |
| Brewing Stand | Cleric |
| Composter | Farmer |
| Barrel | Fisherman |
| Fletching Table | Fletcher |
| Cauldron | Leatherworker |
| Lectern | Librarian |
| Stonecutter | Mason / Stone Mason |
| Loom | Shepherd |
| Smithing Table | Toolsmith |
| Grindstone | Weaponsmith |
A few layout rules from the wiki’s Villager page:
- Reach: a villager can use its job site block if the block is in one of the eight spaces around its feet or in the nine spaces below that, even diagonally. A block that touches the cell corner is enough.
- Java claiming: unemployed villagers look for the nearest unclaimed job site in a 48-block sphere and must get within 2 blocks of it to claim it. The wiki also says a job site can be claimed only inside a village boundary that has at least one bed, so keep a bed registered near the hall.
- Bedrock claiming: villagers search a 16-block radius and 4 blocks of height, and an unemployed villager with a bed claims the first site on the village’s shared list immediately, regardless of distance or access. If a cell’s villager grabs the wrong block, break the block it claimed.
- Leatherworkers work at any cauldron, filled or not.
Reroll and lock in trades
A villager with no experience resets its offers every so often, and removing then replacing its job site block can change them. Once you trade with it, it keeps its profession and trades forever. So the loop is: place the villager, check the offer, break and replace the workstation until you see the one you want at a good price, then make one trade.
- On Java a villager can have at most 10 trades, and each level adds up to two. Bedrock villagers have 7 to 11 trade slots.
- Librarians are the usual reroll target because their book offers are random. For the full list of what each profession can offer, see our Minecraft villager trades chart; for a book most players hunt for, see the Minecraft Mending guide.
- Levelling up: trades unlock at villager experience 10, 70, 150 and 250 (apprentice, journeyman, expert, master).
Curing setup: iron bars and beds near the zombie villager shave a little off the cure time. AI-generated illustration
How to cure a zombie villager for cheaper trades
Curing is the only way to get a permanent discount from a villager. The process, from the wiki’s curing tutorial:
- Get a zombie villager (5% of zombie spawns, igloo basements, zombie villages, a zombie killing a villager, or a spawn egg or command with cheats on; our Minecraft commands list covers the syntax).
- Give it Weakness with a splash potion, a lingering potion, a tipped arrow or a witch. A splash potion of Weakness is brewed from a fermented spider eye and water bottles, then gunpowder to make it splash.
- Feed it a regular golden apple (the wiki says non-enchanted). It shakes, and Weakness is replaced with Strength for the process, so stay out of reach: a curing zombie villager is more dangerous than a normal one.
- Wait. The wiki gives a random 3,600 to 6,000 ticks (3 to 5 minutes) on Java and 2,000 ticks (about 100 seconds) on Bedrock.
Iron bars and beds speed this up, but only a little: the game checks a 9x9x9 cube around the villager and up to 14 of them each have a 30% chance per check of shaving a tick, which the wiki puts at about 4.2% faster with 14 in range. Mojang’s 26.3 notes also added a block tag called #speeds_up_zombie_villager_curing, described as blocks that affect curing time when placed nearby, so data packs can now adjust the list.
What the discount actually is
On Java, the cured villager stores “major positive” gossip of 20 (weight 5, never decays) and “minor positive” gossip of 25 (weight 1). The wiki’s formula takes that reputation times the item’s price multiplier (0.05 or 0.2), rounds down and subtracts it from the price, never below 1 emerald. For a first cure, 5 x 20 + 25 = 125, so an item with a 0.2 multiplier drops by 25 emeralds (floored at 1) and one with 0.05 drops by 6. Trades with the 0.2 multiplier move the most; the multiplier for each trade is in our villager trades chart.
Two wiki details to plan around. First, a villager keeps a previous profession only if it had traded before turning; otherwise a cured villager may switch if it finds a different workstation, so cure it in a cell that has the right block. Second, the wiki’s pages disagree about stacking: the Trading page says the permanent discount is capped at one cure while the Zombie Villager page says repeated cures deepen it. One cure per keeper is the safe plan.
In multiplayer, the Java discount is personal to the player who cured the villager, so everyone has to cure their own. On Bedrock, nearby villagers within a 16-block cube also offer a smaller discount.
Java vs Bedrock: the differences that matter in a hall
| Java Edition | Bedrock Edition | |
|---|---|---|
| Job site claim range | Nearest unclaimed site in a 48-block sphere; must get within 2 blocks | 16 blocks wide, 4 tall; a villager with a bed claims the first listed site at once |
| Trade slots | Up to 10 trades | 7 to 11 slots |
| Cure time | 3 to 5 minutes | About 100 seconds |
| Discount reach | Cured villager (gossip can spread a smaller share) | Cured villager plus small discounts from villagers within 16 blocks |
| Former nitwit when cured | Stays a nitwit | Becomes unemployed and can learn a profession |
| Hero of the Village gifts | Villagers throw gifts | No gifts |
What changed in 26.x (Java 26.1 to 26.4 snapshots, Bedrock 26.10)
Most older hall designs are from 1.16-era videos, and the wiki’s own designs section is flagged as needing an update. These are the Mojang changes since then that touch trading:
- Java 26.1 (March 24, 2026): villager trades became data-driven, so data packs can edit them. Trades unlocked by professions now use deterministic random sequences like loot drops; Mojang says rerolling a villager still gives a randomized sequence, but one determined by the world seed. Master librarians stopped offering name tags and now offer red and yellow candles for three emeralds, and have three trades so an enchanted book is always on offer when the Rebalance experiment is on. The wandering trader now sells name tags for one emerald.
- Bedrock 26.10 (March 2026): name tags can no longer be bought from librarians and become a wandering trader trade (1 emerald, 7% probability, 5 in stock); master librarians can trade red or yellow candles.
- Java 26.3 (September 15, 2026): new trades unlocked by levelling up now appear even while you have the trading window open. Fixes include discounts not applying until the window was reopened (MC-311094), villagers not levelling up until the window had been closed for several seconds (MC-310787), and villagers gaining only one level when they earned several (MC-265423).
- Java 26.4 Snapshot 6 (October 27, 2026): fixed MC-312804, “Some villager trades still unexpectedly differ from 1.21.11”. As of November 13 the newest snapshot is Snapshot 8, so 26.4 has not been released yet.
Mojang does not spell out how the world-seed change affects hall rerolling in practice, so rely on what you see in the trade window rather than assuming a method from an older tutorial.
Builds to study
The wiki lists community designs with video walkthroughs, tagged by edition: Eggfur’s simple and advanced halls (Bedrock, 1.16.100+, with automatic zombification and fast rerolls), IanXO4’s design (Java 1.16, easy to expand), Mysticat’s compact tileable design, plus Tango Tek, sZPeddy and LogicalGeekBoy. It also carries a Java-only “standard design” blueprint built from pistons, glazed terracotta, levers and a workstation per cell. Use them for layout ideas, then check each villager’s trades in 26.x before you trust an old design’s numbers.
FAQ
Can villagers restock if they have no bed?
Yes. The wiki says villagers can resupply twice per day even without a bed, as long as they reach their workstation. A registered village still needs a bed for claiming job sites.
Will my trades change after I lock them?
Not by rerolling. After your first trade, the villager keeps its profession and offers. Prices still move with demand, and a sold-out trade becomes more expensive when it restocks.
Do discounts help when I sell items to a villager?
Yes. The wiki says price changes apply to the first item in the trade, which is what you hand over. For a trade of 32 sticks for 1 emerald, the price can fall as low as 1 stick, never to a 2-emerald price, and never below 1 or above the stack size.
Sources: Fandom Minecraft wiki pages Villager trading hall, Curing a zombie villager, Villager, Zombie Villager and Trading; Mojang’s Java patch notes feed (26.1, 26.3, 26.4 Snapshots 6 and 8); Mojang’s Bedrock 26.10 release notes. Checked November 13, 2026 UTC.
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Featured image: AI-generated illustration
