Enchanting and Trading

An enchanting table is crafted from 4 obsidian, 2 diamonds, and 1 book, with the book itself made from 3 paper and 1 leather. To use it, place an item in the slot along with 1 to 3 lapis lazuli, and three randomized enchantment options appear. Most tools, weapons, armor and books can be enchanted this way; a handful of items, like shields, can't be enchanted at the table at all and need an anvil plus an enchanted book instead.

Bookshelves placed around the table raise the level cap on those three options. With zero bookshelves nearby, the level requirement shown never goes above 8, no matter how lucky you get. Each bookshelf needs a one-block gap of empty air between itself and the table to count — any block in that gap, even something as small as a torch, cuts that shelf off entirely. Reach 15 correctly-placed bookshelves and the cap opens all the way up to level 30, the highest an enchanting table offers; adding more than 15 doesn't push it any further.

Here's the part that catches new players off guard: the level number next to each option (say, 7, 18, or 30) is just the minimum player level you need to have in order to unlock and select that option — it is not what you're actually charged. What you're charged, in both experience levels and lapis lazuli, is exactly the lapis lazuli cost listed for that slot: 1, 2, or 3. So a slot that requires level 30 to unlock might only cost you 3 levels and 3 lapis once you actually pick it, as long as you had at least level 30 to see it in the first place.

An anvil is crafted from 3 blocks of iron across the top row plus 4 more iron ingots below, 31 iron ingots in total, a serious investment for what it does. It repairs items, renames them, and does something an enchanting table alone can't: combine enchantments from two separate sources onto one item, including moving enchantments off a tool entirely and onto a fresh replacement.

Combining two matching tools (say, two iron pickaxes) repairs the target: it adds the sacrifice item's remaining durability plus a bonus of 12% of the maximum, capped at full, and merges both items' enchantments onto the result. Combining a tool with a matching enchanted book instead only merges enchantments — there's no durability to add, since a book doesn't have any. Two books carrying the same enchantment at the same level merge into the next level up (two Sharpness IV books make Sharpness V), up to that enchantment's own cap.

Every operation an item goes through on an anvil adds a hidden "prior work penalty" that roughly doubles each time — 0, 1, 3, 7, 15, 31, and so on — stacking on top of whatever that specific operation actually costs. In Survival mode, any operation that would total more than 39 experience levels is simply refused, with a "Too Expensive!" message, no matter how many levels you actually have banked. A heavily reworked item can hit that wall after only a handful of anvil visits, even for something as cheap as a rename. The fix is to plan ahead rather than repair carefully: merge your enchanted books together first, into one combined book, then apply that single book to a fresh, never-touched tool in as few operations as possible — fewer, bigger merges cost less in total than many small ones.

An unemployed villager takes on a profession by claiming the nearest job site block it can reach: a lectern makes a Librarian, a blast furnace an Armorer, a smithing table a Toolsmith, a grindstone a Weaponsmith, a brewing stand a Cleric, a composter a Farmer, and so on for each profession. Once that villager completes its very first trade, the profession and its offered trades lock in for good — breaking the job site block afterward doesn't undo anything. Before that first trade, though, breaking and replacing the job site block rerolls what it's offering, which is the standard way to fish for a specific trade.

Villagers climb through five trade tiers as they gain trading experience: Novice, Apprentice, Journeyman, Expert, and Master, with each new tier unlocking further trade options on top of the ones before it. Every trade uses emeralds as its currency, whichever profession is involved. Emeralds themselves come from emerald ore, found only in mountain biomes and requiring at least an iron pickaxe, or from trading itself, since plenty of villager trades pay the player emeralds rather than take them.

Prices aren't fixed once a trade unlocks. Demand is tracked per item: trading the same item repeatedly, or emptying it out entirely, pushes its price up the next time the villager restocks, while leaving a pricier trade alone for a while lets it drift back down. Reputation works alongside demand as a separate lever — trading with a villager over time, defending a village from a raid (which grants the temporary "Hero of the Village" effect), and curing a zombie villager all build positive reputation and cheaper prices, while in Java Edition hitting or killing villagers raises them. Curing a zombie villager is the strongest of these: it gives that specific villager a permanent discount, plus a smaller temporary discount that spreads to other villagers nearby.