Mercantile — Villager & Trade Overhaul

Every villager remembers.

Also on Modrinth and GitHub Releases. Visit the website for the full feature list, config reference, and command guide.

Mercantile is a villager and trade overhaul for Minecraft 1.21.1 (Fabric). It turns villagers from disposable trade machines into mobile, named, persistent characters — with pickup, biome-themed names, a six-tier reputation system, emerald-based trade cycling, and an iron-fueled sentry block that defends your village.

Restrained by design. Custom art is scoped to what earns its place — the sentry pylon block, a set of bespoke effect particles, and a handful of HUD/GUI glyphs in the Concord palette; everything else leans on vanilla. No balance-breaking shortcuts, no bundled dependencies you didn't ask for. Every sound is a vanilla sound, and every villager head uses a community skin already hosted on Mojang's CDN.

At a glance

• Minecraft 1.21.1, Fabric loader (0.16.10+), Fabric API required.
• Required on the server. The reputation HUD is the only client-only feature — install it client-side too if you want the readout.
• Every feature is individually toggleable through Mod Menu / Cloth Config or config/mercantile.json.
• MIT licensed.

Features

Villager Pickup

Sneak-right-click a villager with an empty hand to pick them up. The villager becomes a profession-themed player head in your inventory. Place them down with a right-click; they spawn facing you. Full NBT survives the round trip — profession, level, XP, trade offers, gossip, custom name, health, inventory.

The tooltip shows profession and level, every trade in cost → result form, locked/out-of-stock indicators, and a n/m trades unlocked summary. Costs 5 XP levels by default (configurable, waived in Creative). Won't work during a raid, on a villager being traded with, or on one currently following another player.

Biome-Themed Names

Every villager is auto-named on spawn from a biome-themed pool — common English names in plains and forests, Arabic in deserts, Nordic in taiga, Mesoamerican in jungle, African in savanna, Old English in swamps, frontier-era in badlands. Names are always visible above the villager, persist across pickup and restart, and respect player-given nametags. Pools are datapack-driven, so you can override or extend them.

Reputation

A single global reputation score per player that affects every villager, running parallel to vanilla gossip.

Reputation goes up for trading, curing zombie villagers, cycling trades, spending time near villagers, gifting profession-appropriate items, and defending the village from raids (any player awarded Hero of the Village gains a full bonus, outside the daily cap); it goes down for hitting and killing them. Fallen out of favor? Negative reputation slowly recovers toward neutral on its own, and gifting villagers speeds the climb — even a Reviled player has a clear path back. Exclusive trades — per-profession, cross-profession, and a sticky bonus offer from wandering traders at Trusted tier and up — appear in your trade list when you hit the right tier. Other players trading with the same villager see their own list at their own tier.

Trade Cycling

A button in the merchant screen that re-rolls a villager's unlocked trades for 6 emeralds (configurable). Once you've purchased from a trade, that trade is locked and never re-rolled — so cycling becomes more efficient as you fill in the slots you want to keep. No cooldown; the emerald cost is the balance.

Follow Mode

Sneak-right-click a villager while holding an emerald to make them follow you. Same action again releases them — and a released villager walks back to its bed or workstation instead of standing where you left it. Up to 3 villagers can follow at once (configurable). Following villagers ignore their schedule, pathfind to you at moderate pace, and are immune to mob-on-mob pushing — no more being shoved off the path. Out of range (>32 blocks) they give up and stop.

Sentry Pylon

A craftable defense block (3 iron blocks + 1 bell + 1 carved pumpkin + 2 stone bricks). Insert iron blocks as fuel. When a hostile mob enters its 32-block radius, the pylon spends one iron block to spawn a temporary iron golem that fights and then despawns after 30 seconds of peace. Up to 3 active sentries per pylon. Sentry golems don't drop loot, don't count toward iron farms, and don't count toward mob caps. On spotting a threat the pylon also rings the nearest village bell to call players to the fight. Comparator output reflects fuel level; a redstone signal disables the pylon entirely.

Quality-of-Life

• Bulk trading — shift-click the trade output to repeat a trade up to 64 times in one action (or until your inventory fills).
• Restock indicator — the merchant screen shows a Restocks in: ~m:ss estimate and remaining restocks for the day.
• Demand transparency — hover the trade price to see the breakdown: base, demand, reputation modifier, gossip modifier, final.
• Pathfinding fixes — villagers properly traverse fence gates and double doors, multi-step staircases, ladders, and route around water instead of drowning. Each fix is independently toggleable.
• Healing enhancement — splash and lingering potions of healing and regeneration are 2× more effective on villagers (configurable).
• Profession lock — once you've made any trade with a villager, their profession is locked. Breaking the workstation won't wipe them.
• Villager info panel — the merchant screen shows name, profession, level + XP bar, your reputation with this villager, total trades, and workstation status.
• Reputation HUD — a compact tier readout next to nearby villagers.
• Sound volume slider — separate volume for villager ambient, trade, and hurt sounds (0–100%).

Visualization

• Workstation links — hold a bell to see profession-colored particle lines between villagers and their workstations. Unbound villagers pulse with angry particles; unclaimed workstations glow yellow.
• Bell radius — hold a bell to see its 48-block gathering area as a particle circle on the ground. Ring a placed bell to highlight every villager in range.

Trade Index (EMI / REI / JEI)

A unified, searchable catalog of every villager trade across every profession and level. Search "mending" in your recipe viewer to find the librarian trade that sells it. Filter by profession, by level, or by whether the trade is reputation-locked. Each entry also shows the workstation block that unlocks the profession — click a workstation (lectern, composter, smoker, …) in your recipe viewer to list every trade for that profession. Item lookup integrates naturally — the "Uses" and "Recipes" tabs on any item include matching villager trades. Works with EMI, REI, and JEI.

Optional integrations

Mercantile detects and integrates with these mods when present. None are bundled — install whichever you already use.

• Mod Menu — config screen entry
• Cloth Config — settings GUI
• Jade / WTHIT — villager tooltip overlays (breeding state, contextual indicators, pylon fuel)
• EMI / REI / JEI — recipe viewer integration for the trade index

Requirements

• Minecraft 1.21.1
• Fabric Loader 0.16.10+
• Fabric API
• Java 21+
• Required on the server. Install on the client as well if you want the reputation HUD.

Installation

1. Install Fabric Loader for 1.21.1.
2. Drop Fabric API into your mods/ folder.
3. Download Mercantile from this CurseForge page (or via the CurseForge app / your launcher of choice) and drop it into mods/ as well.
4. (Optional) Add Mod Menu and Cloth Config for the in-game settings screen.

Links

• Website: https://mercantile.rfizzle.com
• Modrinth: https://modrinth.com/mod/mercantile-villager-overhaul
• GitHub: https://github.com/rfizzle/mercantile
• Report an issue: https://github.com/rfizzle/mercantile/issues
• Changelog: https://mercantile.rfizzle.com/changelog.html

Companion mods

Mercantile is part of Concord — a modular collection of system overhauls. Install any, combine all:

• Meridian — Chart your enchantments.
• Tribulation — Survive what comes next.
• Prosperity — Every chest, yours to discover.

License & credits

Licensed under the MIT License. © 2025 rfizzle. Mercantile is not affiliated with Mojang Studios or Microsoft.

Villager head skins are community-created textures sourced from minecraft-heads.com, permanently hosted on Mojang's CDN. Every sound is vanilla, and the custom art — the sentry pylon, the effect particles, and the HUD/GUI glyphs — ships inside the jar, so there's no resource-pack download and no surprises.