A Modest Proposal for Making Villagers (Marginally) Less Frustrating.

Selling an Enchanted Diamond Sword to a Master Weaponsmith

Wouldn't Librarians, Academics, and even Artisans learn new skills and trades through study and practice? Why would a villager forget their trades and suddenly learn new magical ones just because you broke their work site?

This mod removes the default enchantment and weapon/armor/tool trades from Villagers, and adds the ability to sell items to them, which they'll then learn how to make and trade.

To compensate, treasure -- hidden chests, suspicious sand, etc. -- is buffed. So, you're encouraged to go explore, adventure, or craft valuable items, and then trade them with Villagers to preserve them. Finally, suspicious sand becomes useful!

Novice Villagers can only learn level 1 enchantments and wooden tools; Appentices can do Level 2 and stone tools; and so on. Diamond items and Level 5 enchants need Master Villagers. Mending requires Journeyman and above. Villagers can only learn trades commensurate with their experience level, so sell a Novice a Diamond Sword with Unbreaking 3 and they'll learn Wooden Sword with Unbreaking 1.

As it's server-side with no client code it has no special UI so the "sell" mechanism is done with vanilla trading, so it can be a little unclear what's going on. A proper implementation would have a "teaching" UI.

While I have played this mod properly, it's really a proof-of-concept; the loot tables, in particular, haven't been finely balanced (but I'd counter that neither have the vanilla loot tables!)

What about the "Villager Trade Rebalance" experiment?

In my opinion the Villager Trade Rebalance asks the right question, but gives completely the wrong answer.

It makes it more effort to establish a trading hall, but it still doesn't get rid of the nonsensical re-roll mechanic which leads experienced players to a day or so of tedious and break-and-place.

And still, Archaeology remains a relatively dull way to get cosmetic items like sherds and trims, rather than the massive opportunity for Exploration and ADventure that it could've been.

Trade School