CARTOGRAPHER
Workstation: Cartography Table|10 trades across 5 levels
Sells explorer maps to structures, banner patterns, and empty maps. Buys paper and glass panes.
What is the Cartographer?
The Cartographer is one of Minecraft's 13 working villager professions, and an unemployed adult villager takes the job the moment it claims a Cartography Table — the block that doubles as its job-site marker. Place that cartography table within range of a jobless villager and it will path to the block, change into cartographer clothing, and open its Novice-tier offers. Remove the cartography table before any deal is struck and the villager drops the profession again.
Across its 5 career tiers this villager exposes 10 distinct trades in total, and it is primarily a supplier that sells finished goods for emeralds. It will take paper, glass pane, and compass off your hands for emeralds, and in return it sells empty map, ocean explorer map, woodland explorer map, and item frame, and more. The Cartographer is not biome-specific, so the same trade pool appears no matter which biome the village generates in.
For players farming currency, the Cartographer's quickest route to an emerald is handing over 1 compass at the Journeyman tier, which is worth keeping in mind when you decide whether to build a trading hall around this profession.
Paper
1 Emerald
Empty MapExplorer Maps
The Cartographer sells explorer maps that point to specific structures. These maps show the location of the nearest Ocean Monument, Woodland Mansion, or Trial Chambers. Explore all Minecraft biomes and their structures at biomes.astroworldmc.com.
Cartographer trades by tier (Novice to Master)
A Cartographer climbs five career ranks, and each rank it reaches adds a fresh batch of offers on top of the ones below it. In vanilla 1.21 the experience gates are fixed: the Novice tier opens immediately with 2 offers, 10 more trade-XP points unlock Apprentice (2 offers), 60 more trade-XP points unlock Journeyman (2 offers), 80 more trade-XP points unlock Expert (3 offers), and 100 more trade-XP points unlock Master (1 offer). The full price list for every rank is laid out below; emerald costs marked as a range roll randomly within that band each time the trade is generated or restocked.
Tier 1 · Novice
2 trades · available from the startSell to villager: 24 papers for 1 emerald.
Buy from villager: empty map for 7 emeralds.
Tier 2 · Apprentice
2 trades · 10 cumulative XPSell to villager: 11 glass panes for 1 emerald.
Buy from villager: ocean explorer map for 13 emeralds plus 1 compass.
Tier 3 · Journeyman
2 trades · 70 cumulative XPSell to villager: 1 compass for 1 emerald.
Buy from villager: woodland explorer map for 14 emeralds plus 1 compass.
Tier 4 · Expert
3 trades · 150 cumulative XPBuy from villager: item frame for 7 emeralds, banner pattern (globe) for 3 emeralds, and trial chambers map for 14 emeralds plus 1 compass.
Tier 5 · Master
1 trade · 250 cumulative XPBuy from villager: banner pattern (globe) for 8 emeralds.
Cartographer trading tips
- Fastest emerald income: stockpile compass and sell it in stacks of 1. This Cartographer buy slot can be used 12 times before it locks, so a single villager returns up to 12 emeralds per cycle before you must wait for it to work its cartography table and restock (which it does up to twice a day).
- Best-value purchase: the cheapest thing this villager sells is banner pattern (globe) for 3 emeralds at the Expert tier — a reliable sink for spare emeralds.
- Save the diamonds for Master: the headline trade is woodland explorer map for 14 emeralds, so it pays to level this villager all the way to Master before spending big.
- Cure for permanent discounts: let a zombie infect this Cartographer on Hard difficulty (guaranteed), trap it safely, hit it with a Splash Potion of Weakness, then feed it a Golden Apple. After the 3-5 minute cure every price drops sharply — often to a single emerald even for its priciest goods. See the full method in our zombie-villager discount guide.
- Leveling up: trading is the only way a Cartographer earns career XP. It needs 10 XP to leave Novice, 70 to reach Journeyman, 150 for Expert, and 250 for Master; a green badge becomes a gold one as it ranks up. The villager must be able to reach its cartography table to restock and gain XP.
- Locking and resetting: the very first completed trade locks this villager's offers for good. If you want to reset them, do it while it is still Novice and untraded — remove the cartography table so it forgets the job, then give it back to generate a new Novice list. Our villager rolling guide walks through it.