LEATHERWORKER
Workstation: Cauldron|9 trades across 5 levelsBiome-specific
Sells leather armor (dyed by biome), saddles, and leather horse armor. Buys leather, flint, and rabbit hide.
What is the Leatherworker?
The Leatherworker is one of Minecraft's 13 working villager professions, and an unemployed adult villager takes the job the moment it claims a Cauldron — the block that doubles as its job-site marker. Place that cauldron within range of a jobless villager and it will path to the block, change into leatherworker clothing, and open its Novice-tier offers. Remove the cauldron before any deal is struck and the villager drops the profession again.
Across its 5 career tiers this villager exposes 9 distinct trades in total, and it is primarily a supplier that sells finished goods for emeralds. It will take leather, flint, and rabbit hide off your hands for emeralds, and in return it sells leather leggings, leather tunic, leather cap, and leather boots, and more. Because the Leatherworker is biome-specific, the exact goods it offers (and their tints, patterns, or stock) shift with the biome its village sits in, so a desert Leatherworker will not always match a plains one.
For players farming currency, the Leatherworker's quickest route to an emerald is handing over 6 leathers at the Novice tier, which is worth keeping in mind when you decide whether to build a trading hall around this profession.
| Input | Output | Price | Uses | Edition | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
6x  Leather |  1 Emerald | 16 | ||||
| 3 Emeralds | 2-4 | 12 | Dyed based on biome | |||
| 7 Emeralds | 7-12 | 12 | Dyed based on biome |
Leather Leggings
Leather TunicLeatherworker trades by tier (Novice to Master)
A Leatherworker 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 3 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 (1 offer), 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
3 trades · available from the startSell to villager: 6 leathers for 1 emerald.
Buy from villager: leather leggings for 2-4 emeralds and leather tunic for 7-12 emeralds.
Tier 2 · Apprentice
2 trades · 10 cumulative XPSell to villager: 26 flints for 1 emerald.
Buy from villager: leather cap for 5 emeralds.
Tier 3 · Journeyman
2 trades · 70 cumulative XPSell to villager: 9 rabbit hides for 1 emerald.
Buy from villager: leather boots for 4 emeralds.
Tier 4 · Expert
1 trade · 150 cumulative XPBuy from villager: leather horse armor for 6 emeralds.
Tier 5 · Master
1 trade · 250 cumulative XPBuy from villager: saddle for 6 emeralds.
Leatherworker trading tips
- Fastest emerald income: stockpile leather and sell it in stacks of 6. This Leatherworker buy slot can be used 16 times before it locks, so a single villager returns up to 16 emeralds per cycle before you must wait for it to work its cauldron and restock (which it does up to twice a day).
- Best-value purchase: the cheapest thing this villager sells is leather leggings for 2-4 emeralds at the Novice tier — a reliable sink for spare emeralds.
- Save the diamonds for Master: the headline trade is leather tunic for 7-12 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 Leatherworker 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 Leatherworker 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 cauldron 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 cauldron so it forgets the job, then give it back to generate a new Novice list. Our villager rolling guide walks through it.