SHEPHERD
Workstation: Loom|13 trades across 5 levels
Sells colored wool, carpets, beds, banners, and paintings. Buys wool and dyes.
What is the Shepherd?
The Shepherd is one of Minecraft's 13 working villager professions, and an unemployed adult villager takes the job the moment it claims a Loom — the block that doubles as its job-site marker. Place that loom within range of a jobless villager and it will path to the block, change into shepherd clothing, and open its Novice-tier offers. Remove the loom before any deal is struck and the villager drops the profession again.
Across its 5 career tiers this villager exposes 13 distinct trades in total, and it is primarily an emerald sink that buys your surplus materials. It will take white wool, brown wool, black wool, and gray wool, among other items, off your hands for emeralds, and in return it sells shears, colored wool, colored carpet, and bed, and more. The Shepherd is not biome-specific, so the same trade pool appears no matter which biome the village generates in.
For players farming currency, the Shepherd's quickest route to an emerald is handing over 12 any dyes at the Apprentice 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 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
18x  White Wool |  1 Emerald | 16 | ||||
18x  Brown Wool | 1 Emerald | 16 | ||||
18x  Black Wool | 1 Emerald | 16 | ||||
18x  Gray Wool | 1 Emerald | 16 | ||||
| 2 Emeralds | 1x  Shears | 2 | 12 |
Shepherd trades by tier (Novice to Master)
A Shepherd 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 5 offers, 10 more trade-XP points unlock Apprentice (3 offers), 60 more trade-XP points unlock Journeyman (2 offers), 80 more trade-XP points unlock Expert (2 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
5 trades · available from the startSell to villager: 18 white wools for 1 emerald, 18 brown wools for 1 emerald, 18 black wools for 1 emerald, and 18 gray wools for 1 emerald.
Buy from villager: shears for 2 emeralds.
Tier 2 · Apprentice
3 trades · 10 cumulative XPSell to villager: 12 any dyes for 1 emerald.
Buy from villager: colored wool for 1 emerald and 4 colored carpet for 1 emerald.
Tier 3 · Journeyman
2 trades · 70 cumulative XPSell to villager: 12 any dyes for 1 emerald.
Buy from villager: bed for 3 emeralds.
Tier 4 · Expert
2 trades · 150 cumulative XPSell to villager: 12 any dyes for 1 emerald.
Buy from villager: banner for 3 emeralds.
Tier 5 · Master
1 trade · 250 cumulative XPBuy from villager: 3 painting for 2 emeralds.
Shepherd trading tips
- Fastest emerald income: stockpile any dye and sell it in stacks of 12. This Shepherd 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 loom and restock (which it does up to twice a day).
- Best-value purchase: the cheapest thing this villager sells is colored wool for 1 emerald at the Apprentice tier — a reliable sink for spare emeralds.
- Cure for permanent discounts: let a zombie infect this Shepherd 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 Shepherd 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 loom 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 loom so it forgets the job, then give it back to generate a new Novice list. Our villager rolling guide walks through it.