ACACIA SAPLING

No two acacias come out the same. The trunk kinks sideways partway up, the canopy sits flat on top of it like a table, and where the branch decides to go is out of your hands. That makes it the most awkward tree in the game to farm and the most recognisable one to build with, and the wandering trader will sell you the sapling for 5 emeralds. Villagers will not: no profession lists an acacia sapling on any tier, in either edition.

The tree lives in savanna, the dry orange grassland with the flat-topped trees and the villages made of the same wood. Its leaves hand back a sapling 5% of the time, 10% once Fortune III is doing the cutting. Savanna is not a rare biome, and if your world has one within reach then this offer is pure convenience: you are paying emeralds to skip a walk.

The wood is why people bother. Acacia planks are bright orange, the only ones in that register, and a stack of them changes the look of a build in a way no other tree manages. The game also lists acacia saplings in 1 of its chest tables, so the odd one turns up in loot without any trading at all.

Only the wandering trader, only at 5 emeralds, and only in that direction. The trade file holds a flat price rather than a range for this one, so the merchant standing in front of you quotes what the last one quoted. Acacia saplings are not among the 6 items he buys, so bringing him a stack from a savanna does nothing for you.

Nothing on the village side comes close. Across every profession and every tier there is no offer that involves a sapling of any kind, which is why this page has one row rather than a ladder of them. His uncommon pool is the interesting comparison: acacia log goes for 8 logs at 1 emerald, which is the cheapest wood on his entire list. If it is orange planks you are after, buy those and leave the sapling.

He asks 5 emeralds each, and 63 of the other 75 come cheaper. Price is the easy part: he draws his stock from a shared pool, so catching one that happens to be carrying acacia sapling is the real constraint.

The Wandering Trader asks 5 emeralds for an acacia sapling. 8 of the 72 villagers that pay emeralds, emptied out:

5 lava buckets against 130 potatoes for the same 5 emeralds, 26 times the carrying, and the shortest wait is the Mason at 3.1 real minutes of shelf, gathering not counted.

There is nothing to set up. The merchant generates near the player on his own, two llamas trailing him on leads, and he is gone again within the hour with whatever he did not sell. You cannot give him a job, cannot move him into a village and cannot influence what he brought, so the only preparation that helps is having emeralds in your pocket when he arrives.

The maths of the slot is short. 8 uses at one sapling a time comes to 8 acacia saplings and 40 emeralds if you take the lot, and because he never restocks that is genuinely the end of it. Villager trades come back twice a Minecraft day. This one does not come back at all.

A name tag keeps him from despawning, which is the standard trick and it works, but ask yourself what you are keeping him for. His saplings do not regrow on the shelf. The reason to pin a trader down is the rest of his list and the leads on the llamas, not a second chance at this row.

Plant what you buy with room to spare. An acacia needs clearance to one side as well as overhead, because the trunk leans before it branches, and a sapling boxed in by walls sits there forever without growing. That is the most common way people waste this purchase.

Treat it as a starter, not a supply. One sapling grows a tree, that tree drops several more out of its own leaves, and the shortage is over. Filling a stack at this price would take 320 emeralds, which for a plant that reproduces itself is money set on fire.

Give the plot headroom and expect a mess. Acacia branches sideways, so a tidy grid of them grows into a tangle and the leaves of one tree end up over the sapling of the next. Spacing them further apart than you would oak costs a little ground and saves a lot of chopping later.

Also on the wandering trader's list: oak sapling, birch sapling, spruce sapling, dark oak sapling, jungle sapling and mangrove propagule. They all cost the same, so if a savanna is walking distance from your base, spend the emeralds on the tree whose biome is not.

Saplings fall from the leaves of the tree you just cut, but grudgingly, and Fortune barely moves it. Cut a whole tree down and you can genuinely walk away with none at all, which is why buying one is less silly than it sounds.

Planting it is where acacia stops behaving like the others. It grows diagonally, so the space it needs is beside the sapling as much as above it, and a sapling boxed into a one-wide shaft will sit there refusing to grow no matter how much bone meal you feed it. Give it a clear square of sky and it goes up first time.

One sapling is also enough forever. The tree it grows drops more saplings than you planted, so the trade is a one-off purchase rather than a supply line.