ANY DYE

Every other Shepherd trade wants a specific color. This one does not. Any of the sixteen dye colors counts toward the same row, which makes it the one place to unload a mixed chest of leftover dye instead of sorting it first. A Shepherd at apprentice pays 1 emerald for every 12 handed over, whatever the mix.

The same offer repeats at 3 separate tiers on his sheet, apprentice, journeyman, expert, all at the identical rate. A villager who rolls it more than once effectively doubles or triples how much dye he can absorb before any single copy locks up.

It only runs one way. No Shepherd, and no other profession, sells dye back, so this row is strictly a sink: emeralds out of the trade window, never dye.

A Shepherd buys it at apprentice, journeyman, expert, and the rate does not change between those tiers: 1 emerald for 12 dye every time. Reaching a higher tier does not sweeten the price, only the odds of having the offer at all.

The best rate any villager offers is an emerald per 12 any dye, from the Shepherd, and nothing else on the list pays out faster. No villager sells any dye back, so it is emeralds out and nothing in.

One slot at the Shepherd takes 12 any dye a trade, 16 trades, 16 emeralds. 8 of the 72 villagers that pay emeralds, emptied out:

16 acacia boats against 416 flint for the same 16 emeralds, 26 times the carrying, and the shortest wait is the Fletcher at 10 real minutes of shelf, gathering not counted. Any Dye itself pays 12 an emerald, so 37 of the 72 ask less and 31 ask more.

A freshly employed shepherd starts one tier short of this offer. It first becomes possible at apprentice, reached at 10 trading experience, and can reappear at each tier above that on a separate roll.

Every copy of the offer locks after 16 sales, and a villager restocks twice per Minecraft day, so one shepherd absorbs 32 loads of dye per copy of the trade he happens to carry.

16 sales close one copy of the slot, and the loom needs 2 real minutes to refill it. A Minecraft day runs 20 real minutes, room enough for two of those refills.

One shepherd clears 384 dye through a single copy of the offer in a full day, and a villager who carries it at more than one tier multiplies that by however many copies he rolled.

Do not sort before selling. Since every color counts the same here, the fastest way through a mixed dye stockpile is to hand it all to one villager rather than splitting it up by shade first.

Where they go back: that Shepherd also sells colored wool, its cheapest offer, 1 emerald a piece.

Also on the Shepherd's list: colored carpet, bed, banner, painting, white wool, and brown wool, the rest of what one loom can put on offer.

This is the one row on the site where the game does not care which item you hand over, only that it is a dye. Sixteen colours all count the same, so the sensible move is to work out which of the sixteen you can produce in bulk with the least effort and feed the villager nothing else.

In practice that means bone meal from a skeleton farm for white, or a flower that yields its dye one for one and grows in a biome near you. Growing a field of the awkward colours to sell is the beginner mistake here: a magenta dye costs three crafting steps and buys exactly what a white one buys.

Keep the pretty ones for the loom. The villager will take the boring ones happily.