BED

A bed is three wool and three planks on a crafting grid, cheap enough that almost nobody buys one for the wood alone. What the Shepherd sells at 3 emeralds once he reaches journeyman is really the colour, one already dyed and stitched without a trip through a loom of your own.

It changes how a build looks and nothing else, no comfort or defense value hidden in the purchase, and the colour that comes out is not something you get to pick. It never appears on the buying side of a villager's window, only the selling one.

One seller, one price: the Shepherd at journeyman asks 3 emeralds for 1 bed, a number fixed in the trade file rather than rolled within a range, so a second Shepherd at the same tier quotes exactly the same.

Nothing buys a bed back off you, and the offer runs 12 times before it locks and the villager has to walk back to his loom to restock.

Bed sells for as little as 3 emeralds, from the Shepherd at the Journeyman tier, and nothing else on that list costs more. The price is fixed rather than rolled, so a second Shepherd will quote you exactly the same.

The Shepherd at its journeyman tier asks 3 emeralds for a bed. 8 of the 72 villagers that pay emeralds, emptied out:

3 compasses against 78 potatoes for the same 3 emeralds, 26 times the carrying, and the shortest wait is the Butcher at 1.9 real minutes of shelf, gathering not counted.

Every bed offer locks after 12 uses, and with two restocks allowed per Minecraft day, one Shepherd is good for 24 of these trades a day and no more.

It sits at journeyman, level 3 of five, which a villager reaches at 70 trade experience, so a freshly employed Shepherd is still a couple of tiers short of offering it.

Trading with him at earlier tiers pays toward that climb, this offer worth 10 experience a use, meaning 8 of them alone would clear a threshold that size if he already had it unlocked.

12 beds empty one slot, as many clicks and nothing more. The restock is where the real time sits: the game holds the offer for 2 real minutes before the villager can refill it, and a Minecraft day of 20 real minutes only fits two of those windows.

One Shepherd hands over 24 beds for 72 emeralds across a 20-minute day, then goes quiet until the next one starts.

Clearing the shelf costs 36 emeralds: 12 beds at 3 emeralds each before the Shepherd needs to restock.

Where the emeralds come from: the same Shepherd pays an emerald per 12 any dye, which is an easy stockpile to keep on hand for exactly this kind of run.

Also on the Shepherd's list: banner, painting, white wool, brown wool, black wool, and gray wool.

Sleeping in a bed sets where you come back after a death, and in a village it also decides how many villagers the place can hold: villagers claim beds, and a village without spare beds stops breeding. That makes beds the cheapest way to grow a trading hall.

The colour is only the wool. Three wool over three planks makes one, and any dye applied to the wool first carries into the finished bed, so a Shepherd selling a colour you want is selling convenience rather than a different item. Beds explode in the Nether and the End, which is the one place the shortcut backfires.

A bed is three wool of the same colour over three planks, and the colour of the wool is the colour of the bed. Dyeing a sheep first is the cheap way to a matching set.

Sleeping skips the night for everybody on a server and clears the thunderstorm with it, which is the real reason a base has beds it never respawns at.

Using one in the nether or the end blows it up. That is not a bug: the explosion is strong enough to kill you and to mine a hole, and a surprising number of people learn about it the expensive way.