BLACK WOOL

Black is the one wool color that hides rather than decorates. Redstone builders line floors with it to swallow the glow of torches and repeaters, and anyone hollowing out a nether portal frame or a hidden piston door reaches for it because it reads as shadow from a distance instead of a painted block. The Shepherd buys it off you rather than selling it, 18 for a single emerald once he settles into novice.

A crafting grid turns 1 black dye and one white wool into it, and the dye itself comes from an ink sac, the thing a squid leaves behind when you kill one in open water. Shearing a black sheep skips that whole chain and hands the wool over directly, no dyeing step at all, which is the faster route whenever one happens to be grazing nearby.

2 of them turn into 3 black carpet on the same grid, so a stockpile bought here does double duty for anyone building a floor as well as a wall.

One profession, one price. Sell it to a Shepherd the moment he reaches novice, and he pays 1 emerald for every 18 you hand across, a rate the same for the next shepherd and every one after that.

The best rate any villager offers is an emerald per 18 black wool, from the Shepherd, and 1 of the other 4 pays out faster. No villager sells black wool back, so it is emeralds out and nothing in.

One slot at the Shepherd takes 18 black wool a trade, 16 trades, 16 emeralds. 8 of the 72 villagers that pay emeralds, emptied out:

16 acacia boats against 416 potatoes for the same 16 emeralds, 26 times the carrying, and the shortest wait is the Butcher at 10 real minutes of shelf, gathering not counted. Black Wool itself pays 18 an emerald, so 53 of the 72 ask less and 15 ask more.

An unemployed villager standing next to a loom becomes a shepherd, and this row is on his table from the first moment he takes the job, no experience banked and no earlier tiers to climb through first. Losing the loom before he settles into the role loses the whole profession with it.

Once he is buying, the offer takes 16 loads of wool before the slot locks, and a restock brings the same price back rather than a fresh roll, so a shepherd who buys black wool today keeps buying it after every refill until the trade table itself changes.

16 loads close the slot, and the loom needs 2 real minutes before the shepherd can refill it. A Minecraft day runs 20 real minutes, long enough for two of those refills to land while you are still standing there.

Camp a full day and one shepherd absorbs 32 loads of black wool, which is a lot of sheep worth of dye and a lot of squid ink sacs if you are dyeing rather than shearing your way to that stack.

Dye ahead of the trip rather than during it. Killing a squid for ink sacs and dyeing a chest of white wool black takes longer stacked up against a whole selling run than doing it once beforehand and walking in with a full inventory of the finished color.

The same loom sells shears on a separate row, its cheapest offer, worth a look if the sheep in front of you still have their wool on.

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

Black dye comes from an ink sac, which means a squid, which means water. There is no flower for it, so a builder inland either travels or buys, and that is the gap the Shepherd fills.

Black sheep do spawn naturally, though rarely, and breeding two of them keeps the colour, so a lucky find can be turned into a farm. Wool burns, so a black wall behind a fireplace is a decision rather than an accident.

An ink sac is a squid, and squid spawn in any water deep enough, including rivers, so black dye is available inland more often than people think. A wither rose gives it too, and that is the only flower that does.

Glow squid drop glow ink instead, which is not a dye: it goes on a sign or an item frame to make it readable in the dark.

Black wool is the base of a lot of decoration because it reads as shadow: a black carpet under a build gives depth that no amount of grey manages.

Dye a sheep black once and every shearing after that is Black Wool, with no dye needed again. That beats hunting for rare black sheep when the Shepherd wants 18 Black Wool per emerald. How to Make a Wool Farm in Minecraft works the same whatever colour the flock is.