BROWN MUSHROOM

Brown Mushroom sells for 1 emerald for 3, and unlike its red counterpart on the same cart, no mob hands one over as a drop. The Wandering Trader, finding one already growing, or breaking a mushroom block are the only ways in, which makes the trade a genuinely cleaner source rather than one option among several combat drops.

One cap is a farm starter, not a one-time purchase. It spreads by itself in low light, and bonemeal on a patch of grass in a dark enough spot forces it into a giant mushroom on the spot, which breaks into a pile of mushroom blocks well beyond what the original cap alone would have grown into over time.

The blocks are a building material in their own right; the caps that started them still feed suspicious stew and rabbit stew the ordinary way. A single trade covers both uses at once, decoration and cooking, off one purchase.

The Wandering Trader sells Brown Mushroom for 1 emerald for 3, one way only; he does not buy it back once you own some.

No standard villager profession lists brown mushroom in its trade table at any tier, so the trader is the whole market for it within trading, and outside of trading there is no mob drop either, only a wild find or breaking a mushroom block.

He asks 1 emerald for 3, which works out at well under an emerald each, and 13 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 brown mushroom is the real constraint.

The Wandering Trader asks 1 emerald for 3 brown mushrooms. 8 of the 72 villagers that pay emeralds, emptied out:

a diamond against 24 flint for the same 1 emerald, 24 times the carrying, and the shortest wait is the Fisherman at 37.5 real seconds of shelf, gathering not counted.

The Wandering Trader has no village and no workstation. He appears wherever you are playing, two leashed llamas behind him, stays for a while, and eventually leaves whether or not a trade happened. There is nothing to place or break near him to steer what is on his cart.

He never buys brown mushroom back; only six specific goods count toward his own pockets and this is not one of them, so the offer runs one direction for 4 trades before it locks for the rest of his visit.

His stock is fixed the moment he spawns, from a list longer than what fits on one cart, so this particular trader may not have brown mushroom today. If he does and more is worth having later, tag him: a named mob will not despawn, turning a passing encounter into a standing shop.

Buy one and grow the rest. A single cap spreads on its own in the dark, and bonemealing it on grass in a dim enough spot forces a giant mushroom that breaks into far more blocks than the purchase itself, so there is rarely a reason to buy more than a starting handful.

A full stack would run about 22 emeralds across as many trades at 1 emerald for 3, well past what the offer's own limit allows in a single visit anyway, another reason to treat this as seed stock rather than a bulk order.

Also on the wandering trader's list: red mushroom, lily pad, sand, red sand, pointed dripstone and small dripleaf.

Bone meal on a planted brown mushroom grows a huge one, a canopy of mushroom blocks that drops far more mushrooms than went in. That single step turns one purchase into an unlimited supply.

Light is the limit. Mushrooms uproot themselves in bright light unless they stand on podzol, mycelium or nylium, so a farm is a dark room or a floor of the right block. Brown and red together make mushroom stew, and the brown one alone goes into fermented spider eye.

A brown and a red mushroom in a bowl make mushroom stew, food that needs no furnace and gives the bowl back. Add a flower instead and it is a suspicious stew, which is the same recipe wearing a different hat.

A giant mushroom is made of mushroom blocks, and those are a building material in their own right: brown caps, red caps and the pale stem, none of which can be crafted.

Mushrooms also grow on nylium in the nether without any light rule at all, which is why a crimson forest is the one place mushrooms behave like ordinary plants.