COLORED WOOL

This is a buying-only row, and the catch is right there in the trade's own notes: a Shepherd hands over a random color, not the one you asked for. Dyeing your own wool gives you the exact shade every time, a sheep, shears and one dye. Buying from the shepherd skips all three steps and trades that control away for speed.

That trade-off suits some builds better than others. A floor that mixes colors on purpose, or a farm that just needs wool moving through storage fast, does not care which shade lands in the chest. A banner pattern that needs one exact color does, and buying is the wrong tool for that job.

It sits at apprentice, low enough on the shepherd's ladder that most villagers who work a loom reach it without much trade experience behind them.

One seller. To buy colored wool, visit a Shepherd at apprentice, who asks 1 emerald for 1, a rate fixed in the trade file rather than one that shifts from villager to villager.

Colored Wool sells for as little as 1 emerald, from the Shepherd at the Apprentice tier, and 1 of the other 5 costs less. The price is fixed rather than rolled, so a second Shepherd will quote you exactly the same.

The Shepherd at its apprentice tier asks 1 emerald for colored wool. 8 of the 72 villagers that pay emeralds, emptied out:

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

An unemployed villager standing near a loom becomes a shepherd, and this row opens at apprentice, one step above the tier he starts a job at. Nothing about the color he hands you is chosen when you trade, it is rolled the moment the offer is generated on his table.

Once open, the slot sells 16 rounds of wool before it locks, and a restock brings back the same fixed color rather than rolling a new one, so a shepherd selling one shade keeps selling that same shade until you or someone else empties the trade table for good.

16 rounds clear the slot, and the shepherd needs 2 real minutes back at his loom before it opens again. A Minecraft day runs 20 real minutes, long enough for two of those refills to land.

Stand there a full day and he sells 32 rounds, all the same color he opened with, which is either exactly what a large build needs or entirely useless if the next room calls for something else.

Check the color before committing to the whole slot. One purchase tells you the shade a given shepherd is locked to, so buy a single round first rather than clearing the offer on a color you have not seen yet.

The same Shepherd buys dye at 12 an emerald, so a leftover flower farm can fund the wool you are buying instead of sitting unused.

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

Wool takes a dye one for one, which sounds fine until you are colouring a build. Dye the sheep instead and it keeps producing that colour every time it grows its coat back, so one dye becomes an endless supply rather than a single block.

Shearing is also the only way to get the full amount. Killing a sheep gives one wool; shears give several, and leave the sheep alive to regrow it on grass.

Wool burns, which is worth remembering before using it as a roof over a fireplace, and it is the one block a bed insists on: three wool of the same colour is what a bed is made from.

The Shepherd sells Colored Wool at 1 emerald a block. A sheep dyed once keeps growing that colour every time it is sheared, so a pen per colour replaces this trade for good: How to Make a Wool Farm in Minecraft.