COOKED SALMON

A Fisherman runs a kitchen with two dishes on it, and salmon is the one you have to wait for. He will swap raw cod for cooked cod from his novice tier, the day he claims a barrel. Salmon sits one tier above that, at apprentice, and the shape of the offer is otherwise identical: 6 raw salmon and one emerald in, 6 cooked salmon out, no emeralds coming back.

Where the raw fish comes from is worth a look before you commit to this. The jar names 2 sources for raw salmon, polar bears and salmon, and only one of those is something you can farm with a rod in your hand. Cod turn up almost anywhere there is water. Salmon do not, which is the real reason this trade sits higher up the ladder than the cod one and the real reason people run out of stock halfway through a slot.

None of this is about the recipe. 3 different recipes in the jar produce cooked salmon, and a furnace, a smoker or a campfire will each give you one at a time for the cost of fuel. The villager is selling batch size and a free pair of hands. Whether that is worth an emerald depends entirely on how much coal you are sitting on.

Put 6 raw salmon and one emerald into the window at a Fisherman who has reached apprentice, take 6 cooked salmon out. That is the whole offer. It is not a purchase, because you supplied the goods, and it is not a sale, because you are the one paying. The trade window has no third category for it, which is why it looks so odd sitting between a campfire and a fishing rod.

The detail that decides whether this is worth doing is on the same tier. At apprentice he also buys 15 raw cod for one emerald. So the emerald this trade eats does not have to come from a mine or a farm. It comes from the other fish, at the same villager, on the same visit, which makes raw salmon and cod two halves of one loop rather than two separate errands.

Start with the gate, because it is the part that costs you time rather than emeralds. Apprentice is level 2 of 5 and a villager gets there at 10 trade experience, so a fisherman who just picked up a barrel cannot cook salmon for you at all. You have to trade him up first, and only then does the roll for this slot even happen.

After that it is arithmetic. The slot allows 16 uses, a villager refills it at his barrel up to 2 times a day, and that ceiling gives you 32 uses out of one man: 192 cooked salmon for 192 raw salmon and 32 emeralds. Each use also pays him 5 experience, and the climb out of apprentice is 60, so 12 rounds of cooking carry him to the next tier on their own. That is the opposite of the cod slot, which pays a fraction of this and leaves a villager stuck where he is.

The emerald is a fixed cost, not a rolled one, so no amount of breaking and replacing the barrel will get you a cheaper version of this trade. Re-rolling only decides whether he has it. How re-rolling works.

Bring cod as well as salmon. 15 raw cod buys the one emerald this slot wants, and 6 raw salmon fills the rest of it, so one use costs 21 fish and nothing else. Emptying the whole slot that way runs to 240 cod and 96 salmon for 96 cooked. Fish twice, walk once.

Curing him is worth more here than the emerald is. The reputation discount comes off the first item in the trade, which on this row is the fish rather than the currency, so 6 raw salmon drops to 1 while the emerald stays exactly where it was. Same 6 out, 5 fewer in, every use. How curing works.

Do not confuse this with selling. Higher up his ladder, at journeyman, the same villager pays one emerald for 13 raw salmon, and that is the row you want if emeralds are the goal. The cooking slot is the opposite trade: it spends emeralds to make food. Keep the two apart in your head or you will feed your currency into a smoker.

The rest of the barrel is ordinary shopkeeping. string goes at 20 for one emerald, coal at 10, and both of those are easier to gather in bulk than fish are. He sells bucket of cod and campfires low on the ladder and an enchanted fishing rod at the top of it, which is the one thing on his list that pays for the fishing rather than the other way round.

Salmon spawn small, normal and large, and it makes no difference to what you get: every one of them drops the same single raw salmon. The size is decoration, which is why a river full of them is worth exactly as much as it looks.

Cooked, salmon is the better of the two common fish, restoring more than cod for the same trouble. A campfire cooks it without fuel, which fits how you usually catch it.

Raw salmon has one other job: it is what tames a cat and what an axolotl will follow, and the axolotl only accepts it in a bucket of tropical fish, not this one. Keep a few raw and cook the rest.

The Fisherman's cooking works on salmon too: 6 Raw Salmon and 1 emerald for 6 Cooked Salmon. A furnace would do it for a bit of fuel, so the trade mostly earns its place as a way to level the Fisherman. Salmon for it comes off How to Build an AFK Fish Farm in Minecraft.