DIAMOND HOE

This is the hoe problem in its final form. A Toolsmith at journeyman will sell you a diamond hoe for 4 emeralds if you ask for it, but you probably should not ask. By the time this tool is on the market, when a toolsmith has reached his middle tier, you have either mined all the diamonds you need or you have no use for them.

The real issue is what diamonds are for. Mining deep enough to find diamond ore means you are already equipped for it. Building a diamond hoe to harvest crops is like buying a luxury car to pick up groceries: technically capable, economically absurd. If you need crops, a wood hoe works. If you need diamonds, you are holding them in your hand after mining them.

The trade itself is fair, since the emerald cost reflects the material value, but fairness does not matter when the item is pointless. This is the clearest waste of emeralds on a toolsmith's list.

The Toolsmith holds the monopoly. He must reach journeyman tier, which takes significant prior trading, before this offer shows up. At that level he hands over one hoe for 4 emeralds, and no other profession sells diamond hoes.

The cost is hardcoded and never shifts. Curing a zombie toolsmith will lower it by one emerald, and that is the only bargain available. What does vary is volume: he can hand out 3 before restocking, and he restocks twice per Minecraft day, so 6 hoes is the daily maximum.

Diamond Hoe sells for as little as 4 emeralds, from the Toolsmith at the Journeyman tier, and 4 of the other 11 cost less. The price is fixed rather than rolled, so a second Toolsmith will quote you exactly the same.

The Toolsmith at its journeyman tier asks 4 emeralds for a diamond hoe. 8 of the 72 villagers that pay emeralds, emptied out:

4 acacia boats against 104 flint for the same 4 emeralds, 26 times the carrying, and the shortest wait is the Armorer at 2.5 real minutes of shelf, gathering not counted.

Diamond Hoe does not show up until late. An idle villager claiming a smithing table starts at Novice tier, and he has to be traded with many times before he reaches journeyman. Plan on dozens of emerald trades at lower tiers before this one appears.

Once the tier is unlocked, the trade slot holds 3 uses before locking, and a villager restocks twice daily in Minecraft time. That means 6 hoes per day is the ceiling. This is much lower than early-game stone tools, so throughput is constrained.

The smithing table remains the anchor. Remove it before he ranks up and the profession dies along with his list. Once he reaches Expert tier the workstation is no longer necessary; the job is locked to him permanently.

Clicking through 3 hoes is moments. The restock is where time accumulates: the villager walks back to his smithing table and the game holds him for 2 real minutes before he will trade again. One Minecraft day is 20 real minutes and contains two of these windows.

One toolsmith moves 6 hoes and 24 emeralds per day, then stands idle. Most players use that time for other work rather than waiting on a single trader.

Do not buy this unless you have an actual use for a diamond hoe, which is rare. If you are at the tier where this appears, your emeralds are better spent on the enchanted tools that sit beside it on the list. Those you cannot craft anywhere else. This hoe you can skip without regret.

If you do want a hoe for crop farming, diamonds are overkill. A wood hoe does the same job and costs nothing. Spend the diamonds on gear that wears out faster and hits harder.

A toolsmith at this tier also buys iron ingots, so you can sell them for the emeralds this trade would require. If the choice is between a diamond hoe and an enchanted pickaxe, sell the ingots and buy the pickaxe. You will use it far more often.

Worth knowing before you spend: the same toolsmith deals in diamond, so a run of mining pays for everything else on his shelf without you ever selling iron.

A diamond hoe tills at exactly the same speed as a wooden one, so what the diamonds buy is durability and nothing else. On a large farm that still matters, since the tool is swung thousands of times between repairs.

It is also the one diamond tool the villager never enchants: the enchanted version appears nowhere in the trade files, so an anvil and a book from a Librarian is the only route to one.

A hoe is the correct tool for hay bales, leaves, sponges, dried kelp blocks, moss and nether wart blocks, and it is several times faster than an axe on all of them. Most players never find this out.

That makes a durable hoe genuinely useful to a builder clearing leaves, quite apart from farming, and diamond is the tier that survives the job.

It only loses durability when tilling, so used as a leaf cutter it effectively never wears out at all.