ENCHANTED DIAMOND CHESTPLATE

This is the most expensive single roll on the Armorer's whole sheet, 21 to 35 emeralds for one piece of gear, and the price is not covering anything fancy. A chestplate has no enchantment of its own the way boots or leggings do. It only ever carries a protection variant, plus whatever mending, unbreaking or thorns the roll happens to add on top, so what you are actually buying is a shot at a high protection number and nothing else.

That makes it the plainest gamble of the four armor pieces and also the one with the most riding on it. The chestplate covers more of a player's hitbox than any other slot, so a strong protection roll here does more for survival than the same roll on a boot or a helmet would.

It shows up pre-enchanted, no anvil work required, at whatever level the game decided when that particular villager last restocked.

Only the Armorer sells it, and only at master, the top of his ladder. The asking price runs from 21 to 35 emeralds, the widest and highest band of anything he carries, set entirely by what enchantment the game attached when he rolled it. There is no second profession to compare against and no way to craft one instead.

Enchanted Diamond Chestplate sells for anywhere between 21 and 35 emeralds, from the Armorer at the Master tier, and 12 of the other 13 cost less. That is a rolled price rather than a fixed one, so the Armorer you happen to find matters more than the tier does.

The Armorer at its master tier asks 21 emeralds for an enchanted diamond chestplate, on its cheapest roll. 8 of the 72 villagers that pay emeralds, emptied out:

21 dark oak boats against 672 rotten flesh for the same 21 emeralds, 32 times the carrying, and the shortest wait is the Butcher at 13.1 real minutes of shelf, gathering not counted.

Place a blast furnace next to an unemployed villager and he takes the Armorer job on the spot. Getting him to master from there means clearing every tier underneath it with real trades first. There is no way to skip a rung, and the chestplate simply is not on offer until he has cleared the last one.

What he rolls is decided the moment he restocks, not the moment you buy, so shopping around only helps if you are checking different villagers rather than clicking the same one twice. Break and replace his blast furnace before you have traded with him even once and he rerolls; do it after, and the offer he already gave you is locked for good. How re-rolling works.

The purchase pays him 30 experience same as anything else on his sheet, butmaster is the end of his ladder, so that experience has nowhere left to go. Unlike the trades that fund a climb, this one is pure spending.

3 chestplates before his slot locks, and he needs 2 real minutes at his blast furnace before it can fill again. A Minecraft day is 20 real minutes long and only fits two of those refills, so two full slots is the most any single Armorer will ever hand you in a day.

Clear both slots in a day and the bill lands somewhere between 126 and 210 emeralds for 6 chestplates, the priciest full-day haul of anything on his sheet. Curing him before you start pulls that whole range down without changing what enchantment either chestplate ends up with.

Cover the cost with a trade the Armorer already runs the other direction. He pays an emerald for a single lava bucket, which is a faster way to fund this than gathering goods for some other villager's shelf.

At the top of his price band, a single chestplate is expensive enough that curing a zombie Armorer first is worth doing. A cure permanently cuts what he charges, and the discount pays for the golden apple many times over before you have bought a single piece of gear. How curing works.

The rest of his shelf is worth a look in the same visit: he also carries coal, iron leggings, iron boots, iron helmet, iron chestplate and iron ingot.

The chestplate carries more armour than any other slot, so an enchanted diamond one is the single largest jump in survivability you can buy from a villager. Protection on it applies to almost every kind of damage, which is why that roll is the one worth paying a premium for.

Thorns and Unbreaking are the other common results. Thorns hurts attackers but eats durability, and Unbreaking simply makes the set last, so a cheap roll is still a base worth keeping. An anvil can add a book later, so the villager's roll is a starting point rather than the final form.

Netherite armour is not crafted from scratch. It is an upgrade applied to a finished diamond piece with a smithing template, and it keeps every enchantment that was already on it.

That makes a traded diamond chestplate a legitimate final piece of gear: whatever you spend on enchanting it survives the upgrade, so nothing is wasted by starting here.

Protection is the enchantment worth stacking, and it caps, so a second Protection book on the same piece is money thrown away. Thorns and Unbreaking are the sensible additions after that.