ENDER PEARL

Everywhere else in this group of twelve, a villager is buying a mob drop off you. Here it runs the other way: a Cleric at expert sells the pearl for 5 emeralds, and you are the one paying.

No recipe in Java 26.2 produces it: it drops from endermen. That single mob is famous for teleporting away from a fight and punishing eye contact with aggression, so hunting a stack of pearls on purpose means picking fights with a creature built to avoid them. Buying sidesteps the entire chase.

What it is spent on has not changed: eyes of ender for locating a stronghold, and the throwable pearl itself for closing distance fast, at the cost of a little fall damage every time.

One seller. A Cleric at expert charges 5 emeralds a pearl, and the slot allows 12 purchases before it needs a restock.

Ender Pearl sells for as little as 5 emeralds, from the Cleric at the Expert tier, and nothing else on that list costs more. The price is fixed rather than rolled, so a second Cleric will quote you exactly the same.

The Cleric at its expert tier asks 5 emeralds for an ender pearl. 8 of the 72 villagers that pay emeralds, emptied out:

5 diamonds against 130 flint for the same 5 emeralds, 26 times the carrying, and the shortest wait is the Butcher at 3.1 real minutes of shelf, gathering not counted.

This sits at expert, level 4 of five, near the top of what a Cleric can reach, so it takes real investment in that one villager before the offer even appears. There is no equivalent lower down the ladder to fall back on.

The slot allows 12 purchases before it locks, refilling only when the Cleric revisits his brewing stand, up to twice a Minecraft day. Buying out a full slot in one visit is the only way to walk away with a real supply.

12 purchases close the slot, and the wait for a fresh batch runs 2 real minutes, the standard clock behind every trade. A Minecraft day spans 20 real minutes and fits two of those restocks.

Camped there for a full day, that Cleric can sell 24 pearls for 120 of your emeralds, whether you watch each sale happen or only check in twice.

Bring more emeralds than you think you need. At 5 each, filling the whole slot of 12 purchases costs 60 emeralds in one trip, and there is no partial refund for changing your mind halfway through.

Funding the emerald half: the same Cleric buys rabbit feet, 2 for 1 emerald, so a stack of feet sold at that stall pays straight into the pearls bought at it.

A full slot also crosses the line where curing starts to matter. See How curing works for how much a zombified Cleric can knock off a purchase this size.

Also on the Cleric's list: nether wart, bottle o' enchanting, rotten flesh, redstone dust, gold ingot, lapis lazuli.

Thrown, an ender pearl teleports you where it lands and takes a small bite of health for the trouble. Over a wall, up a cliff or out of a hole, that is often the difference between a long walk and none at all.

Pearls are also the road to the End: twelve of them with blaze powder make the eyes that find and open the portal. Endermen drop them and a Cleric sells them, and the villager is the only source that does not fight back.

A pearl and a blaze powder make an eye of ender, and eyes are the only way to find a stronghold: thrown, they fly towards one, and they break about one time in five, so a serious trip carries more than a dozen.

The portal frame then wants twelve eyes on top of that. Between finding the place and filling the frame, a trip to the end is measured in pearls more than in anything else.

Endermen drop them, and so does a piglin bartering with gold, which is often the calmer route: endermen fight back and piglins only want the ingots.

The Cleric's whole stock is 12 pearls a restock, 60 emeralds for the lot. Endermen spawn thickly on the End's islands, and a farm built there drops Ender Pearls and levels together: How to Build an Enderman XP Farm in Minecraft.