GOLD INGOT

A plain metal on a shelf otherwise stacked with potions and enchanting supplies: a Cleric at apprentice pays 3 gold ingots per emerald, the only raw crafting material this profession buys at all.

A crafting grid makes one from nine gold nuggets, and the ingot itself unpacks back into nine, so gold moves cleanly between the two forms without any loss either direction. Most of it comes from zombified piglins or smelting raw gold, both well ahead of ever bringing it to a villager.

One buyer, one price: a Cleric at apprentice takes 3 gold ingots for 1 emerald. No other profession touches gold at all, so there is nowhere else to compare it against.

The best rate any villager offers is an emerald per 3 gold ingots, from the Cleric, and 1 of the other 5 pays out faster. No villager sells gold ingot back, so it is emeralds out and nothing in.

One slot at the Cleric takes 3 gold ingots a trade, 12 trades, 12 emeralds. 8 of the 72 villagers that pay emeralds, emptied out:

12 acacia boats against 384 sticks for the same 12 emeralds, 32 times the carrying, and the shortest wait is the Butcher at 7.5 real minutes of shelf, gathering not counted. Gold Ingot itself pays 3 an emerald, so 12 of the 72 ask less and 59 ask more.

The offer locks after 12 uses, and a villager restocks at most twice a Minecraft day, so 24 of these sales is the ceiling one Cleric takes before the day cuts him off.

It sits at level 2 of 5, reached once a villager banks 10 trade experience, 1 tier past where he starts.

36 gold ingots fill one slot, and the Cleric needs 2 real minutes back at his brewing stand before he buys again. A Minecraft day, 20 real minutes, covers two of those refills.

A full day selling nets 72 gold ingots off your hands for 24 emeralds. A stack of 64 takes more than one fill of the slot.

Clearing the shelf takes 12 trades and 12 emeralds. Where they go back: the same Cleric sells redstone dust for an emerald, his cheapest offer on the buying side.

The rest of his sheet, worth a look on the same trip: lapis lazuli, rabbit foot, glowstone, scute, glass bottle and ender pearl.

Piglins trade for gold, and that is the only way to get some of the things they hand over. Dropping ingots in front of one buys ender pearls, obsidian, fire resistance potions and a list of other items no villager sells, so a chest of gold is a shopping trip rather than a metal store.

On the crafting side gold is soft and fast: golden tools wear out quickly but mine at speed, and the metal is the base of the golden carrot, the golden apple and the powered rail. Nine nuggets make an ingot, which is why nugget level trades add up faster than they look.

Gold tools mine faster than diamond and break almost immediately, which makes them a joke with one exception: gold takes enchantments far more readily than any other material, so a gold pick with Efficiency and Mending is a genuine tool rather than a punchline.

Nuggets are the useful denomination. Eight around a carrot or an apple make the two golden foods, and eight around a torch make a lantern, so most of what gold does in practice is wrapping something else.

Wearing any piece of gold armour stops piglins attacking you, which is the single most important fact about the metal for anybody spending time in the nether.

The Cleric buys Gold Ingots 3 at a time, 36 per restock, which is 324 gold nuggets. Zombified piglins in the Nether drop nuggets and the odd Gold Ingot, and How to Build a Gold Farm in the Nether in Minecraft collects them by the chestful.