LEATHER CAP

Two tiers apart, the same villager can sell you a Leather Cap twice, at apprentice and again at master, and both times he asks for the exact same 5 emeralds. Nowhere else on his sheet does the price sit still like that across two separate rolls.

It is a helmet, so it covers less of your body than the Tunic or the Leggings and costs less leather to make because of it: a crafting grid turns 5 leather into one. That also makes it the cheapest piece to replace if it gets lost or you simply want a second one dyed to match a different biome's villager stock.

Leather is dyeable, and it is the only one of the game's four armor materials that is. Iron, gold, chainmail and diamond all stay whatever colour they spawn as. Buy a Cap from a villager and you inherit his local colour; dye a vat yourself and you choose it.

The Leatherworker sells it at apprentice and again at master, both times for 5 emeralds. No other profession stocks leather armor, and the price does not drop between the two tiers the way some repeated offers do elsewhere on this site.

Leather Cap sells for as little as 5 emeralds, from the Leatherworker at the Apprentice tier, and 2 of the other 5 cost less. The price is fixed rather than rolled, so a second Leatherworker will quote you exactly the same.

The Leatherworker at its apprentice tier asks 5 emeralds for a leather cap. 8 of the 72 villagers that pay emeralds, emptied out:

5 acacia boats against 150 flint for the same 5 emeralds, 30 times the carrying, and the shortest wait is the Butcher at 3.1 real minutes of shelf, gathering not counted.

Level a fresh Leatherworker up from Novice by trading whatever he offers there, and the Cap becomes available once he reaches apprentice. Buying it feeds him 5 experience per use, which pushes him toward the second copy of the same offer further up his list.

Curing a zombie Leatherworker resets his trades entirely, so it is a second chance to roll the Cap on a villager who missed it the first time, at either tier.

Each copy of the offer allows 12 purchases before it locks, and a restock takes 2 real minutes. Two restocks fit inside a 20 minute Minecraft day, so one villager can move 24 caps through a single copy of the trade in a full day.

A villager who rolled both tiers doubles that ceiling, since the two offers refill on independent schedules. It is not something to count on, but it is worth checking his full list rather than assuming the first Cap offer you see is the only one he has.

Curing pays off here mainly through volume rather than price: it will not push 5 emeralds any lower, but it opens every other slot on his sheet to a discount at once. See how curing works before deciding whether it is worth the golden apple for a villager you plan to use for more than just this one item.

Sell him leather to cover the cost, and look for Leather Boots, Rabbit Hide, Leather Horse Armor, Scute, Saddle and Leather Leggings on the same cauldron before you move on.

A leather cap is the least protective helmet in the game and it is still the difference between an arrow that hurts and an arrow that hurts a lot. Five leather makes one, and leather comes off cows you were already breeding for beef.

The reason to keep one after you have iron is that it dyes. Leather takes colour and nothing else does, so if the head slot is doing a job other than defence, this is the only piece that can do it.

Worth knowing: any helmet, including this one, is what stops a turtle shell or a carved pumpkin going in that slot. Wearing the pumpkin is the trick that stops endermen looking at you.