PALE MOSS BLOCK

Regular moss spreads the moment bonemeal touches it. Pale moss does not: it is a fixture of the pale garden, the fog-toned biome full of pale oak trees, and bonemeal against it does nothing. That single difference changes what this block is for. You are not buying a starter patch that grows on its own, you are buying the exact amount you plan to use. The Wandering Trader sells it at 1 emerald for 2 blocks.

There is no recipe for it either: nothing in the game's crafting files produces pale moss block, and it is gathered from the world rather than made. It does not turn up in any of the game's chest loot tables, so short of walking into a pale garden and mining it yourself, this trade is the only door in.

Two of them make three pale moss carpet on a crafting grid, the same ratio the ordinary moss carpet recipe uses, so if it is flooring rather than the block itself you are after, buying enough to craft is usually cheaper than hunting a biome for it.

Just the Wandering Trader, at 1 emerald for 2 blocks, and the offer runs out after 5 uses with no restock to follow. No profession villager, at any tier, sells or buys pale moss block in either edition.

The rate does not move between traders, since the trade file stores one fixed number rather than a range, and none of them will take a pale moss block back off you for emeralds.

He asks 1 emerald for 2, which works out at well under an emerald each, and 19 of the other 75 come cheaper. Price is the easy part: he draws his stock from a shared pool, so catching one that happens to be carrying pale moss block is the real constraint.

The Wandering Trader asks 1 emerald for 2 pale moss blocks. 8 of the 72 villagers that pay emeralds, emptied out:

a diamond against 32 rotten flesh for the same 1 emerald, 32 times the carrying, and the shortest wait is the Fisherman at 37.5 real seconds of shelf, gathering not counted.

He spawns near you rather than in a village, arrives with two leashed llamas, and leaves again forty minutes to an hour later no matter what he sold. There is no workstation involved and nothing to level, so his five common offers, whether or not pale moss block is among them, are set the instant he generates.

He never buys it back. His buying list covers 6 kinds of item and pale moss is not on it, so this trade only ever runs from him to you. His common stock is only a slice of a longer list, so the trader in front of you may not have pale moss block at all, and there is no reroll to wait out: what he spawned with stays fixed until he leaves.

A name tag removes his despawn timer if you do find him carrying it and want more than5 uses' worth. Since the pale garden itself is the only other source and does not spread its moss for free, tagging a trader who has it is worth more here than it is for the ordinary moss block he also sells.

Buy as much as the build needs, not a starter amount. Pale moss will not spread on its own the way regular moss does, so there is no shortcut version of this purchase: a full 5-use slot runs 5 emeralds for 10 blocks, and that is what you walk away with, nothing more.

If it is floor coverage you are after rather than the block, craft it down. Two pale moss blocks become three pale moss carpet, which stretches the trade further than laying the block itself would.

Also on the wandering trader's list: wildflowers, tall dry grass, firefly bush, golden dandelion, name tag and packed ice.

Pale moss comes from the pale garden, the grey woodland that generates without colour, and it behaves like the green moss elsewhere: bone meal on a block spreads it across the ground and turns stone and dirt into more of itself.

Two blocks make three pale moss carpet, and the carpet is the half most builds actually use, since it lays a thin layer over a floor without changing the block underneath.

Spreading is worth doing deliberately rather than accidentally. Once it starts converting the ground around it, getting the original blocks back is a matter of replacing them by hand.