RED MUSHROOM

Red Mushroom is trader stock, 1 emerald for 3, but it is not only trader stock: a zombie can drop one on death too, which makes this the rare page here where a fight is a real alternative to a trade, not just a wild patch you might stumble on.

Buying, dropping, or growing, the destination is the same. A single cap spreads on its own in low light, so one mushroom is enough to seed a dark corner and let it multiply without replanting, and both routes feed suspicious stew and rabbit stew, the two recipes that make keeping mushrooms around worth the trouble.

Between the two sources, the trader is the tidier one. A zombie drop depends on the mob actually dying near you and the game deciding to drop anything at all, while an emerald and a lucky cart at least tells you exactly what you are getting before you spend it.

The Wandering Trader sells Red Mushroom for 1 emerald for 3, one direction only, and does not take it back off a player once sold.

No standard villager profession lists red mushroom in its trade table at any tier, so within the trading system specifically, the trader is the entire market. Outside of trading, a zombie kill is the only other confirmed route to one.

He asks 1 emerald for 3, which works out at well under an emerald each, and 16 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 red mushroom is the real constraint.

The Wandering Trader asks 1 emerald for 3 red mushrooms. 8 of the 72 villagers that pay emeralds, emptied out:

an oak boat against 26 flint for the same 1 emerald, 26 times the carrying, and the shortest wait is the Leatherworker at 37.5 real seconds of shelf, gathering not counted.

The Wandering Trader keeps no village and no job block. He shows up wherever you are playing, two leashed llamas in tow, stays for a stretch, and moves on whether or not a trade happened. There is nothing to place or break near him that changes what is on his cart.

He never buys red mushroom back; only six specific goods go into his own pockets and this is not one of them, so the offer runs one way, emeralds out and mushrooms in, for 4 trades before it locks for the rest of his visit.

What he is carrying is decided the moment he spawns, from a list longer than what fits on one cart, so red mushroom may just not be on today's stock. A name tag fixes that for next time: a named mob does not despawn, so a tagged trader becomes a shop you can return to rather than a one-off encounter.

Plant the first one instead of spending the rest. Since a single mushroom multiplies on its own in a dark, damp corner, one purchase or one zombie drop can seed a farm that never needs buying from again.

A full stack runs about 22 emeralds across as many trades at 1 emerald for 3, more than the offer's own limit allows in one visit, so treat the trader as a starter kit rather than a bulk supplier.

Also on the wandering trader's list: lily pad, sand, red sand, pointed dripstone, small dripleaf and moss block.

A mushroom placed in bright light pops out of the ground, which is why mushroom farms are dark rooms rather than fields. On podzol, mycelium or nylium it stays put at any light level, and that is the usual way around the rule.

Bone meal on a planted mushroom grows a huge mushroom, which drops far more than you planted, so a single purchase becomes a supply. Red and brown together make mushroom stew, and a red one is the brewing base for the Potion of Fermented Spider Eye chain.

Shearing a mooshroom gives five red mushrooms and turns it into an ordinary cow, permanently. Milking one with a bowl instead gives mushroom stew and leaves the animal standing, which is the renewable version of the same idea.

A brown mooshroom fed a flower gives suspicious stew with that flower's effect, and it is the only mob in the game that hands out a potion effect in a bowl.

Mooshrooms only live on mushroom islands, which is one of the rarest biomes in the game, so most worlds meet red mushrooms in a cave instead.