SLIMEBALL

Slimes are not a mob most players go out of their way to fight. They only turn up in specific swamps under a full moon or deep in the handful of chunks flagged to spawn them underground, which makes hunting slimeballs on purpose a fairly niche errand. No recipe in Java 26.2 produces it, unless you count unpacking a block of slimeball: it drops from slimes.

A passing trader skips all of that. 4 emeralds buys 1 slimeball on the spot, no swamp-finding and no waiting for the right moon phase, provided he happens to be carrying the line at all.

4 emeralds for 1 slimeball, up to 5 times, which caps a single trader's stock at 20 emeralds spent for everything he has. The price is fixed rather than rolled, so it reads the same on every trader who carries the line.

No profession sells it. Not the Cleric, whose brewing table stops short of raw slime, and not the Farmer, whose stock is entirely plant matter. The Wandering Trader is the only villager anywhere who deals in slimeballs at all.

He asks 4 emeralds each, and 62 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 slimeball is the real constraint.

The Wandering Trader asks 4 emeralds for a slimeball. 8 of the 72 villagers that pay emeralds, emptied out:

4 diamonds against 96 flint for the same 4 emeralds, 24 times the carrying, and the shortest wait is the Shepherd at 2.5 real minutes of shelf, gathering not counted.

There is no tier to climb and no workstation to reset, because the Wandering Trader belongs to no village. He arrives near a player with two llamas in tow, stays briefly, and leaves on his own timer whether or not a trade happened.

His stock is fixed the moment he spawns, drawn from a pool of 78 offers with 5taken, so the trader standing in front of you either has slimeball on his list or he does not, and no amount of waiting at his stall changes which one it is. Meeting more traders is the only lever that moves the odds.

When a trader does carry it, 4 emeralds a piece for up to 5 purchases is the entire deal, since he never restocks the same slot. A name tag keeps him around as a shop you can revisit, which matters more here than on a common item, given how long the next carrier might take to find.

Buy toward a project, not a stockpile. Slime blocks take a fixed number of slimeballs to craft, so decide what you are building before spending 20 emeralds on a full slot of them.

Also on the wandering trader's list: open eyeblossom, pale oak sapling, brain coral block, bubble coral block, fire coral block, horn coral block. His full stock, both directions, is on the Wandering Trader page.

Slimes only spawn in a few chunks deep underground and in swamps at night, so finding them is a matter of luck or of reading a map for slime chunks. That is why slimeballs turn up in trades: the alternative is a specific hunt.

What they make is worth the hunt. Sticky pistons, slime blocks, leads for moving animals, and the magma cream that potions of fire resistance start from.

The slime block is the interesting one. It bounces, it sticks to its neighbours when a piston pushes it, and every flying machine and moving platform in the game is built out of that one behaviour.

4 emeralds for one Slimeball, 5 at most per visit: the wandering trader's price suits a single sticky piston, not a build full of them. Slimes keep spawning underground in slime chunks, and How to Build a Slime Farm in Minecraft collects the Slimeballs they drop.