SPRUCE BOAT

Spruce is the one wood on this boat list that actually grows where its fisherman lives, in both directions the game assigns it. A taiga village stands among the trees the boat is cut from, and a snowy village usually sits close enough to a taiga edge that the same coat still makes sense. No other boat trade lines up this cleanly with its own surroundings.

A crafting grid makes one from 5 × spruce planks. Both biomes carry water worth crossing: taiga is thick with lakes and slow rivers, and a snowy coast freezes over hard enough that walking across the ice beats wading through it. The fisherman there is buying back a hull built for exactly that trip.

What he pays for it is 30 experience toward his next tier, no different from any other fisherman, cold coat or not.

One coat, two biomes. The Fisherman pays 1 emerald for 1 spruce boat at master, whether he settled in a taiga village or a snowy one, and neither version charges more than the other.

Nobody sells a spruce boat back to you. This row runs one way, player to fisherman, and no other profession lists a boat of any wood on its own table.

The best rate any villager offers is an emerald for a single spruce boat, from the Fisherman, and 4 of the other 10 pay out faster. No villager sells spruce boat back, so it is emeralds out and nothing in.

One slot at the Fisherman takes 1 spruce boat a trade, 12 trades, 12 emeralds. 8 of the 72 villagers that pay emeralds, emptied out:

12 acacia boats against 384 rotten flesh 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. Spruce Boat itself pays 1 an emerald, so nothing in that table asks less and 62 ask more.

A fisherman locks into the cold coat the moment an unemployed villager standing in taiga or snowy terrain claims a barrel. Both biomes share the same trade table afterward, so there is no difference to look for once he has the job.

Getting to master opens the row. From there the slot holds 12 boats before it locks, and a restock refills that same offer rather than rolling a fresh one, so a spruce seller keeps selling spruce for good.

Curing a zombie fisherman found in either biome, or breeding one there and waiting for the barrel, is the only way to guarantee this exact coat on a villager you did not find already employed.

12 boats clear the slot, and the fisherman needs 2 real minutes back at his barrel before it opens again. A Minecraft day runs 20 real minutes, long enough for two of those refills.

Sit with him for a full day and he clears 24 boats for 24 emeralds, a pace set by the restock clock rather than by how fast you can click through the window.

Taiga is the better hunting ground of the two. It sits on more lakes than a snowy plain does, so you will already be crafting spruce boats to cross them, and selling the spare to the local fisherman is free money on the way past.

On ice, remember a boat still breaks the instant it hits something solid. Frozen rivers look smooth from a distance but crack and jut in ways open water never does, so treat a spruce boat there as disposable rather than precious.

Also on the Fisherman's list: jungle boat, acacia boat, dark oak boat, string, bucket of cod, and coal, the shelf every fisherman carries no matter which biome raised him.

Boats are identical whatever wood they are made of, so this one is a spruce boat because spruce is what grows in a taiga, not because it handles differently. Five planks, which is not much more than one log.

In cold country the boat is the more useful vehicle anyway. Frozen oceans and rivers mean a boat on ice, which is the fastest travel in the game short of flying, and a chest boat carries the supplies with you.

Two seats, so a villager or an animal shoved into the second one travels along. That is the standard way of moving a trader to where you want him.