STRING
2 trades involving this item across 2 professions.
View on Items Database →String in villager trading
String is a raw-material trade: villagers pay emeralds for it, which makes it a candidate for an automated emerald farm rather than something you purchase back.
String appears in the villager trade economy as a tradeable good.
It passes through 2 different professions — Fisherman and Fletcher — so several trading-hall layouts can supply it. String can also be obtained outside of trading, but buying it from a villager is often faster than gathering or smelting the ingredients yourself.
Villagers that buy String(you give String, get emeralds)
Who trades String, and at what price
To sell String for emeralds, bring it to a Fisherman at the Novice tier (20 units per 1 emerald) and a Fletcher at the Journeyman tier (14 units per 1 emerald).
Is trading String worth it?
On the supply side, String is worth one emerald per 14 units at its best rate (the Fletcher). That ratio is what decides whether farming string for currency is efficient: the fewer units a villager demands per emerald, the more valuable each one is to produce. A buy slot like this can be used 16 times before it locks and the villager has to restock, capping how many emeralds one villager returns per cycle before it must work at its job site again.
Since no villager sells string back, this is a one-way emerald faucet: you supply the string, the villager supplies the emeralds. That makes it a prime candidate for an automated trading hall, where a renewable source of string feeds a row of villagers and steadily converts your surplus into currency you can spend on the gear and rare items other professions sell.
How String trading works
Every String trade follows Minecraft's standard supply-and-demand rules. A trade can be used a limited number of times — 16 for the slot in question — before it greys out and locks until the villager restocks. A villager restocks up to twice per in-game day, but only if it can path to its job-site block and "work" there, which is why a trading hall must leave the workstation reachable.
When you sell string to a villager, completing that trade is what grants the villager career experience and pushes it toward its next tier. Spreading sales across several villagers of the same profession multiplies both your emerald throughput and how quickly the hall levels up.
One caution: the first trade you complete with a fresh villager permanently locks its current offers, including the string slot at whatever price it rolled. If you are chasing a specific price, decide before you trade, because there is no re-rolling a villager once it has done business with you.
Tips for trading String
- Best rate when selling it: the Fletcher gives an emerald for just 14 of thems, the most generous buy rate for string.
- Lock the price: once you complete a trade the offer is fixed, so a cheap roll of string stays cheap for that villager. Reset only happens on never-traded Novice villagers via the rolling method.