SULFUR SPIKE

Most of what the Wandering Trader carries in this part of his stock is pure decoration. Sulfur spike is not: it breaks down into an actual crafting ingredient, which makes buying it a raw-material purchase rather than a look. He sells it 2 at a time for 1 emerald.

4 sulfur spike breaks down into 1 sulfur, so a stack bought from the trader converts directly into that many units of raw material. There is no other listed source for it on this site, so for now the trader is the only confirmed route to it.

The Wandering Trader is the only seller, asking 1 emerald for 2 sulfur spike, with no buy-back offer at any price.

No profession villager stocks it. It sits entirely outside the job system, so the trader's row above is the whole market for it.

He asks 1 emerald for 2, which works out at well under an emerald each, and 23 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 sulfur spike is the real constraint.

The Wandering Trader asks 1 emerald for 2 sulfur spikes. 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 Butcher at 37.5 real seconds of shelf, gathering not counted.

No workstation or job level sits behind this offer, since the Wandering Trader answers to no village. He turns up near the player unprompted, two leashed llamas in tow, stays for roughly forty minutes to an hour, and leaves again on his own clock whether or not the spike got bought.

Selling it back to him is not possible. His buying list covers six named items and this is never one of them, so the trade only ever runs from his stock into yours. His inventory is a rolled sample, so the one you find might simply not have it that visit; a name tag removes the despawn timer if more than one purchase's worth is needed.

A full stack costs 32 emeralds across 32 trades, if the trader has that many to sell. Since it converts into a fixed amount of raw material, buying more than the current recipe needs is just banked material sitting in a chest.

A trader stocking sulfur spike usually carries other odd finds too: rooted dirt, pale moss block, wildflowers, tall dry grass, firefly bush and golden dandelion.

Sulfur spikes belong to the newer volcanic ground rather than to any village, which is why no job villager handles them and the wandering trader is the only merchant that ever carries one. They grow out of the block below them, so a spike broken off does not grow back in place.

As a material the spike is mostly a builder's block: it reads as heat and danger in a landscape without needing lava behind it. Buying a few off a trader is usually quicker than travelling to the biome for a decorative set.

A sulfur spike is placed on top of a block and stays only while that block is there. Mine what it stands on and the spike breaks with it, which makes moving one a matter of taking the floor as well.

The colour is the reason to want it. Sulfur yellow is a shade almost nothing else in the game provides, and it reads as heat and hazard next to grey stone, which is exactly what a volcanic build wants.

Because it comes from ground no villager job touches, the wandering trader is the only merchant who will ever hand you one, and only on the visits where his list happens to include it.