WHITE WOOL

Every dyed wool on this site starts here. Black, brown, gray and every other color are white wool with a dye added, so a stack of this is a stack of potential, not a finished color choice. The Shepherd buys it off you rather than selling it, 18 for a single emerald once he opens novice.

It is also the one wool color with a recipe that has nothing to do with sheep: 4 string on a crafting grid makes one, no dye and no shears involved. A spider drop or a cobweb can end up as a bed just as easily as a sheep can.

2 of it crafts into 3 white carpet on the same grid, and it is also the wool every other color's carpet recipe quietly assumes as the starting point.

One profession, one price. Bring it to a Shepherd once he settles into novice, and he pays 1 emerald for every 18 handed over, the same figure whichever shepherd is asked.

The best rate any villager offers is an emerald per 18 white wool, from the Shepherd, and nothing else on that list asks for more. No villager sells white wool back, so it is emeralds out and nothing in.

One slot at the Shepherd takes 18 white wool a trade, 16 trades, 16 emeralds. 8 of the 72 villagers that pay emeralds, emptied out:

16 acacia boats against 384 paper for the same 16 emeralds, 24 times the carrying, and the shortest wait is the Butcher at 10 real minutes of shelf, gathering not counted. White Wool itself pays 18 an emerald, so 53 of the 72 ask less and 15 ask more.

An unemployed villager standing next to a loom becomes a shepherd, and this row is on his table the moment the job sticks, no trading experience needed and no earlier tier to climb through.

The slot buys 16 loads before it locks, and a restock brings the same price back rather than a fresh roll, so a shepherd who buys white wool keeps buying it after every refill.

16 loads close the slot, and the loom needs 2 real minutes before it can refill. A Minecraft day runs 20 real minutes, long enough for two of those refills to land while you wait.

A full day at one shepherd clears 32 loads of white wool, which is more base material than most dyeing projects will ever need dyed at once.

Sell it undyed if the emeralds matter more than the color. Turning white wool into a specific dyed color and then selling that back nets the same base rate as selling the white wool directly, so dyeing only pays off when you need the color for building, not for the trade itself.

The same loom sells shears, its cheapest offer, handy for anyone shearing sheep to feed this trade rather than crafting from string.

Also on the Shepherd's list: brown wool, black wool, gray wool, any dye, colored wool, and colored carpet, the rest of what one loom can put on offer.

Sheep come in several colours but white is the one that takes dye cleanly, so a wool farm is usually a pen of white sheep and a chest of dye rather than a hunt for the colour you want. Shearing beats killing: the wool grows back while the sheep stands on grass.

Four wool make a bed's mattress, three make a carpet pair, and one over a stick makes a banner base, so almost everything the Shepherd sells is wool that has been through one more step. Wool also burns, which is worth remembering before decorating a wall next to a torch.

Three wool over three planks make a bed, six wool and a stick make a banner, and three wool give eight carpet. Those three recipes account for almost all the wool anybody uses, and each one keeps the colour of the wool that went in.

Carpet is the cheap one and the useful one: it covers a floor for a third of the blocks, it stops mobs spawning on what is underneath, and a carpet on a fence lets you walk over the fence.

Wool burns, so a wool roof over a fireplace is a house fire waiting to happen. That is the one material rule worth remembering about the whole family.

A sheep grows its White Wool back after eating grass, so a pen with a dispenser full of shears pays out again and again. White is the colour most sheep spawn with, which makes this the easiest wool for the Shepherd: 18 White Wool per emerald, 288 for a full restock, and How to Make a Wool Farm in Minecraft shows the pen.