Mercantile — Villager & Trade Overhaul

Every villager remembers.

Also on CurseForge and GitHub Releases. Visit the website for the full feature list, config reference, and command guide.

Mercantile is a villager and trade overhaul for Minecraft 1.21.1 (Fabric). It turns villagers from disposable trade machines into mobile, named, persistent characters — with pickup, biome-themed names, a six-tier reputation system, emerald-based trade cycling, and an iron-fueled sentry block that defends your village.

Restrained by design. Custom art is scoped to what earns its place — the sentry pylon block, a set of bespoke effect particles, and a handful of HUD/GUI glyphs in the Concord palette; everything else leans on vanilla. No balance-breaking shortcuts, no bundled dependencies you didn't ask for. Every sound is a vanilla sound, and every villager head uses a community skin already hosted on Mojang's CDN.

At a glance

Minecraft 1.21.1, Fabric loader (0.16.10+), Fabric API required.
Required on the server. The reputation HUD is the only client-only feature — install it client-side too if you want the readout.
Every feature is individually toggleable through Mod Menu / Cloth Config or config/mercantile.json.
MIT licensed.

Features

Villager Pickup

Sneak-right-click a villager with an empty hand to pick them up. The villager becomes a profession-themed player head in your inventory. Place them down with a right-click; they spawn facing you. Full NBT survives the round trip — profession, level, XP, trade offers, gossip, custom name, health, inventory.

The tooltip shows profession and level, every trade in cost → result form, locked/out-of-stock indicators, and a n/m trades unlocked summary. Costs 5 XP levels by default (configurable, waived in Creative). Won't work during a raid, on a villager being traded with, or on one currently following another player.

Biome-Themed Names

Every villager is auto-named on spawn from a biome-themed pool — common English names in plains and forests, Arabic in deserts, Nordic in taiga, Mesoamerican in jungle, African in savanna, Old English in swamps, frontier-era in badlands. Names are always visible above the villager, persist across pickup and restart, and respect player-given nametags. Pools are datapack-driven, so you can override or extend them.

Work Orders

Stop playing workstation roulette. Sneak-right-click an unemployed adult villager while holding a profession's workstation item — a lectern, composter, smithing table — and it walks to the nearest unclaimed job site of that type and takes the matching profession. The held item only names the job and is never consumed; the block must already be placed. Each order costs a small emerald fee (1 by default, waived in Creative); if no free workstation is in range the order is refused and nothing is charged. Professions resolve from the block's point-of-interest, so modded jobs work automatically.

Villager Mood

Every villager tracks a mood from its living conditions — a claimed bed and workstation, recent sleep, food on hand, staying unharmed, and not witnessing a neighbor's death — settling into one of four tiers: Miserable, Unhappy, Content, or Happy. Mood is a nudge, not a gate: Happy villagers give a small discount and restock sooner; Miserable ones add a small markup and restock later. The tier shows in the info panel and Jade/WTHIT tooltips and appears as its own line in the price breakdown. Mood belongs to the villager — the same for every player — and persists across pickup and reload.

Reputation

A single global reputation score per player that affects every villager, running parallel to vanilla gossip.

Tier	Range	Effect
Reviled	-200 to -150	Trade refusal, angry villager particles
Distrusted	-149 to -1	Price markup (10-25%)
Neutral	0 to 74	No modifier
Liked	75 to 299	Small discount (5%)
Trusted	300 to 999	Moderate discount (10%), profession-exclusive trades
Honored	1000+	Best discount (15%), all exclusive trades

Reputation goes up for trading, curing zombie villagers, cycling trades, spending time near villagers, gifting profession-appropriate items, and defending the village from raids (any player awarded Hero of the Village gains a full bonus, outside the daily cap); it goes down for hitting and killing them. Fallen out of favor? Negative reputation slowly recovers toward neutral on its own, and gifting villagers speeds the climb — even a Reviled player has a clear path back. Exclusive trades — per-profession, cross-profession, and a sticky bonus offer from wandering traders at Trusted tier and up — appear in your trade list when you hit the right tier. Other players trading with the same villager see their own list at their own tier. At Honored the gifting runs both ways — a nearby villager will occasionally walk over and toss you a small profession-flavored thank-you.

Delivery Contracts

An employed villager occasionally posts a delivery request, a speech bubble floating over its head. Sneak-use paper on it to sign: the paper becomes a contract item naming a profession-appropriate haul (32 wheat for a farmer, coal for an armorer), an emerald payment, and a deadline (2 in-game days by default). While the contract is in hand its villager glows through walls, so you can find them again. Right-click the payee with the goods anywhere in your inventory to deliver — items and contract are consumed, emeralds paid, and you earn a reputation bonus that bypasses the daily cap (up to a few deliveries a day). Expired contracts crumble with no penalty. Request pools are datapack-driven per profession.

Nitwit Rehabilitation

Nitwits stop being dead weight. At Trusted standing and above, use a golden apple on an adult nitwit and pay an emerald fee (16 by default) — after a short pause it sheds the green robe and becomes an unemployed villager, ready to claim a workstation like any other; its name and gossip carry over. The conversion is one-way and checked at use time: below Trusted you're told what standing it takes, and nothing is charged on a denied attempt. With reputation disabled, only the apple and emerald cost apply.

Trade Cycling

A button in the merchant screen that re-rolls a villager's unlocked trades for 6 emeralds (configurable). Once you've purchased from a trade, that trade is locked and never re-rolled — so cycling becomes more efficient as you fill in the slots you want to keep. No cooldown; the emerald cost is the balance.

Trade Pinning

Pin the trades you're waiting on. Each row in the merchant screen carries a small pin toggle; pinned trades are remembered per player and survive relogging. When a villager restocks a pinned trade that had sold out and you're within range (128 blocks by default), an action-bar note names the villager and the trade. /mercantile pins lists your pins with live stock status, and the reputation detail panel shows the same list. Pins are capped per player (10 by default) and pruned automatically when a villager dies or re-rolls the trade away.

Market Day

Every 7 in-game days (configurable) the world holds a market day from dawn to dusk. Every trade takes a global discount (5% by default) that stacks with reputation and gossip, and villagers gain an extra restock cycle. The day opens with a bell ring, happy particles, and an action-bar announcement for everyone online. The schedule is world-wide and predictable, so it's easy to plan around.

Memorials, Mourning & Fear

Villager deaths carry weight. When a named villager dies it drops a memorial keepsake — a custom skull whose tooltip records its name, profession, level, and cause of death (a keepsake, not a revive; unnamed villagers drop nothing). Nearby villagers mourn for a few seconds, turning toward where their neighbor fell and shedding grief particles — purely cosmetic. And villages remember who did it: kill several villagers in one village within a short window (3 in 10 minutes by default) and its survivors fear you — a price markup (25% by default) that applies to the killer alone, in that village alone, fading over a few in-game days. It shows as its own "Fear" line in the price breakdown.

Follow Mode

Sneak-right-click a villager while holding an emerald to make them follow you. Same action again releases them — and a released villager walks back to its bed or workstation instead of standing where you left it. Up to 3 villagers can follow at once (configurable). Following villagers ignore their schedule, pathfind to you at moderate pace, and are immune to mob-on-mob pushing — no more being shoved off the path. Out of range (>32 blocks) they give up and stop.

Sentry Pylon

A craftable defense block (3 iron blocks + 1 bell + 1 carved pumpkin + 2 stone bricks). Insert iron blocks as fuel. When a hostile mob enters its 32-block radius, the pylon spends one iron block to spawn a temporary iron golem that fights and then despawns after 30 seconds of peace. Up to 3 active sentries per pylon. Sentry golems don't drop loot, don't count toward iron farms, and don't count toward mob caps. On spotting a threat the pylon also rings the nearest village bell to call players to the fight. Comparator output reflects fuel level; a redstone signal disables the pylon entirely.

Quality-of-Life

Bulk trading — shift-click the trade output to repeat a trade up to 64 times in one action (or until your inventory fills).
Restock indicator — the merchant screen shows a Restocks in: ~m:ss estimate and remaining restocks for the day.
Demand transparency — hover the trade price to see the full breakdown: base, demand, reputation, mood, gossip, market-day discount, fear markup, final.
Pathfinding fixes — villagers properly traverse fence gates and double doors, multi-step staircases, ladders, and route around water instead of drowning. Each fix is independently toggleable.
Healing enhancement — splash and lingering potions of healing and regeneration are 2× more effective on villagers (configurable).
Profession lock — once you've made any trade with a villager, their profession is locked. Breaking the workstation won't wipe them.
Villager info panel — the merchant screen shows name, profession, level + XP bar, your reputation with this villager, total trades, and workstation status.
Reputation HUD — a compact tier readout next to nearby villagers.
Sound volume slider — separate volume for villager ambient, trade, and hurt sounds (0–100%).
Baby feeding — right-click a baby villager with bread, carrot, potato, or beetroot to shave a percentage off its remaining growth time (10% per bread by default), up to a configurable cap.
Tutorial advancements — a dedicated Mercantile advancement tab teaches the mod's gestures as you play; each advancement's description spells out the exact interaction that grants it, so hidden features are discoverable without a wiki.
In-game hints — item and block tooltips explain the mod's gestures where you'd reach for them — the sentry pylon, delivery contracts — so the how is in your hand, not on a wiki.

Visualization

Workstation links — hold a bell to see profession-colored particle lines between villagers and their workstations. Unbound villagers pulse with angry particles; unclaimed workstations glow yellow.
Bell radius — hold a bell to see its 48-block gathering area as a particle circle on the ground. Ring a placed bell to highlight every villager in range.

Trade Index (EMI / REI / JEI)

A unified, searchable catalog of every villager trade across every profession and level. Search "mending" in your recipe viewer to find the librarian trade that sells it. Filter by profession, by level, or by whether the trade is reputation-locked. Each entry also shows the workstation block that unlocks the profession — click a workstation (lectern, composter, smoker, …) in your recipe viewer to list every trade for that profession. Item lookup integrates naturally — the "Uses" and "Recipes" tabs on any item include matching villager trades. Works with EMI, REI, and JEI.

Commands

Player commands: /mercantile pins lists your pinned trades (pins remove <n>, pins clear). Operator commands cover reputation adjustment (/mercantile reputation set|add) and hot-reloading config (/mercantile reload). Full reference: mercantile.rfizzle.com/commands.html

Optional integrations

Mercantile detects and integrates with these mods when present. None are bundled — install whichever you already use.

Mod Menu — config screen entry
Cloth Config — settings GUI
Jade / WTHIT — villager tooltip overlays (breeding state, contextual indicators, pylon fuel)
EMI / REI / JEI — recipe viewer integration for the trade index
Meridian — with Meridian installed, high-standing librarians sell salvage tomes, shelf materials, and rolled Meridian enchanted books, widening with your reputation. Pure data; nothing changes when it isn't installed.

Requirements

Minecraft 1.21.1
Fabric Loader 0.16.10+
Fabric API
Java 21+
Required on the server. Install on the client as well if you want the reputation HUD.

Installation

Install Fabric Loader for 1.21.1.
Drop Fabric API into your mods/ folder.
Download Mercantile from this Modrinth page (via the Modrinth App, Prism Launcher's Modrinth tab, or a manual jar drop) and place it into mods/ as well.
(Optional) Add Mod Menu and Cloth Config for the in-game settings screen.

Companion mods

Mercantile is part of Concord — a modular collection of system overhauls. Install any, combine all:

Meridian — Chart your enchantments.
Tribulation — Survive what comes next.
Prosperity — Every chest, yours to discover.

License & credits

Villager head skins are community-created textures sourced from minecraft-heads.com, permanently hosted on Mojang's CDN. Every sound is vanilla, and the custom art — the sentry pylon, the effect particles, and the HUD/GUI glyphs — ships inside the jar, so there's no resource-pack download and no surprises.

Mercantile - Villager Overhaul

Compatibility

Minecraft: Java Edition

Platforms

Supported environments

Links

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Details