How to Get a Mending Villager in Minecraft

Keeping your best tools, armor, and weapons in perfect condition is a must for any serious Minecraft server hosting player. The Mending enchantment is the holy grail when it comes to durability, it lets your items repair themselves as you gain experience. However, with recent changes to villager trades, getting a reliable Mending source has become more complex. Here’s an up-to-date guide on how to secure this invaluable enchantment.

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Why Mending Is So Important

Unlike other enchantments, Mending uses the XP you collect to restore durability to your gear instead of adding it to your experience bar. This effectively gives your favorite pickaxes, swords, Elytra, and armor an infinite lifespan - as long as you keep earning XP. Whether you’re mining ancient debris in the Nether or soaring across your world, Mending makes sure your gear stays intact.

How Mending Villagers Work Now

In recent updates, the way librarians offer enchanted books has changed. By default, librarians can offer random enchantments, but the new Villager Trade Rebalance experimental feature makes things more restrictive. Now, certain rare enchantments, like Mending, are only guaranteed through specific villagers under the right conditions.

For worlds using the trade rebalance, Mending is locked to swamp librarians, who have unique trade tables. If you’re not using the experimental trades, you can still reroll librarian offers the old-fashioned way, but it might take longer.

Step 1: Get What You Need

To create a Mending librarian, you’ll need:

• Lectern: The workstation block that gives a villager the librarian profession. Craft it with 4 wooden slabs and a bookshelf.

• Beds: Villagers need beds to claim a home and breed.

• Food: Bread, carrots, or potatoes to encourage breeding if you plan to make new villagers.

Step 2: Find or Make Swamp Villagers

For players using the Villager Trade Rebalance, a swamp villager is required. There are two ways to get them:

1. Breeding: Move two regular villagers into a swamp biome and breed them. Any babies born there will take on the swamp villager skin and trade offers.

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1. Curing: Find a zombie villager inside a swamp, cure it with a splash potion of Weakness and a golden apple, and it will become a swamp variant.

If you’re not using the trade rebalance, any librarian can still potentially offer Mending.

Step 3: Build a Safe Trading Hall

Set up a simple shelter in or near the swamp biome. Include:

• Beds for villagers.

• Lecterns (one per librarian).

• Doors and fences to keep zombies and pillagers out.

• Good lighting to prevent hostile mob spawns.

IMPORTANT

Protecting your villagers is crucial - if they die, you’ll have to repeat the process

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Step 4: Turn Villager Into Librarian

Place a lectern near an unemployed swamp villager. They’ll soon claim it and become a librarian. When they do:

• Open their trade window and check the first enchantment book they offer.

• If it’s not Mending, break and replace the lectern.

• Keep repeating until you see Mending as the first book trade.

IMPORTANT

Do not trade with the librarian until they offer Mending. Once you make a trade, their trades lock forever

Step 5: Lock In the Trade

Once you see Mending, buy at least one Mending book from that librarian. This locks their trades permanently, ensuring you can return for more Mending books whenever you like.

To get better deals, you can:

• Cure the librarian if they ever become a zombie.

• Use the “Hero of the Village” effect to lower prices further.

Level Up for Mending

If you’re using the trade rebalance feature, leveling a swamp librarian to Master guarantees a Mending book in their trade pool. To do this:

• Trade frequently to earn experience for the librarian.

• Sell paper, books, or buy other enchanted books to push them up to Master rank.

• At Master, they’ll always offer Mending.

This method takes longer but guarantees success.

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Other Ways to Get Mending

If villager rerolling isn’t your style, you still have a few options:

• Fishing: Mending books are a rare “treasure” catch when fishing.

• Loot Chests: Strongholds, mineshafts, and ancient cities sometimes contain enchanted books, including Mending.

• Raids (Bedrock Edition): Some enchanted books can drop as raid loot, but this is inconsistent.

How to Protect Your Mending Villager

A Mending librarian is incredibly valuable. To protect your investment:

• Build walls, fences, and use iron golems for extra defense.

• Use name tags to prevent villagers from despawning (rare, but possible if chunk loading glitches).

• Keep trading with them regularly to refresh their stock.

Result

To get a Mending Villager in Minecraft, place a Lectern next to a swamp villager and reroll their trades until they offer a Mending book. Breed or cure villagers in a swamp biome for the best chance under the latest trade rules.

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