The issue...

Imagine if Minecraft’s villagers weren’t a gamble to progression but were instead active contributors in getting the enchantments you want? If their trades could change in response to your input, you could focus on resource gathering in order to help librarians provide the best books in the game.

Introducing: Librarian's Balance

Librarian's Balance is a datapack / mod that improves the progression of obtaining enchantments through villagers. It only adds a few small things to make a big difference.

Featuring...

1. Customisable Trades: Place an Enchanted Book on a Librarian's Lectern, and their first or second book trade will change to the one you entered. This gives new purpose to the books you collect in the world. Some books are treasure enchantments and these will produce untradable (sealed) variants when bought from a Librarian in this way.

2. Limited Random Trades: Villager's Enchanted Book trades are random up to Level 3. You need to use the new custom trade mechanic to get a Level 4 or 5 trade, so first obtain this book as an item. I recommend combining two purchased books on an Anvil to upgrade its level, or use one you found in the world.

3. Rare Mending: Librarians do not trade for Mending so players will have to find it in the world. Once obtained, you can put it on a Librarain's Lectern to trade for more. It can be found in End Cities or Ancient Cities as often as an armour trim.

Everything listed here can be toggled or configured with the /function libal:config command (must be run with OP). This datapack works great to enhance the Villager Rebalance experimental feature from Mojang! (not required)

Uses

On Survival Multiplayer servers you may find enchantment progression too quick by some members of the server. Librarian's Balance provides a balanced progression system by use of experience points, emeralds, and requiring a proper level of exploration.

Notes:

You might see the UI show a mending or >3 enchantment sometimes, but it's just a visual hitch and you should ignore it. On a new world, it took two hours to get my first Mending book (anicent city). This was also my first datapack!

If you are having issues try running /function libal:load to refresh the datapack. Make sure you didn't unzip it into your folder. It is compatible with the Amendments mod! The Tome Reader mod is fully supported, adding better placement and enchantment transfer mechanics! (1.21; future compatiblity coming soon)

I built this datapack upon parts of gibbsly's Lectern Enchanting. I want to thank him for providing a starting point for this project, and for some of his tutorials on YouTube. Otherwise I would have had no idea on where to start making something like this :).

Feedback:

Please give feedback on the GitHub page, PlanetMinecraft or on my Discord server! I'm interested in hearing your ideas, opinions or suggestions from your time with this datapack. What do you think about the sealed books system? Do you think that the book pricing is appropriate?

Configuration

Run:

/function libal:config

Alternatively, edit settings.mcfunction in the folder data > libal > functions (datapack only).