Highlights
- The Wandering Trader in Minecraft has a reputation as one of the game's most annoying mobs due to its lack of long-term usefulness.
- The new archeology mechanic in Minecraft could potentially redeem the Wandering Trader by incorporating it to support the feature and offer more valuable trades.
- The Wandering Trader could have a future in archeology by being found near structures like Trail Ruins and offering archeology-related items such as brushes, pottery shards, and maps.
Now that archeology has finally made its way into Minecraft, the long-overdue mechanic could help salvage the love-hate relationship players have with the Wandering Trader and open up new potential for the mob following the Trails and Tales update. With its vast range of mobs in all shapes and sizes, it's inevitable that a select few Minecraft mobs are labeled most annoying by fans from skeletons to silverfish. But among these, the Wandering Trader seems to hold the reputation as one of Minecraft's more contentious mobs thanks to its general lack of long-term utility for players with its available trades.
But the ideas behind the Wandering Trader now have the opportunity to redeem the mob if it can be adapted to support Minecraft's new archeology features. After being held back in multiple updates, archeology is already off to a bumpy start and will therefore need all the help it can get to not disappoint fans. But potential pitfalls in the mechanic's design from how it interacts with world generation to the tools and structures that are so far associated with it could be effectively resolved with the help of Wandering Traders, either by being directly repurposed or by inspiring a new mob based on its concept.
Minecraft's Wandering Traders Need An Upgrade
For the more inexperienced players, the Wandering Trader can seem exciting at first as it's easy to perceive the random spawn as lucky and its trades as rare or valuable. But once players become acclimatized to the bigger picture of Minecraft, the function of the Wandering Trader is to offer items and resources from other biomes that might not yet have been found or visited. So while these trades can be helpful during the game's earliest stages, they gradually become less worthwhile over time until the repetitive appearances of the Wandering Trader are as annoying as they are useless.
On the one hand, the Wandering Trader should justify more random events in Minecraft if only to add some diversity to the player experience, but it doesn't resolve the fate of the Wandering Trader itself. For instance, the Wandering Trader has limited use since it doesn't share the Villager's novice-to-master skill levels, and should players already own whatever is offered for trade, then its purpose is completely defunct. Left in its current state, the Wandering Trader will remain as one of Minecraft's most inconsequential mobs if it doesn't receive an overdue upgrade, something it could finally have with the new archeology feature.
Wandering Traders Could Have a Future in Archeology
Starting from the general premise of the Wandering Trader, it would actually be a much better fit if this mob had connections with Minecraft's archeology, as it would make sense that a traveling merchant would collect and sell buried treasures and relics. Instead of a random spawn close to the player, then, the Wandering Trader could instead be found within the vicinity of structures like the new Trail Ruins or even Desert Pyramids and Jungle Temples. As a result, much like how Azalea Trees spawn atop Lush Cave biomes to help guide players, so too could a Wandering Trader hint to where buried Trail Ruins are.
But Wandering Traders could have a far more useful purpose than just guiding players. Since archeology specifically requires a brush, players would be forced to sacrifice inventory space for a limited-use item or waste time hastily searching for feathers and copper. Instead, a Wandering Trader could trade archeology-related items like brushes to spare players the trouble, while other trades could include pottery shards, explorer maps, or even fashion-forward armor trims. But even if the Wandering Trader can't be repurposed, then a new "Explorer" mob with a revamped skin and llamas swapped for camels would fit neatly within Trails and Tales' overall design and style.
Minecraft is available now for Mobile, PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
