A merchant lives on the ocean. He finds you, ties up for a day, and rows away for good
A merchant lives out on the open ocean in a spruce chest boat that steers itself. When you are far enough from land he finds you, rows over, ties up alongside and trades for exactly one Minecraft day, then casts off and never comes back. He sells sea treasure cheap and pays well for ordinary land goods like bread and logs, because he has been out there for months. Sometimes pillager longboats come out of the haze after his cargo, and sometimes they come for yours.
You are anchored off an island with nothing on the horizon, and then there is something on the horizon. No sound, no message, just a chest boat that was not there a minute ago, already pointed at you. He ties up alongside and suddenly your spare logs are worth prismarine. You trade with one eye on the haze, because one visit in three something follows him in, and when the low bell rings and he starts stowing his goods you feel a genuine small loss: this exact man, with this exact manifest, is about to row out of your world for good.
The peddler picks one player and rows to them, but anyone who can reach him can trade.
New to this mod? Do these in order and you will have seen the point of it.
Whether you count as at sea comes from sampling the water around you, not from the biome you are standing in. A coral reef, a mushroom island shore and the middle of a cold ocean all work; a river, a pond and a beach all do not, so he never appears anywhere a rowing boat could not plausibly have come from.
He ships his oars, ties up, and stays for exactly one Minecraft day. Three thousand ticks before the end a low bell rings and he starts stowing his goods, and once he casts off he will not trade while under way. A few in-game days later another peddler may find you, with a different manifest. None of them ever return, and only one exists at a time.
Months on the water turn every shore price backwards. He sells nautilus shells, sponge, prismarine, sea lanterns, coral, sea pickles, tropical fish and glow ink, plus one headline lot: a buried treasure map, an ocean monument map, a heart of the sea, or an enchantment only someone who lives on the water would know. He buys wool, string, leather, iron, bread, carrots, coal, logs, books and cooked meat, none of which anyone on land will pay you for.
One visit in three, two pillager longboats come out of the haze without a word, and they are after him, not you. He is faster than they are and spends that speed entirely on reaching you, so the fight happens where you are standing. Drive them off and he pulls up the floorboards on a stash he was never going to sell a stranger, including the mod's only trident. Lose him and the longboat takes his hold.
Now and then a longboat appears with no peddler anywhere, and comes for you. It rows faster than your boat, so fleeing on open water is not a plan. Fight, or make land: a boat full of pillagers cannot follow you up a beach. They give up after three minutes and leave you alone for a couple of days afterwards.
Steal from his hold and he leaves immediately. Kill him and the skiff is yours, chest, cargo and all, which is deliberately worth less than trading with him was. The mod does not stop you being a pirate; it just prices piracy honestly.
The whole mod rides vanilla's own switch: /gamerule doTraderSpawning false disables it. There is no config file, the mod never writes in chat, and the only sounds it adds are the departure bells, because leaving is the one thing you cannot see coming.
The merchant himself, months from shore. Every peddler carries a different manifest, and no individual ever visits twice.
Where: Be genuinely at sea and watch the horizon.
His spruce chest boat, which steers itself around headlands and out of coves without a pathfinder.
Where: His, while he lives. Kill him and it is yours, cargo included, at a worse exchange rate than honesty.
A crewed raider that rows out of the haze, faster than anything you can paddle. Usually after his cargo; occasionally after you.
Where: One peddler visit in three brings two of them. You did not want them, and neither did he.
The goods he was never going to sell a stranger, offered only to someone who fought for him. Includes the only trident in the mod, and you only get one.
Where: Drive off the longboats before they sink him.
Flavour, not rules. None of this changes how the mod behaves.
Everything about his manifest follows from one fact: he has not touched land in a very long time. Coral and prismarine come out of his bilge by the stack, and what he genuinely cannot get is a loaf of bread, a dry book or an iron ingot. He is the only economy in the game that agrees your log farm was worth building.
A one-man boat full of monument loot, alone, on open water, with no golems and no walls. The surprise is not that longboats hunt him; it is that he has survived long enough to reach you. His entire defensive doctrine is rowing very fast toward the nearest armed stranger and hoping.
You are probably not at sea by the mod's measure, which samples the water around you. Rivers, ponds and beaches never qualify. There is also only ever one peddler in the world, and a few quiet days follow each visit.
No. One Minecraft day, the bell, and he is gone, and that individual never returns. The next peddler is a different man with a different manifest.
No. The behaviour is server-side and the rendering is vanilla, so vanilla clients see everything. On a server he rows to one chosen player, but anyone who reaches him can trade.
One of six: NeoForge, Forge or Fabric, for Minecraft 1.21.1 or 1.20.1. The Fabric builds need Fabric API; the others need nothing.
They ship together; the longboats are a third of the reason to keep watching the horizon. The everything-off switch is /gamerule doTraderSpawning false.
Status: The jar compiles and the author has tested it himself, but it has not had a real playtest yet.
.jar file into your mods folder.This wiki documents the mods; it does
not host them. Builds live in the project's own repository under
mc-passing-trade/build/libs/.
Bulletpies