How to Get Mending Villagers in Minecraft 1.20.2: A 5 Step Walkthrough

Mending is arguably the single most valuable enchantment in Minecraft. Slap it on your netherite chestplate, your favorite pickaxe, or that overworked Elytra, and durability essentially stops being a problem. The catch? Patch 1.20.2 trimmed back the pool of villagers willing to sell it, so the days of clicking any plains librarian until you got lucky are gone.

The good news: it is still completely farmable. You just need to know exactly which villager to hunt and where to put them. Below is the full process broken into five very manageable chunks.

Step 1: Build Yourself a Lectern

Lecterns are the magic block that turns any unemployed villager into a librarian, and crafting one is trivially cheap.

You will need:

• 4 wooden slabs (any wood works, no need to match)
• 1 bookshelf

Lay the ingredients out on the crafting grid in a T shape. Three slabs across the top row, the bookshelf in the dead center, and the final slab right below it. Done. Pocket it for now and move on.

Step 2: Find a Swamp and Set Up a Tiny Base

Here is the twist that trips most players up: in 1.20.2, only swamp librarians sell Mending. And Minecraft does not generate swamp villages naturally, which means we are building one from scratch.

First, locate a swamp biome. Wander around for a while and you will almost certainly bump into one, since swamps are not particularly rare. If exploration is not your idea of a fun afternoon, drop into chat and run:

``` /locate biome minecraft:swamp ```

The game will spit out coordinates. Head over there and put together a small structure. Nothing fancy is required. A modest shack with walls, a roof, room for a couple of beds, and space for the lectern from Step 1 is plenty. Think of it less as architecture and more as a glorified villager containment cell.

Step 3: Bring In (or Convert) a Swamp Villager

No villagers spawn naturally in swamps either, so you have two reasonable ways to populate your new town:

1. Import breeders. Find an existing village within a reasonable distance, lead two villagers back to your swamp shack (boats and minecart rails are your friends here), give them beds, and let them get to work. Any babies born inside the swamp biome will be swamp variants.
2. Convert a zombie villager. This is the express route. If you spot a zombie villager wandering through a swamp, splash it with a Weakness potion, feed it a Golden Apple, and wait for the cure. The result is an instant swamp villager. No matchmaking required.

Option 2 is faster. Option 1 is more chill. Pick whichever fits your playstyle.

Step 4: Drop the Lectern and Lock In a Librarian

Place your lectern inside the swamp house. Any unemployed swamp villager nearby should walk over and claim it, taking on the librarian profession. Right click them to open their trade menu.

A few quick tips:

• If a villager you did not want claims the lectern first, no big deal. Mine it back and craft another one. You have endless slabs.
• If you want to reroll the offers, break the lectern before completing any trade with that librarian, then place a new one. The villager will requalify with a fresh trade list. Repeat until you see Mending in their level 5 slot.
• Once you actually trade something with them, their profession locks in. Choose carefully.

Step 5: Trade Until They Hit Master Level

Last piece of the puzzle: getting your librarian to level 5 (Master). As of 1.20.2, swamp librarians at master level are guaranteed to offer a Mending book. That is the whole reason we did all this.

Leveling up is just a matter of repeated trades. Paper for emeralds is the classic loop. Bring a stack of sugar cane farm output, convert it to paper, and dump it on the villager. Each successful trade nudges their experience bar up. Five tiers later, the Mending book unlocks.

Keep a few emeralds in reserve so you can actually buy the book once it shows up.

You Now Own an Infinite Mending Tap

That is the full pipeline. One swamp, one shack, one villager, and a small pile of paper later, you have a renewable Mending book source for every piece of gear you ever craft.

A couple of parting thoughts:

• Light the area well. Swamps spawn hostile mobs by the bucketload at night, and a single zombie can ruin weeks of villager training. Torches, walls, or even a fully enclosed roof are worth the effort.
• Make backups. Once your librarian is set up, consider breeding more swamp villagers and locking in additional Mending traders. Redundancy is cheap insurance.
• Future proof your loadout. Mending pairs beautifully with Unbreaking III, so when you finally enchant that netherite kit or pristine Elytra, layer both on for a setup that essentially never wears out.

Happy trading, and watch your back out there.

Until next time,

HolyHosting =)