└ Module: Automation

The trade station is a block that trades with vanilla villagers. It can check at most three different trades with villagers in 6 blocks around it (taxicab distance) and can instantly complete a trade.

The trade station has a GUI that shows up when a user right-clicks the block.

In the user interface, on the top left, there are three rows of three slots and a die. On the top right is a villager profession selector. Below these two areas and the 4-row player inventory is an inventory with two rows (18 slots total), which belongs to the trade station.

For the rows on the top left, each row resembles a possible trade for the trade station to check. If the row is left empty, the trade station will skip checking that trade. The trade may be generated randomly (explained later) or set by modifying the trade slots' contents. (They are filter slots; they can be set by dragging items onto the slot, and the size can be changed by left and right-clicking the slot.)

When a trade matches (both inputs have the same items, including air, as the input filter while the size requested by the trade is less than or equal to the size set in the station; the output has the same item as the filter and the offered output's size is larger than or equal to that of the filter output) and the trade station has enough items in its inventory for input, the trade station will immediately perform a trade with the villager using the item in the station. The trade output will go to the station inventory, but the station does not collect the experience generated by villagers.

The random trade generation is configured with the profession selector and the die icon. First, select the profession of villager you want to trade with. Then, click the die icon on the row where you want to put the randomly generated trade. You can click the die again for another trade or modify the content of these randomly generated trades with mouse operations referred above to create an optimal trade.

A demonstration video from CovertJaguar is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-_A5Bm2XtU.

If you have a very crowded villager farm, you can put a trade station in the middle so that you can perform a trade you desire without checking each villager for the lowest price or talking to each villager and clicking through trades to make a deal.

A similar device that can interact with vanilla mobs and modify their AI is the Feed Station. They were both originally designed to encourage the usage of rail transport within Minecraft.

On the vanilla crafting table, four steel plates at ordinal directions (on the corners), four glass panes at cardinal directions (top, bottom, left, right), and an emerald in the center will produce one trade station.