VMerchant

VMerchant

A living villager merchant economy for Fabric — persistent Merchant
Tables, simulated trade routes, negotiation, reputation, and player-built
Markets, all without turning villagers into a static shop menu.

VMerchant gives villagers a real trading profession tied to a Merchant
Table: they keep their normal villager life (sleeping, walking, village
integration), leave on simulated trade journeys, and come back to open a
limited trading window. Distance, the local village’s professions, and the
merchant’s own level all shape what’s on offer. Level up Tables, build
distant outposts, negotiate prices, earn reputation, and link Tables into
player-run Markets with shared dashboards and collective contracts — all the
way up to dedicated Nether and End economies.

✨ Highlights

• Persistent progression object — level, XP and stats live on the
  Merchant Table, not the villager. Break it, keep the glowing drop, replace
  it: progression carries over.
• Real villagers, real routines — merchants sleep, walk, and stay part
  of the village; no scripted shop NPCs.
• Simulated trade routes — merchants travel using real time, continuing
  across server shutdown, with no long-distance chunk loading required.
• Distance matters — longer routes mean bigger quantities, deeper sale
  stock and better rarity potential, with diminishing returns and
  configurable caps.
• Context-aware economy — nearby villager professions and levels shape
  what each merchant wants to buy.
• Negotiation — right-click an offer to negotiate once per rotation;
  the odds and formulas stay hidden.
• Reputation — five tiers from Unknown to Renowned, tracked per player,
  shared across dimensions, surviving reconnects and table destruction.
• Nether & End economies — their own item pools, longer minimum travel
  times, and a requirement to physically bring a villager into the
  dimension.
• Markets — group nearby Merchant Tables into a Market Registry with
  tiered capacity upgrades, a shared dashboard, and a central deposit.
• Collective contracts — large multi-player deliveries with shared,
  claimable Coin rewards.
• Exceptional contracts — a chance at a bonus high-value contract once
  a Table reaches level 5.
• Themed interfaces — dedicated burgundy/ivory merchant, market and
  collective screens with custom icons, departure/return sound and particle
  effects.

🏪 The Merchant Table

Craft one with 5 gold ingots, 2 planks, 1 bell and 1 chest, then bring a
villager to it to assign the profession. Right-click the villager or its
table during the day to trade: the top row holds six full-delivery
contracts, the bottom row holds Coin-priced sale lots. Left-click to trade,
right-click an offer to negotiate once.

🧳 Travel & lifecycle

Once its active window ends, a merchant departs on a simulated trip — real
time, no physical walking, travel continuing even while the server is
offline. When due, it returns near its table and opens a fresh rotation.
The timer pauses at night, while the villager sleeps, or while unloaded.

🤝 Negotiation & reputation

Negotiating an offer rolls a hidden outcome once per player, and the
result sticks for the rest of the rotation. Successful trades build
personal reputation, shown in-screen as a tier — Unknown, Recognized,
Appreciated, Respected or Renowned — while the raw numbers stay
server-side.

🌍 Nether & End merchants

Bring a villager into the Nether or the End and assign it to a table there
to unlock that dimension’s dedicated item pool — a 12-item Nether pool with
a 60-minute minimum trip, and a 10-item End pool with a 90-minute minimum
trip (Elytra and Dragon Eggs excluded from stock).

🏛️ Market Registry

Craft a Market Registry (5 gold ingots, 2 bells, 1 paper, 1 chest) and
place it near your Tables. Right-click empty-handed to attach nearby loaded
Tables and open its dashboard; sneak-right-click to detach all. Pay with
Coins and Netherite to upgrade tiers and raise capacity from 2 up to 8
member Tables.

📜 Collective contracts

Open a Market’s dashboard and start its collective contract: large,
dimension-specific deliveries split across resource lines that any
combination of players can fill. Each contributor earns a claimable Coin
share once their line is delivered — withdrawable at any registry, even
after the source table is gone.

⭐ Exceptional contracts

From table level 5, a rotation has a chance to add a seventh, glowing
contract: a tripled quantity at a boosted reward-per-item, pulled from one
of the current standard contracts. Delivered and negotiated the same way as
ordinary contracts.

⚙️ Requirements

┌──────────────┬───────────────────────────────────┐
│ │ │
├──────────────┼───────────────────────────────────┤
│ Minecraft │ 1.21.1 │
├──────────────┼───────────────────────────────────┤
│ Mod loader │ Fabric Loader │
├──────────────┼───────────────────────────────────┤
│ Dependencies │ Fabric API │
├──────────────┼───────────────────────────────────┤
│ Side │ Client + Server (install on both) │
└──────────────┴───────────────────────────────────┘

🔌 Optional integration

Native Coin payment is enabled by default. Set "mode": "veconomie" in
config/vmerchant-payment.json to route individual sales and contracts
through VEconomie’s ObjectShare service instead — no hard dependency, no
currency fallback surprises.

📁 Data & world saves

Merchant Table progression, routes, reputation, Market state and
collective-contract balances are stored in your world save
(vmerchant_collective.dat and related data). Back up your world folder
alongside any other mod data.

This mod is in active development — phases 0 through 19 are implemented;
balancing and release hardening (phase 20) are still in progress. Feedback
and bug reports welcome — see the Issues tab for this project.