What Is Paint’s Choosier Bartering?
If you’ve ever traded with piglins in the Nether, you know the drill: toss a gold ingot, wait for them to inspect it, and receive a random item from the bartering loot table. It’s a simple, predictable loop — but what if every piglin had its own unique stock? Paint’s Choosier Bartering turns that idea into a full-blown datapack, transforming piglin trading into a strategic hunt for the right bartering partner. Instead of drawing from the entire loot pool each time, every piglin now only offers 1 to 4 specific items, forcing you to examine them carefully and protect the ones that carry what you need.
How the Datapack Changes Bartering Mechanics
In vanilla Minecraft, piglins share a global loot table, and every barter pulls randomly from it. With this datapack, each piglin spawns with a personal set of tradable items drawn from that same table — but only a handful. The result is that you can no longer mindlessly throw gold at any piglin; you need to locate the ones that actually barter the items you want. The rarity of an item in the original table determines how likely a piglin is to have it in its offer list. This means the piglin carrying an enchanted book with Soul Speed is an extremely rare find, while one offering blackstone or gravel is far more common.
The odds are based on the vanilla bartering loot table weights. Here’s a breakdown of item rarity and their chances of appearing in a piglin’s personal offer set:
- Enchanted Book with Soul Speed: 5/459 chance
- Iron Boots with Soul Speed: 8/459 chance
- Splash Potion of Fire Resistance: 8/459 chance
- Potion of Fire Resistance: 8/459 chance
- Water Bottle: 10/459 chance
- Iron Nugget: 10/459 chance
- Ender Pearl: 10/459 chance
- String: 20/459 chance
- Quartz: 20/459 chance
- Obsidian: 40/459 chance
- Crying Obsidian: 40/459 chance
- Fire Charge: 40/459 chance
- Leather: 40/459 chance
- Soul Sand: 40/459 chance
- Nether Brick: 40/459 chance
- Spectral Arrow: 40/459 chance
- Gravel: 40/459 chance
- Blackstone: 40/459 chance
Keep in mind that a piglin can offer up to four different items, so the probability of finding a specific rare trade is higher than the raw fraction suggests. Still, hunting down that elusive Soul Speed book will test your patience and your ability to keep a special piglin alive amid ghasts and hoglins.
Gamerules for a Customized Experience
Version 2 of the datapack introduces four gamerules that let you fine-tune the bartering system. All are enabled by default, and you can toggle them by running /function paint:pcb/gamerules/change. A chat prompt will guide you through the options.
Show Offers
When you hold a gold ingot, nearby piglins will pause and display what they have to trade. This visual cue makes it much easier to identify valuable piglins without blindly bartering. If you enable the “Show known offers” variant, they only reveal items you’ve already obtained from them — unless you’ve bartered at least four times, in which case they show their entire stock. Note that this feature is disabled if the piglin has items in its inventory (due to a vanilla duplication bug) or if it has completely run out of items.
Limited Stock
With this gamerule active, piglins no longer have infinite supplies. Each item has a barter limit based on its rarity. Common blocks like blackstone or soul sand can be bartered 14–18 times, uncommon ones like string and quartz last 6–10 trades, rare items like ender pearls only 2–6 times, and the enchanted book might run out after just 1–4 barters. When a piglin’s stock is depleted, it will return your gold ingot — though it might try to pick it up again — and emit barrier particles to signal it has nothing left. This turns piglin management into a resource puzzle, where you must decide whether to protect a piglin for its rare loot or use it up quickly.
Self-Armor
Piglins who are bartered with repeatedly will gradually equip themselves with gold armor, provided they aren’t already wearing any. The cost in gold ingots mirrors the player crafting recipe: 4 ingots for boots, 5 for a helmet, 7 for leggings, and 8 for a chestplate. They always prioritize boots first, then helmet, leggings, and chestplate, and they never save up for a more expensive piece — they’re too impatient. While it’s unlikely they’ll run out of stock before gearing up fully, the possibility adds a layer of unpredictability to every encounter.
Checking a Piglin’s Offers in Creative Mode
If you’re building or testing in Creative, you can peek at a piglin’s barter list without spending gold. Stand near the piglin and run tag @e[type=piglin,limit=1,sort=nearest] list. The entity’s tags will reveal every item it can trade, and all affected piglins carry the pcb_piglin tag. This is a handy way to debug or simply scout for the perfect trading partner in your world.
Installation and Compatibility
Adding this datapack to your world is straightforward. If you’re using a modern launcher like the foxygame.net launcher, you can download and install mods and datapacks right from its built-in menu — a flexible and convenient way to manage your Minecraft setup without digging through folders. The datapack itself is completely safe to enable or disable at any time. It relies on entity tags and scoreboard scores, which simply become meaningless when the pack is removed, so nothing breaks. You can experiment freely, toggling gamerules to find the balance that suits your playstyle.
Why Paint’s Choosier Bartering Transforms the Nether
Instead of treating piglins as interchangeable loot dispensers, this datapack gives each one a personality and a purpose. Suddenly, you’re not just farming gold — you’re scouting, protecting, and even equipping your favorite traders. The limited stock mechanic encourages you to move deeper into the Nether to find fresh piglins, while the show-offers gamerule reduces guesswork. Whether you’re hunting for that perfect Soul Speed book or simply want a more immersive bartering system, Paint’s Choosier Bartering adds depth to an otherwise routine mechanic. It’s a small change that reshapes how you interact with one of Minecraft’s most iconic mobs, making every gold ingot feel like a deliberate investment rather than a blind gamble.