Piglin Bartering: Mechanics and Rewards

Key Takeaways

Point	Details
Piglin bartering is a	Piglin bartering is a renewable source of Nether items, controlled by the piglin_bartering loot table.
The barter cycle is	The barter cycle is 6.05 seconds in Java Edition and 8 seconds in Bedrock Edition.
In Bedrock Edition, angering	In Bedrock Edition, angering a piglin by breaking gold blocks instantly completes the barter, enabling rapid farming.
Soul Speed enchanted books	Soul Speed enchanted books are exclusive to bartering (~1.07% chance) and bastion remnant chests.
You can trick a	You can trick a piglin into dropping Soul Speed boots by offering it a pair of golden boots.

Piglin bartering is a core Nether mechanic that turns gold ingots into valuable items. For more on trading mechanics, see Understanding Minecraft Vanilla Trading. It's the only renewable source for several unique materials and a key part of the Nether's economy.

The Minecraft Wiki page on Bartering defines the mechanic:

Bartering is a gameplay mechanic that allows players to exchange gold ingots for various items with piglins.

How to Start a Trade

You need an adult piglin. Wearing at least one piece of golden armor keeps them neutral, so you can trade safely. You can either throw a gold ingot on the ground near the piglin or use the ingot while looking directly at it. The piglin will pick it up and examine it.

Baby piglins are useless for trading. The Bartering page notes:

Baby piglins take the ingot, but do not barter; they instead store the ingot in their inventory.

Piglin brutes, the larger axe-wielding variants found in bastion remnants, also completely ignore gold ingots and cannot be bartered with.

Barring Cycle Times and Edition Quirks

The time it takes for a piglin to complete a barter differs between Java and Bedrock Editions. The full cycle time, from when a piglin accepts an ingot until it accepts the next one, is a key difference:

The full cycle time, from when a piglin accepts an ingot until it accepts the next ingot, is 6.05 seconds (121 gameticks) in Java Edition and 8 seconds (160 gameticks) in Bedrock Edition.

If a piglin is angered while examining a gold ingot by breaking a container or gold block nearby, its behavior changes. In Bedrock Edition, this leads to a unique farming trick:

In Bedrock Edition, the piglin immediately finishes the barter and starts attacking the player, leading to a bartering transaction much shorter than the default 8 seconds.

This allows piglins in Bedrock Edition to barter rapidly when gold-related blocks are repeatedly broken or pushed by pistons.

Rewards: What You Can Get

The rewards are controlled by the piglin_bartering loot table. One of the most sought-after items is the Soul Speed enchanted book. The Enchanted Book page specifies the exact odds:

Players can barter with piglins by using or throwing gold ingots, and doing so has a 5⁄459 (~1.07%) chance for piglins to give the player an enchanted book with any level of Soul Speed.

Soul Speed enchanted books are obtainable only through bartering or chest loot inside a bastion remnant. They cannot be obtained through enchanting, trading, or fishing.

Occasionally, a piglin will pick up and equip the iron boots enchanted with Soul Speed that it just offered. To recover them without killing the piglin:

A player wanting to obtain the iron boots without killing the piglin can induce the piglin to discard the iron boots by offering a pair of golden boots.

Other common rewards include crying obsidian, nether quartz, soul sand, dried ghasts, leather, string, and flint.