Day eight is the last day of The Merchant of Minecraft!, Michael Deering's February 2015 Minecraft Hardcore Challenge, where the most emeralds at the end of the eighth day wins. Basket starts it with 56 emeralds, a hotbar full of pork and a plan that fits in one sentence. "Today is the final day for this month's challenge so I'm going to try and get whatever resources I can."
One more round of trade screens
The morning village is quiet until a villager noise gives one away. Basket goes door to door: a leatherworker, a cleric who wants more rotten flesh than Basket has, a couple of shepherds. A farmer is the one worth the time, and after a few trades a new one opens up. "Let's unlock this trade." Then it's off across the plains to look for the other villages.
The butcher opens up
The next village has crops growing and a mixed crowd. "You're a string guy, that's kind of useless, and you're a paper person, okay, that's also useless, great." The butcher is still the problem from yesterday, with the pork trade crossed out in red. Basket trades on the butcher's other offers anyway, and this time it works. "Oh hey, he's happy now." The pork trade comes back, and the pork goes across.
There's a catch. "There's no farmer in this town, so I'll have to go back to that last town to try and trade the crops that I've been getting."
Pigs before dark
So Basket spends the rest of the daylight on the plains, hunting pigs for one more pork trade and passing some sugar cane planted days ago. The bone meal stays in the inventory for now, until Basket knows which crops a farmer will actually take.
Paper for the librarian
Back at the butcher's village after dark, the butcher takes the fresh pork and then has nothing else Basket can fill. The librarian is next. Basket crafts paper, trades one batch, and a new trade appears. "So I can trade books for emeralds, what a deal." Basket checks the direction and heads out into the night toward the village with a farmer, running hard. "We're sprinting so fast the mobs can't even spawn."
Bone meal by torchlight
At the farmer's village it takes a minute to find the right villager. "Farmer, where are you? Not there. There you go, Farmer." The wheat goes in, and then Basket works the farm in the dark: bone meal on the crops, harvest, replant, and torches along the rows. "Bone meal, bone meal, bone meal." Basket doesn't expect the last plantings to make it. "I don't think any of this stuff will grow in time, but might as well light it up."
Counting at sunrise
One last carrot goes to the farmer, and then the sky starts to lighten. "I see that the sun's coming up so I don't think I'll be able to do that in time." Basket opens the inventory and spreads the emeralds out to count them. "Yeah, it looks like 89. I have 89 emeralds. Hopefully that wins."
Looking back on the month, Basket thinks guarding one town was the wrong way to play for emeralds, and working several villages instead suited the goal. "At least for me, this seemed like it worked out pretty well." The challenge ends with Basket alive at sunrise in a village house next to two villagers, "these couple surviving villagers and I", holding 89 emeralds. The credits follow with no gameplay after them.