Enchanting
Enchanting is a system in which the player trades experience to give armor, tools and books special boosts and abilities. Enchanted items have a transparent purple animation overlayed infront.
Contents
Enchanting methods
There are three ways to enchant an item in Survival mode:
- Through an enchantment table in exchange for experience. Only unenchanted items may be enchanted this way.
- Through an anvil, combining an enchanted book with an item.
- Through an anvil, combining two of the same item with different existing enchantments into a single item that has the enchantments of both.
A player may also obtain items already enchanted through fishing, which gives a chance of obtaining enchanted bows, fishing rods and books.
Players in worlds with cheats enabled can also enchant items using the /enchant command. In Creative mode, items can be enchanted via an anvil and enchanted books, with no experience required.
Enchantments
The Enchantments are upgrades given to certain tools, and those mostly come directly from Minecraft, and are sometimes increased in levels such as for Unbreaking (from a maximum of III-Minecraft, to level IV-Mine Blocks, as well as Protection IV-Minecraft, to Protection V-Mine Blocks). The maximum level for enchanting is 54.
The Level Requirement for Maximum Level column shows the minimum level needed to enchant an item with that enchantment at maximum level. This number can be useful, as if the player removes/adds bookshelves around the enchantment table so that a certain level to enchant at is more probable, it will be more likely to get an specific enchantment.
| Name | Summary | Maximum level | Level requirement for maximum level | Applicable to |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unbreaking | Gives a tool or weapon the chance to not use up a durability point when used. The higher the level, the greater chance that this will happen. | 4 | 20, apart from 10 for Balloons | Any tool |
| Protection | Reduces the overall damage taken from attacks. | 5 | 28 | Armor |
| Fire Protection | Reduces the damage taken from fire. This can be helpful against blazes, especially when combined with Fire Resistance potions. | 3 | 16 | Armor |
| Blast Protection | Reduces the damage taken from explosive damage. This can be helpful against creepers and when standing too close to a TNT's blast radius. | 3 | 14 | Armor |
| Projectile Protection | Reduces damage taken when hit by an arrow, fireball, or snowball. This can be helpful against blazes, skeletons, ghasts, and the ender dragon. | 3 | 17 | Armor |
| Feather Falling | Reduces fall damage. | 3 | 29 | Boots |
| Depth Strider | Increases movement speed in water. | 3 | 24 | Boots |
| Frost Walker | Turns water sources below the player's feet into frosted ice. | 2 | 29 | Boots |
| Thorns | Damages a mob that has dealt damage to the player. | 3 | 20 | Chestplates |
| Respiration | Increases the amount of time a player can hold their breath underwater without taking damage. | 3 | 18 | Helmets |
| Aqua Affinity | Increases mining speed underwater. | 1 | 10 | Helmets |
| Sharpness | Gives the weapon a chance of dealing one to two damage extra on the target, as if turning an iron sword into the equivalant of a diamond sword. | 4 | 27 | Swords, Axes |
| Smite | Increases damage dealt to undead foes. This includes: zombies, skeletons, and zombie pigmen. | 4 | 22 | Swords, Axes |
| Bane of Arthropods | Increases damage dealt with a weapon to arthropods, which currently only includes spiders. | 3 | 21 | Swords, Axes |
| Knockback | Knockback increases the distance an enemy is thrown back, farther with each level. This enchantment is useful for fighting creepers because it stops them from exploding, because it knocks them out of the distance close enough to the player for them to explode. | 3 | 24 | Swords, Axes |
| Fire Aspect | Sets the target on fire when hit. Meat-bearing animals will drop cooked meat when slain. | 1 | 20 | Swords, Axes |
| Looting | Increases the amount of drops given by a mob upon death, and increases the chance of a mob dropping a rare drop. | 3 | 25 | Swords, Axes |
| Efficiency | Increases speed at which a tool breaks blocks. | 2 | 20 | Pickaxes, Axes, Shovels, Shears |
| Silk Touch | Causes certain blocks to drop themselves instead of their normal drops. These blocks include stone, ores, grass, mycelium, glass, cobwebs, leaves long grass, shrub, desert shrub. mushroom caps, mushroom stems, and clay blocks. This enchantment is also mutually exclusive to fortune. | 1 | 14, apart from 23 for Axes | Pickaxes, Axes, Shovels, Shears |
| Fortune | Fortune is a special enchantment that gives the wielder of the enchanted tool a chance to gain more from mining something. Fortune works on coal ore, redstone ore, odd rock ore, diamond ore, topaz ore, lapis lazuli ore, ender gem ore, long grass, and clay blocks. The higher the level, the higher the probability of the block dropping a higher amount of drops. This enchantment is also mutually exclusive to silk touch. | 3 | 19, apart from 38 for Axes | Pickaxes, Axes, Shovels |
| Power | Increases the damage dealt by an arrow shot from the bow. | 3 | 26 | Bow |
| Punch | Increases the knockback dealt by an arrow shot from the bow. | 2 | 20 | Bow |
| Flame | Sets the entity hit by an arrow shot from the bow on fire. Cooked goods are dropped from meat-bearing mobs. | 1 | 20 | Bow |
| Infinity | Shooting from the bow does not use up an arrow, though at least one is still required in the inventory. | 1 | 20 | Bow |
| Lure | Decreases the time it takes to catch something while fishing. | 3 | 15 | Fishing rod |
| Luck of the Sea | Increases the chance of catching treasure with a fishing rod. | 3 | 20 | Fishing rod |
Commands
Since the 1.28 update, you can enchant your equipment by using commands. An example enchant code would be:
/enchant Unbreaking4 (the enchantment level can be specified by using either natural numbers (1 - 5) or roman numerals (I - V)). You can, also, repeat an level-1 enchantment command to increase the level of the enchantment (ex: repeating three times /enchant Unbreaking1 in a Balloon will make the Balloon have an Unbreaking III Enchantment).
| ID | Levels | Name |
|---|---|---|
| unbreaking | 4 | Unbreaking |
| protection | 5 | Protection |
| protectionFire | 3 | Fire Protection |
| protectionBlast | 3 | Blast Protection |
| protectionProjectile | 3 | Projectile Protection |
| protectionFalling | 3 | Feather Falling |
| depthStrider | 3 | Depth Strider |
| frostWalker | 2 | Frost Walker |
| thorns | 3 | Thorns |
| respiration | 3 | Respiration |
| aguaAffinity / aquaAffinity | 1 | Aqua Affinity |
| sharpness | 4 | Sharpness |
| smite | 4 | Smite |
| baneOfArthropods | 3 | Bane of Arthropods |
| knockback | 3 | Knockback |
| fireAspect | 1 | Fire Aspect |
| looting | 3 | Looting |
| efficiency | 2 | Efficiency |
| silkTouch | 1 | Silk Touch |
| fortune | 3 | Fortune |
| power | 3 | Power |
| punch | 2 | Punch |
| flame | 1 | Flame |
| infinity | 1 | Infinity |
| lure | 3 | Lure |
| luckOfTheSea | 3 | Luck of the Sea |
Tasks
| # | Task | Objective | Needs |
|---|---|---|---|
| 46 | Enchant an item | Use the enchantment table to enchant a item. |  |
History
| Version | Date | Changes |
|---|---|---|
| 1.25 | May 11, 2013 |
|
| 1.26.5 | Jul 03, 2014 |
|
| 1.27 | Nov 13, 2015 |
|
| 1.28 | Oct 08, 2016 |
|
| 1.29 | Sep 27, 2019 |
|
| 1.29.2 | Oct 20, 2019 |
|
Trivia
- You can name your shovel Bob and still be able to enchant it with Unbreaking and Silk Touch.
- Level 54 enchantments usually give 3-5 high level enchantments dependent on the type of tool being enchanted.
- Unlike Minecraft, there are not many mutually exclusive enchantments, except for Fortune and Silk Touch, meaning a sword can be enchanted with Sharpness, Smite and Bane of Arthropods at the same time, and a piece of armor can have both Fire Protection and Blast Protection.
- Although some enchantments are for only a certain group of tools or armor, with commands the player can put any enchantment on a tool or armor piece, such as Sharpness on a shovel.
Gallery
The interface of an enchantment table, with three available options.
An enchantment table with highest possible level.
