Best Enchantments in Minecraft

If you want to survive in Minecraft, you need to know how to enchant. I'll go over the best enchantments for every weapon, tool, and piece of armor in the game to keep you alive and well.

What are the best enchantments in Minecraft?

Minecraft has around 43 enchantments across all of its weapons, tools, and armor. It can be difficult to choose which enchantments to place on your gear, especially since the Enchanting Table randomizes which enchantments it adds. If you're not sure which enchantments to use, our list of the best Minecraft enchantments will help you decide which ones are right for you.

Best Overall Minecraft enchantments for tools, weapons, and armor

If you're looking for the top Minecraft enchantments for tools and weapons, there are two that stand above the rest. These enchantments can be added to everything from pickaxes to boots and Elytra. Their versatility and convenience make them the best overall enchantments in the game.

Unbreaking

Unbreaking is the best Minecraft enchantment, and one that should be on every single item you enchant. When an item is enchanted with Unbreaking, it has a chance to avoid losing durability every time you use it. This greatly increases the lifespan of any item that is enchanted with it. When paired with Mending, you'll never need to replace your weapons, tools, or armor again!

Mending

While Unbreaking prevents your items from losing durability, Mending helps repair them. Its primary purpose is to replenish your gear's durability by absorbing dropped experience orbs. These experience orbs can come from a variety of sources, including slaying mobs, mining, and fishing. Pairing an item already enchanted with Unbreaking with Mending guarantees your equipment will never break as long as you replenish it with experience. However, be careful about placing it on bows as a bow enchanted with Mending cannot also be enchanted with Infinity.

The easiest way to take advantage of Mending is to either build a mob farm or mine a lot of Sculk. Both options will drop a lot of experience at once, allowing your equipment to repair much faster than any other method. Just make sure that you are either using the item you want to repair or holding it in your left hand while using another item to gather the experience orbs.

Essential Enchantments for Survival Mode

This list contains the best enchantments for every piece of gear while playing Minecraft survival. The enchantments listed here focus on helping you with PvE combat, moving quickly, and gathering lots of resources as fast as possible.

Best Armor Enchantments in Minecraft

These armor enchantments will keep you safe in your Minecraft world.

All Armor

Every piece of armor you own should have one of the four Protection enchantments on it. The regular version of Protection will reduce the overall damage you take, while the other three reduce damage taken from specific sources.

One piece of armor can only have one Protection enchantment on it, so you'll want to carefully decide which one you need. While deciding, keep in mind that there are limits to how much Protection can do for you. An enchanted suit of armor can only reduce up to 80% of damage taken, with Blast and Fire Protections having a 60% cap on their knockback and fire time reductions.

• Protection: Reduces damage taken from outside sources, except the Warden's sonic boom attack. It adds 4% of armor protection for each level of the enchantment. If you enchant an entire suit of armor with Protection IV, it will add 64% of armor protection. It's a great choice for beginners and those who spend most of their time in the Overworld.
• Blast Protection: Reduces the damages taken from explosions only. It provides 8% blast protection per level, plus reduces knockback from explosions by 15% per enchantment level. It's a good choice for Nether players who want to prepare to fight Ghasts. It would also be handy for cave exploration as it could prevent exploding Creepers from knocking you off ledges.
• Fire Protection: Reduces all fire damage taken by the player by 8% per enchantment level. It also reduces the time a player is on fire by 15% per enchantment level. If you're planning on exploring the Nether extensively, you'll want to put Fire Protection on at least one piece of armor.
• Projectile Protection: Reduces the damage from projectiles by 8% per enchantment level. It's good for PvP situations where you anticipate a lot of long-distance combat, but not as useful in regular Survival mode compared to the previous three options.

Helmets

The best enchantments for Helmets center around exploring underwater. If you plan on taking on Ocean Monuments, caverns, or other underwater structures, you'll want these enchantments with you.

• Aqua Affinity: Aqua Affinity allows you to mine as quickly underwater as you would on land. This one is a must for gathering materials like Prismarine and coral.
• Respiration: Allows you to breathe underwater longer by 15 seconds per enchantment level. It also gives you the chance to not take drowning damage each second, further increasing how much time you can spend underwater. You'll need it for longer underwater tasks like exploring caves and excavating ocean ruins. Combine it with Aqua Affinity to ensure your time underwater goes just as easily as any exploring and gathering you do on land.

Boots

To upgrade your boots, you'll want to use utility enchantments that both protect you from environmental effects and help you move around more easily.

• Feather Falling: Feather Falling is the essential enchantment for boots because it reduces the amount of fall damage a player takes. With the tall cliffs and deep caves of Minecraft, it's sure to save your life while you explore the world around you. If you're planning on using a mace, especially one enchanted with Wind Burst, you really need to add this enchantment to your boots.
• Depth Strider: Depth Strider removes the speed penalty while moving underwater. It is best used for exploring underwater caves and structures in combination with a Helmet enchanted with Aqua Affinity and Respiration.
• Frost Walker: Frost Walker turns water blocks beneath your feet into ice, allowing you to walk over them easily. It also prevents you from taking damage when walking over magma blocks. Frost Walker cannot be combined with Depth Strider, so I would recommend using it on a pair of boots meant for the Nether or if you're wanting to walk across an ocean.

Best Weapon Enchantments in Minecraft

Enchanting your weapons properly will help you defeat even the strongest enemies with ease. This list is centered around fighting against enemy mobs in a Survival world. However, many of them will be just as useful in PVP combat against other players.

Swords

The best enchantments for swords are centered around doing more damage and getting more loot from mobs.

• Looting: Looting both increases the number of items a mob drops and increases the chance for rare items to drop. If you need to gather large amounts of a mob drop, like gunpowder for fireworks, you'll want to use a sword with Looting III to fight Creepers. Additionally, you'll want to use it when trying to get enough Wither Skeleton Heads to take on the Wither.
• Sharpness or Smite: Sharpness increases the amount of damage your sword does against all mobs, while Smite increases the damage done to undead mobs only. The category of undead mobs includes all zombies, skeletons, phantoms, drowned, and even the Wither. If you fight these undead mobs a lot, pick up Smite. If you don't, choose Sharpness instead.
• Fire Aspect: Fire Aspect adds four seconds of burning per enchantment level to the enemy hit by your sword. It is especially handy for killing farm animals as they will drop cooked meat instead of raw. If using it for this purpose, you'll want to add the highest level of looting possible to your sword so you can gather a lot of food at once. This enchantment isn't as ideal for Nether adventures as most of the mobs will be immune to the fire damage.

Maces

There are three mace-specific enchantments, but I would only recommend two of them for survival mode. They each increase the mace's already-immense power to help you take out enemies in just a single blow. Additionally, there is one weapon enchantment that will increase your power without taking away from the other two enchantments.

• Density: The Density enchantment increases the damage done by a mace's Smash Attack based upon how many blocks you fall before the attack. At it's highest level, it will increase the damage of your Smash Attacks by 1.25 hearts for every block you fall. This means even powerful enemies like the Warden can be dealt a heavy blow if you attack them from a high-enough ledge. Density cannot be used in combination with the Breach enchantment, but that won't be a problem if you're not playing against armored enemies, like in PvP.
• Wind Burst: After committing a Smash Attack, this enchantment will shoot you back into the air. The height you reach depends on how high of a level the enchantment is. This makes it possible for you to consistently deal heavy amounts of damage to enemies in a lower area before immediately safely returning to higher ground. However, do be careful as missing a Smash Attack after bouncing into the air with this enchantment could easily be fatal.
• Fire Aspect: Fire Aspect is just as useful for maces as it is for swords. It causes hit enemies to become lit on fire for a designated duration, dealing extra damage to enemies and causing animals to drop cooked meat. It's a good way to add extra damage to your attacks without limiting any of the other enchantments available.

Bows

Like with the sword's enchantments, most of the best bow enchantments in Minecraft increase the amount and type of damage a bow does. The only exception is the final enchantment, which helps players with an arrow shortage keep using their bow.

• Power: Increases the damage done by an arrow by 25% times the enchantment level plus one. This means that Power I adds an extra 50% of damage to an arrow, while Power V adds a whopping 150%. If you can only put one enchantment on your bow, Power V is the one to go for.
• Punch: Punch adds three blocks of knockback distance to an arrow per enchantment level. It's great for knocking enemies off of cliffs and can even be used in combination with the Elytra to keep yourself in the air if you don't have fireworks.
• Flame: Fired arrows will set hit mobs on fire, dealing 5 fire damage over 5 seconds. This makes it perfect for dealing extra damage to foes without having to get in close. However, the Flame enchantment will not take effect if an arrow is fired through water or in the rain.
• Infinity: Allows a bow to shoot the same regular arrow forever. Spectral and tipped arrows will still be consumed on use. Infinity cannot be combined with Mending, so you'll need to decide which to use based on how easy it is for you to get flint or arrows.

Crossbows

These crossbow enchantments can make the crossbow outshoot a regular bow and arrow any day.

• Quick Charge: This enchantment essentially decreases your Crossbow's reload time. Combine the faster reload with one of the damaging enchantments below to make your crossbow an extremely powerful weapon against both mobs and other players.
• Multishot or Piercing: You can only have one of these enchantments on your Crossbow. Which one you should choose largely depends on how you play the game.
  • Multishot fires three arrows at once in a triangle, so I would recommend it if you usually play out in the open. It costs extra durability, so you'll want to have Mending and Unbreaking on your crossbow as well.
  • Piercing makes arrows shoot through your opponent into whatever is behind them. The amount of mobs it can shoot through is equal to the level of the enchantment plus one. It's perfect for those who prefer to stick to caves or other narrow areas.

Tridents

Before enchanting a Trident, make sure you know which enchantments cannot be used together. I recommend having two Tridents—one using Riptide for transportation and the other using Loyalty and Channeling for fighting.

• Riptide: Riptide allows for fast transportation for the player under specific conditions. If the player is standing in water, rain, or snow, they can throw the Riptide-enchanted Trident to essentially ride it through the air. When combined with an Elytra, it is one of the fastest methods of transportation in Survival Minecraft. It cannot be used with either the Channeling or Loyalty enchantments.

• Impaling: Impaling adds an extra 2.5 hearts of damage per enchantment level. This only applies to aquatic mobs in Java Edition. However, in Bedrock Edition, this applies to all mobs and players who are in water, including those in the rain. If you are planning to raid an Ocean Monument, this is a great enchantment to have on your Trident.
• Loyalty: Loyalty is a special enchantment that allows your Trident to return to you after a specific amount of time. The Trident will return to you faster as the level of Loyalty increases.
• Channeling: A trident enchanted with Channeling will summon a lightning strike onto the mob it hits. This only occurs if there is an active thunderstorm in the area and the mob is exposed to the sky. If the correct conditions are met, each of the mobs below changes into the following when struck by a lightning strike:
  • Creeper: Charged Creeper
  • Villager: Witch
  • Pigs: Zombified Piglins
  • Mooshrooms: Opposite color Mooshroom

Axes

While axes are traditionally used as a tool for chopping trees, they can also be used as a weapon. In Java Edition, they actually do more damage than swords with a lower attack speed. In Survival mode, there are only two achievements that will always be useful on an axe when used as a weapon.

• Sharpness: Sharpness is the go-to achievement in survival because it increases an axe's damage against mobs. This will always be useful as it will allow you to defeat enemies faster in any situation. It cannot be combined with Smite, so make sure you want this enchantment when adding it.
• Smite: Smite is essentially a stronger version of Sharpness that only activates when fighting undead mobs. This includes enemies like zombies and the Drowned. If you already own a sword with the Sharpness enchantment, I'd recommend putting Smite on your axe so you can have an advantage against attacking zombies. This is especially true for players like myself who spend time chopping trees at night.

Best Tool Enchantments in Minecraft

These enchantments will not only keep your tools working longer but will also bring in more loot!

Fortune

Fortune is one of the most popular enchantments because it increases the amount of resources mined blocks drop. Each tool enchanted with this will cause increased drop rates for certain blocks. It's especially important for gathering diamonds, saplings, and apples for golden apples.

• Pickaxes: All mined ores will drop more of their minerals.
• Axes: Chopped trees will drop more apples, saplings, and sticks.
• Hoes: Hoes will be able to get more wheat seeds, beetroot seeds, carrots, potatoes, and even saplings from leaves.
• Shovels: Mined gravel will drop flint nearly 100% of the time.

Efficiency

Efficiency increases the speed at which your tool mines blocks. For the best effect, you'll want to use Efficiency V and combine it with Unbreaking to prevent your tools from being destroyed. The speed added by the Efficiency enchantment is equal to the level of the enchantment squared plus one.

Silk Touch

Silk Touch makes it so the blocks you mine drop the blocks themselves rather than raw materials. An example of this would be that using Silk Touch on a Diamond Ore Block will make it drop a Diamond Ore Block rather than a diamond. This is especially helpful for players who want to gather dirt-based blocks like Mycelium, Grass, and Podzol.

However, keep in mind that a tool cannot be enchanted with both Silk Touch and Fortune. I highly recommend enchanting your best tools with Fortune and using Silk Touch on only a few tools used specifically for gathering certain blocks that would otherwise be unobtainable.

Best Minecraft Fishing Rod Enchantments

Minecraft only has two fishing rod-specific enchantments. They're both very helpful, so you'll want to get both on your rod as soon as possible.

Lure

Whether you're fishing for food or for treasure, the Lure enchantment is a necessity. Lure decreases the time between catches by 5 seconds per level. This allows fishing rods with Lure III to catch a fish every few seconds. The increased catch rate of Lure combined with the improved odds of finding rare treasures with Luck of the Sea will greatly increase the amount of items you catch that have low drop rates, like name tags.

Luck of the Sea

This enchantment increases the chance of finding rare treasure while fishing by 2% per level. At the same time, it reduces the chance of catching junk by 2% per level. If you want to stock up on nametags and Enchanted Books, you'll want the Luck of the Sea on your side.

Best Minecraft Shield Enchantments

Unlike the other tools and weapons on this list, there are no enchantments made specifically for the shield. Instead, it can only be enchanted with Mending and Unbreaking using Enchanted Books and an Anvil.

If you try to place a shield in an Enchanting Table, nothing will happen.

Best Minecraft Elytra Enchantments

Like the Shield, the only enchantments that can be added to the Elytra are Mending and Unbreaking. We recommend using both to decrease the resources required to maintain it.

Best Minecraft Enchantments for the Nether

If you're wanting to enchant gear for the Nether, you'll want to use a few specific enchantments to make your life easier. These are in addition to the armor, weapons, and tools enchantments mentioned previously.

• Fire Protection: With all of the fire mobs and lava in the Nether, you'll need to protect yourself from their flames. When enchanting your armor, enchant at least two of the pieces with Fire Protection instead of one of the other variations. As mentioned previously, it will reduce all fire damage by 8% per level. It will also reduce the time a player is on fire by 15%, with the maximum time reduced being 60% of the original time.
• Soul Speed: Soul Speed is a boots enchantment that increases the speed at which you walk on Soul Sand and Soul Soil. However, running on Soul Sand with the Soul Speed enchantment causes the durability of your boots to decrease faster. Because of this, we strongly recommend also having the Mending and Unbreaking enchantments on your Soul Speed boots.
• Knockback: If you're planning on exploring Nether Fortresses and Bastions, you'll want Knockback on your sword. This will increase how far mobs are thrown from you when hit, which can save your life when facing enemies like the Wither Skeletons.

Best Minecraft combat enchantments for PVP

While most of the enchantments for Survival mode will work in PvP, there are a few substitutions you should make to give yourself a higher chance of winning battles. The following list contains the top Minecraft PVP enchantments you'll want to use during your next fight.

• Curse of Vanishing: The Curse of Vanishing makes any gear enchanted with it disappear as soon as its wearer dies. While this is not at all helpful in survival, it's perfect for ensuring that you don't give your perfectly enchanted gear to anyone who defeats you in combat. It's the best way of one-upping your opponent even after losing.
• Efficiency: When applied to an axe, the Efficiency enchantment gives players a 25% chance of disabling an opponent's shield for a duration of 5 seconds. An axe enchanted with Efficiency will have the odds of disabling a shield increased by 5% per enchantment level. It could give you the upper hand in a battle by disrupting your opponent's attempts to block and counter-attack.
• Breach: Breach is a mace enchantment that reduces the effectiveness of an enemy's armor by 15% per level. It's ideal for taking on other players since they'll likely be wearing plenty of enchanted gear. If you combine it with Wind Burst, you could deal devastating damage to enemies while constantly knocking yourself out of the range of melee-weapon users.

Minecraft Enchanting Tips for New Players

This short Minecraft enchantment guide for beginners will help you master all you need to know about enchanting.

How to enchant items in Minecraft

There are two methods for enchanting items in Minecraft. The first requires combining the item you want to enchant with one to three pieces of lapis lazuli on an enchantment table. After placing these items, the enchanting table will show three enchantment slots, the amount of lapis lazuli required, and how many experience levels each enchantment will cost. Each slot will show one guaranteed enchantment and its level, with the more expensive slots being likely to also throw in a few random enchantments at higher levels. Clicking one of these slots will enchant the item and use up both the lapis and the experience.

The other way to enchant an item is by combining it with an enchanted book on an anvil. In this way, you can put any enchantments you would like onto an item.

How to get Enchanted Books in Minecraft

Within Survival mode, obtaining specific enchantments for particular tools, like Unbreaking for shields, is exclusively possible through Enchanted Books. Enchanted Books are crafted using an Enchanted Table, lapis lazuli, and experience points.

You can also find them naturally in hidden chests or purchase them from a Librarian villager. Getting them from a Librarian villager is ideal because it makes it a lot easier for you to stack enchanted books to level them up.

How do you get the highest-level enchantments in Minecraft?

The easiest way to raise your enchantments to the highest level is through the use of Enchanted Books. Placing two Enchanted Books of the same enchantment and level into an anvil will create a single enchanted book containing the next highest level of that enchantment. For example, placing two Blast Protection I books into an anvil creates one Blast Protection II book.

However, you can also increase your the level of an enchantment on an item through enchantment stacking/

How to stacking enchantments in Minecraft

Stacking enchantments refers to the process of combining an enchanted item with another item with the same enchantment to raise the enchantment's level on the first item. It is a great way to ensure you get a high-level version of an enchantment, but it's a finicky process. There are two main ways to combine enchantments in Minecraft, each of which I'll describe below.

The Enchanted Book method

Of the two methods, this one is the most consistent and requires the least amount of resources. To start, you'll need to enchant books until you get one containing the enchantment you're looking for at the right level. You can then combine this book with your enchanted item for a chance to raise the enchantment's level on the item.

In the image above, I combined a Diamond Sword with the Sharpness III enchantment with a Sharpness III Enchanted Book to give the resulting sword Sharpness IV.

The item combination method

This method requires a lot more resources but is perfect if you've gathered a lot of enchanted gear in your world. It involves combining two items of the same type with the same enchantment at the same level in hopes of creating a new version of the item with the enchantment at the next level.

In the example above, I combined two Diamond Swords with the Looting II Enchantment to create a better Diamond Sword with Looting III.

What Minecraft enchantments can not be used together?

There are a few enchantments in Minecraft that cannot be placed on the same piece of equipment in Survival Minecraft.

The conflicting enchantments include:

• Protection, Blast Protection, Fire Protection, and Projectile Protection cannot be placed on the same piece of armor.
• Crossbows cannot have both Multishot and Piercing.
• Bows cannot have both Mending and Infinity.
• Sharpness, Smite, Bane of Arthropods, and Cleaving cannot be on the same sword.
• Frost Walker and Depth Strider cannot be on the same pair of boots.
• A Trident cannot combine either Loyalty or Channeling with Riptide.
• Tools cannot have both Fortune and Silk Touch.
• A Mace can only have Density or Breach, not both.

How to disenchant items in Minecraft

Disenchantment is the process of removing enchantments from an item. If you've accidentally added a conflicting enchantment to an item or got bad enchantments from the Enchantment Table, you'll need to know how to disenchant. To disenchant an item, all you need to do is place it into a Grindstone.

This will remove all of the enchantments from the item. You will also get some experience back, depending on which enchantments were removed. However, this will not remove the Curse of Binding or the Curse of Vanishing.

For more Minecraft enchantments, check out How many bookshelves are needed for Level 30 Enchantments in Minecraft here on Pro Game Guides.