The Best Enchantments for Every Item

Enchanting is the difference between barely surviving a single Trial Chamber and farming them in your sleep. The wrong enchant order, though, will lock you out of further upgrades thanks to the dreaded “Too Expensive!” message. This guide covers everything: which enchants matter, which conflict, and the anvil order that actually works.

The Two Enchants You Want on Everything

Before we talk specifics, two enchants belong on almost every piece of gear you ever own:

Mending

Mending repairs your item using XP orbs that would otherwise go to your level bar. A Mending tool that you actively use lasts forever — you literally never have to replace it. The catch is that you cannot enchant Mending at an enchanting table; you have to find a Mending book from a librarian villager, fishing, or a chest loot pool.

Unbreaking III

Unbreaking III on a piece of armor only makes it last about 43% longer, but for a tool or weapon, its effective durability is quadrupled. Combined with Mending, you get an item that effectively cannot break under normal play.

Armor: Defending Your Hearts

Protection IV (or a Protection Variant)

Protection IV is the workhorse enchant for every armor piece. Each level grants damage reduction against most sources except poison and status effects. Putting Protection IV on all four pieces is the standard endgame loadout.

However, the four Protection variants — Protection, Fire Protection, Blast Protection, Projectile Protection — cannot stack on the same piece. Specialized protections reduce that specific damage type by twice as much per level. The trade-off:

Per-Piece Specialties

Helmet: Add Respiration III (longer breath underwater) and Aqua Affinity (full mining speed underwater). Both fit together since neither competes with Protection.

Chestplate: Just Protection + Unbreaking + Mending. There’s nothing else to add.

Leggings: Add Swift Sneak III, which is one of the rarest enchants in the game — only found in Ancient City chests. It lets you sneak almost at walking speed, essential for Warden runs.

Boots: Multiple choices that conflict:

• Feather Falling IV — reduces fall damage by 48%. Mandatory.
• Depth Strider III — near-walking-speed swimming. Or...
• Frost Walker II — freezes water into walkable ice. Cannot combine with Depth Strider.
• Soul Speed III — sprint normally on soul sand. Only obtained from Piglin barter.

Weapons: Dealing the Damage

Sword

The textbook end-game sword loadout: Sharpness V, Unbreaking III, Mending, Looting III, Sweeping Edge III, Fire Aspect II. In Bedrock there’s no Sweeping Edge, so you slot in something else.

• Sharpness V adds +3 damage per hit in Java (+6.25 in Bedrock). Most generally useful damage enchant.
• Smite V adds +12.5 damage against undead specifically. If you’re grinding wither skeletons or running raids, Smite outdamages Sharpness by a wide margin.
• Bane of Arthropods V hits spiders/silverfish hard. Niche but devastating in their habitats.
• Looting III increases mob drop chances — essential for wither skull farms.
• Fire Aspect II sets enemies on fire, also auto-cooks the food drops from animals (cooked steak from cows directly).

Sharpness, Smite, and Bane of Arthropods cannot combine. Pick one based on what you fight most.

Bow

Bows boil down to one key decision: Infinity or Mending. You cannot have both. Pick Mending for endgame use (one arrow stack lasts forever); pick Infinity if you have no Mending book yet.

Full kit: Power V, Punch II, Flame I, Unbreaking III, Infinity OR Mending.

Crossbow

Crossbows compete with bows for the projectile slot. They fire slower but hit harder, and they accept a unique enchant pair: Multishot (3 arrows in a spread) or Piercing IV (single arrow penetrates up to 5 mobs). Pick Piercing for the Wither fight, Multishot for crowd control. Always pair with Quick Charge III, which slashes reload from 1.25s to under 0.4s.

Trident

Tridents are versatile but split into two roles you can’t combine: Loyalty (it returns to your hand when thrown) and Riptide (it launches you forward through water/rain). Most veterans craft two tridents: one Loyalty for combat, one Riptide for travel.

Loyalty trident: Loyalty III, Channeling, Impaling V, Unbreaking III, Mending. Channeling spawns lightning on hit during thunderstorms — a great mob-head farm trick when paired with charged-creeper explosions.

Mace (1.21+)

The Mace is its own beast. See our dedicated Mace guide for full builds. Short version: Density V + Breach IV + Mending + Unbreaking III, then dive from height.

Tools: Mining and Building Faster

Pickaxe (Make Two!)

Silk Touch and Fortune cannot coexist. You need both. The standard loadout for each:

• Fortune III pickaxe: Efficiency V, Unbreaking III, Mending, Fortune III. For diamond, emerald, lapis, redstone, and ancient debris.
• Silk Touch pickaxe: Efficiency V, Unbreaking III, Mending, Silk Touch. For ice, glass, ender chests, sea lanterns, glowstone, and grass blocks.

Axe

Axes can be used as weapons too, accepting Sharpness/Smite/Bane just like swords. A common second-weapon kit: Sharpness V, Efficiency V, Unbreaking III, Mending. The axe’s slower swing trades for higher per-hit damage and shield disabling.

Shovel

Same template as pickaxe minus Fortune (Fortune only affects gravel-flint drops here): Efficiency V, Unbreaking III, Mending. Optional Silk Touch for grass paths and snow blocks.

Fishing Rod

If you AFK fish at all: Luck of the Sea III, Lure III, Unbreaking III, Mending. Luck of the Sea reduces junk drops and increases treasure odds. Lure III cuts catch time roughly in half.

Anvil Order: The Real Trap

Every time you use the anvil it adds a “work penalty” to the item. After enough operations the next combination becomes “Too Expensive!” (more than 39 levels). The fix is to combine books with books first in a tournament-bracket pattern, then apply the final mega-book to the item.

Stage 1 (combine books):
  Sharp V book + Looting III book = combined book A
  Unbreaking III + Mending      = combined book B
  Fire Aspect II + Sweep Edge III = combined book C

Stage 2:
  Book A + Book B = mega-book AB

Stage 3:
  Mega-book AB + Book C = final book ABC

Stage 4:
  Sword + final book ABC = fully enchanted sword

For tools/armor you plan to push to full enchants, always start with the best base item you can get from villager trading or a high-level enchanting table — combining lower-level books up to V is much more expensive than starting with a Sharpness V book directly.

Where to Get Enchantment Books

• Villager Librarians — the best source by far. Place lecterns near jobless villagers, lock in a librarian, and reset its trades by breaking and replacing the lectern until you see the book you want. Mending and Silk Touch are common targets.
• Fishing — with Luck of the Sea III you get an enchanted book every few catches on average.
• Chest Loot — Ancient City, Stronghold, and Trial Chamber Vaults all spit out enchanted books.
• Enchanting Table — surround it with 15 bookshelves for the level-30 enchant slot. Random, but stockpiles books fast if you spam lapis.

The Enchants You Should Skip

• Thorns III — damages attackers but eats your armor durability twice as fast. Skip unless you’re doing a meme build.
• Bane of Arthropods in a general-purpose sword — spiders die fast anyway; you lose Sharpness for almost no benefit.
• Curse of Vanishing / Curse of Binding — these are downsides. Use a grindstone to remove them. The only time they’re acceptable is on hardcore-mode PvP gear so it doesn’t drop.

TL;DR Cheat Sheet

Print this, screenshot it, or memorize it — either way, your gear progression is now solved. Up next, put that gear to work in our Trial Chambers guide or get ready for the Nether with our Nether survival manual.