Want to get a little more out of your Pickaxe? Tired of taking forever to chop down a tree? Our Best Minecraft Enchantments Guide will tell you the best enchantments to get for all of your tools! Whether you’re looking to power up your bow or mine like a maniacal dwarf, we’ve got you covered!
Before you can enchant anything, you’re going to need to get an enchanting table, some books, some lapis lazuli, and a boatload of experience. Read our Minecraft XP Fast 1.14 guide to find out the fastest and easiest way to level up!
Bear in mind that all of these enchantments are for Diamond-level equipment — don’t waste your enchantments on Iron (or, goodness forbid, Stone) tools!
Best Minecraft Enchantments Guide | Best weapon & tool enchantments
The importance of Mending
There are a bunch of different enchantments for every item in the game. One of the most important is surely Mending — it allows you to automatically repair items when you pick up XP while holding it. This is most easily found from Librarians in villages, so track one down and make sure he’s safe! Mending ensures that you won’t ever have to replace your tools so long as you have a constant income of XP; it’s easily the most valuable enchantment in the game.
Why is Mending so important? Well, when your durability gets low, your only options are to combine two tools together at an Anvil or use the base material (a single bar of Iron, a single Diamond, etc.) to repair it. Each successive repair gets more expensive and you eventually will be unable to repair your items. Mending gets around this problem.
There’s one important note on Mending in our Best Minecraft Enchantments Guide — it’s bugged and it won’t work well if you’re wearing enchanted armor. I advise against enchanting armor with Mending entirely; you’re still going to be saving diamonds by not having to make new weapons and it saves you a lot of micromanagement.
To repair your tools with Mending, simply hold it in your hand and pick up experience. This is a litttle harder for things like Shovels and Axes as you’ll have to switch to them after the XP orbs drop, but it is still very doable (especially with an XP farm full of animals!).
Unbreaking III
Pretty much everything on this list will have Unbreaking III; this will extend the life of your equipment significantly and give you a nice buffer before you have to head back to an XP farm, kill mobs, or mine ore to make repairss. Consider it just as standard as Mending!
Sword
- Unbreaking IIII
- Mending
- Sharpness V
- Sweeping Edge III
Sharpness V and Sweeping Edge III will increase the damage significantly. You could create specialist swords with Bane of Arthropods or Smite that will do more damage to certain enemies, but I’ve found the generic Sharpness to be much more useful.
Bow
- Unbreaking III
- Mending
- Power V
- Flame
Power V increases your damage as high as possible, and Flame will set enemies on fire for even more damage. Infinity is a nice choice for saving arrows, but you can’t have Infinity and Mending on a bow at the same time without cheating. If you’re playing honestly, Mending is clearly the superior choice — arrows are much cheaper to get than diamonds!
Crossbow
- Unbreaking III
- Mending
- Quick Charge III
- Piercing IV or Multishot
The Crossbow is brand-new to Minecraft; it fires farther and can do more damage, but it takes longer to reload. Quick Charge III lets you reload faster.
You can have either Piercing IV or Multishot for your fourth enchantment as they’re mutually exclusive. Piercing will go through one extra enemy for every level, turning it into a sort of railgun. Multishot fires three arrows instead of one, effectively making it a shotgun. I’m more fond of Multishot, but both choices are valid!
Pickaxe
- Unbreaking III
- Mending
- Efficiency V
- Fortune III or Silk Touch
Mending on a Pickaxe lets you repair your pickaxe by mining ore like Coal and Diamonds! Efficiency V speeds up your Mining, and Fortune III will get you more Coal, Diamonds, and the like from every block! Alternatively, replace Fortune III with Silk Touch to get the ore blocks and other items without breaking them.
Shovel
- Unbreaking III
- Mending
- Efficiency IV—Efficiency V
- (Optional) Fortune III
If your game lags or you’re playing online, you might only want Efficiency IV to prevent lag errors from creating “ghost” blocks and making it hard to move; essentially, you might dig up blocks so fast with Efficiency V that the server and/or game client can’t keep up.
Fortune III is a nice option for a specialist scenario: gravel. At Fortune III, you will always get Flint from Gravel.
Axe
- Unbreaking III
- Mending
- Efficiency V
- (Optional) Fortune III
Efficiency V lets you chop down trees and wood a lot faster! Optionally, Fortune III can get you more fruits & saplings from the leaves if you really need them, but this is a highly situational choice.
Fishing Rod
- Unbreaking III
- Mending
- Luck of the Sea III
- Lure III
Luck of the Sea III will decrease the chances of getting junk while fishing and Lure III will let you catch fish and loot faster.
Hoe, Flint & Steel, Shears, & Shield
It’s not really worth it to enchant any of the above items in my opinion. Save your enchantments and experience for your more important tools!
Best Minecraft Enchantments Guide | Best armor enchantments
A note on Protection for our Best Minecraft Enchantments Guide: I find the generic Protection better than Fire Protection, Projectile Projection, or Blast Protection. You might want a specialist option anyway, but I find the generic version much more versatile in saving your life.
As noted above in the weapons & tools section, do not put Mending on your armor!
Helmet
- Unbreaking III
- Protection V
- Aqua Affinity
- Respiration III
Aqua Affinity will let you mine faster underwater and Respiration III will let you breath a total of 45 seconds longer — perfect for digging up goodies in the ocean!
Chestplate
- Unbreaking III
- Protection V
- (Optional) Thorns III
As an option, Thorns III will let you do a little damage back to the enemies who attack you! Unfortunately, it also increases the damage done to your armor and shortens its life. Keep that in mind when making a decision!
Leggings
- Unbreaking III
- Protection V
- (Optional) Thorns III
Just like the Chestplate, Thorns III can let you damage enemies who hit you at the cost of more durability.
Boots
- Unbreaking III
- Protection V
- Depth Strider III
- Feather Falling IV
Depth Strider III will let you move faster underwater and Feather Falling IV will greatly reduce fall damage (including from Ender Pearl teleportations). Don’t bother with Frost Walker; it’s a novelty and it’s mutually exclusive with Depth Strider.
Elytra
- Unbreaking III
- (Optional) Mending
The Elytra (wings) are a pain in the butt to get, and that is why it is the only armor item in our Best Minecraft Enchantments Guide where I recommend Mending. The Mending bug might keep you from repairing your tools while wearing the wings, but they’re so rare that it’s worth the trouble to unequip & equip items.
