MINECRAFT ENCHANTING MECHANIC: COMPLETE GUIDE

What is enchantment in Minecraft? What do you need to enchant your gear?

Enchantment is one of the core mechanics of Minecraft since the game's official release on 18th of November 2011. It was in the game for ages. Despite  that, a lot of the players are still a little confused about it. Let’s break it down bit by bit.

Enchantment, as it was already said, a core game mechanic in Minecraft. To enchant your tools and armor, you will need the following things:

• Enchantment table.
• Experience, or as it is commonly referred to – XP. It’s that green bar that fills up after killing mobs, mining  certain ores, smelting something, etc. If you haven't noticed it before, it is located right on top of your hotbar and slightly beneath health and hunger bars. 
• Lapis – a blue ore(don’t mistake it for diamonds) that can be found  in caves.

This is the bare minimum required to enchant something in Minecraft. However, that is not all.

Enchantment: advanced

Enchantment table, some XP and lapis is indeed all you need, but only if your goal is minimal enchantment. You see, in the game most enchantments have levels to them, represented by Roman numerals after its name(Fortune III, Efficiency V, etc.). The higher the level, the stronger the effect of the enchantment. For example Fortune I grants you a 33% chance to multiply the drop from an ore by 1.33x(so instead of 1 item, you get 2 from one block), but Fortune III has a 60% chance to multiply the drop by 2.2x(instead of 1 item you can get 2, 3 or even 4 from one block).

So higher level enchantments are better, but how do you get them? For that you will need more XP and lapis, but more importantly – bookshelves. If you place a bookshelf anywhere within 1 block distance from the enchantment table, it will boost its enchanting abilities. This means that the enchantment table can enchant your gear with higher level enchantments. The maximum “level” of the enchantment table is 30. This is also the amount of XP you will need to enchant something on a maxed out enchantment table. 

To get this level 30 set up, you will need 15 bookshelves carefully placed around the enchantment table like in the image below.

Controlled enchantment and enchanting alternatives

You just found out or reminded yourself how to get the best possible enchantment in the enchanting table. But I might know the follow up question you will have: “Can I control which enchantments I will get? If so, how?”. The answer to that is a little complicated – Yes and No, let me explain.

You see, while you can know in advance what you will get from enchanting using the table, there is no way to refresh it if you don’t like it, unless you get the enchantment you don’t want and then get rid of it by using the grindstone. Doesn’t seem that bad, but unenchanting your gear on a grindstone gives you back only a fraction of the XP you’ve used to enchant the item. Also, it’s quite tedious to enchant, unenchant and rechant over and over again. However, there is a better option available, but for that i need to start from a far.

Another game mechanic that will help you get better enchantment is enchantment combination. If for example, you have a 2 pickaxes(they should be made of the same materials, so both iron pickaxes, or both diamond pickaxes, etc.) with Efficiency IV, you can combine that into one pickaxe with Efficiency V enchantment using the anvil. This enchantment combination rule – level X +  level X = level X + 1, applies to any enchantment as long as it has level gradation at all. This can help you save the XP used for enchantment and just combine identical items to get better enchantments. It’s already way better, now you don’t waste as much XP, but it is still not that good, as you need lots of identical gear. However, that is not all, there is another fact for you.

When you were told that you can enchant tools and armor, we deliberately haven’t said one fact to not overcomplicate things in the beginning of the guide: you can also enchant books and certain special items(elytra, shields, flint and steel, fishing rods and etc.).

How is this of any use to solve our problem? Well, the special items part is just a fun fact, but the books are a crucial bit of information here. If you enchant a book to Unbreaking II for example, and then you happen to have an anvil, you can enchant the gear you want with this enchanted book and some XP using the anvil

Also, remember the enchantment combination rule? It applies to the books as well. So to get the highest possible level of a certain enchantment, you just need a couple of books that have the same enchantment and XP to combine them on an anvil a couple of times and then apply the obtained enchantment on a gear.

Getting the best enchantments: additional tips

To even further enhance and ease your enchanting process, here are some tips you can use.

1)XP farms

No matter which option for enchanting you take, you will inevitably run into the problem of insufficient XP. The best way to fix it is an XP farm. Those, just like the iron farms, can vary a lot: from small to big, from suitable for early game to end game, from built in overworld or in some other dimension, etc. Choose the one that suits you the best(based on your advancement in the game and ease of building), build it and visit it when necessary to get more XP for enchantments. Additionally, this XP farm will come in handy in the end game even after you’ve got all the necessary enchantments. How exactly? Any gear can be enchanted with Mending enchantment, that will give you an ability to repair your gear with XP.

2)Villagers and trades

Villagers in Minecraft can hold different professions. In the list of all professions we are interested in 2: fletcher and librarian. Why?
Fletcher has a chance of having a very profitable trade: 32 sticks for 1 emerald. Farming wood is really easy. From 64 logs of any wood you get 256 wood planks and 512 sticks, which is 8 stacks(8 times 64). And so, from a stack of logs you can get 16 emeralds. This doesn’t seem that much, until you realize farming 64 logs using a good axe takes about 10 minutes or less of active farming.

PRO TIP

Find yourself spruce saplings, put 4 of them side by side to each other in a small 2x2 square and either wait or use bone meal on one of them. In the result you get a giant spruce tree. After cutting it down you will have multiple stacks of logs. Repeat  as much as you want or need, it’s basically an unlimited emeralds

Just keep in mind that villagers can block their trades from time to time if you trade with them too much. However, you can have multiple villagers with the same fletcher profession by placing more fletching tables(if  they don’t have the desired trade, break and place the fletching table – this will trigger villagers to lose the job and then regain it, updating their trades. Repeat until all of them have your desired trade.)

Librarian is particularly interesting to us, because in his trades he can sell various enchanted books. Knowing that, just update librarians' trades until you get the desired book. Farming emeralds to buy it will be a piece of cake if you already have lots of fletchers, like described earlier. Note that once you trade with villagers they won’t update their trades or lose their jobs even if you break their workplace block. So if you want different books, get yourself multiple librarians.

This villager strategy is a little tedious, but it is way more profitable in terms of XP and that you can get the best enchantments by buying and combining books and gear together. Keep in mind that this only works starting from Minecraft version 1.14 or newer.

Conclusion

In this we’ve covered the whole enchantment mechanic and a lot of things adjacent to it: what do you need for a basic enchantment, how to set up level 30 enchanting table, how to farm for the best enchantments, enchantment combination rule and extra ways to get your hands on the best enchantments in the game. We sincerely hope this article helps clear things out or brush up your memories regarding the enchantment mechanics in Minecraft. Thank you for reading and good luck on your enchantment hunt!