MINECRAFT ENCHANTMENTS
Complete guide to every vanilla enchantment. Max levels, effects per level, compatible items, and how to obtain them.
Browse by Category
Melee
Enchantments for swords, axes, and close-combat weapons that increase damage or add special effects.
7 enchantments
Ranged
Enchantments for bows, crossbows, and tridents that improve projectile performance.
11 enchantments
Mining
Enchantments for pickaxes, shovels, axes, and hoes that improve block-breaking speed and drops.
3 enchantments
Armor
Enchantments for helmets, chestplates, leggings, and boots that provide defense and mobility.
12 enchantments
Universal
Enchantments that can be applied to almost any item, including durability and repair.
4 enchantments
Special
Enchantments that fit exactly one item, such as the mace and the fishing rod.
6 enchantmentsBest Enchantments For
Popular Enchantments
Increases melee damage dealt to all mobs.
Reduces most types of damage taken.
Uses experience orbs to repair the item instead of adding to the player's experience bar.
Increases mining speed on the blocks a tool is made for, and it works on shears as well.
Increases the number of drops from mining blocks like ores, crops, and gravel.
Increases item durability by giving a chance to not consume durability on use.
Increases arrow damage from bows.
Reduces fall damage and ender pearl teleportation damage.
How enchanting works
Minecraft Java Edition has 43 enchantments. 36 of them come out of an enchanting table, and the other seven are treasure that a table never offers: Frost Walker, Soul Speed, Swift Sneak, Mending, Curse of Vanishing, Curse of Binding and Wind Burst.
A table works from three things: the experience level you spend, the bookshelves around it and the enchantability of the item. Up to 15 bookshelves count when they stand two blocks from the table with a clear gap in between, and with all 15 in place the bottom slot asks for level 30 while it only takes 3 levels and 3 lapis lazuli. The enchantment shown on a slot is a preview of one of them; more can come with it.
An anvil puts books on gear and merges two of the same item, which makes it the only way to add a treasure enchantment and the usual way to reach a top level the table will not roll. The max levels overview lists which top levels those are and what the last merge costs. A grindstone goes the other way: it strips every enchantment except the curses and pays back part of the experience.
Treasure has to be found. Librarians sell Mending, Frost Walker and both curses; Soul Speed comes from bastion chests and piglin bartering, Swift Sneak from ancient city chests, and Wind Burst only from ominous vaults, as a level I book.
Enchantments that can't be combined
Some enchantments shut each other out. Java Edition has seven of these exclusive sets, and one item keeps at most one enchantment from each. Once an enchanting table picks one of them, the rest of that set leaves the draw, and an anvil drops the clashing enchantment from the item you add while still charging a level for it.
| Set | Enchantments | Where it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Protection | Protection, Blast Protection, Fire Protection and Projectile Protection | Every armor piece takes only one of the four. |
| Damage | Sharpness, Smite, Bane of Arthropods, Density, Breach and Impaling | A sword, spear or axe gets one of the first three, and a mace one of Smite, Bane of Arthropods, Density and Breach. Impaling is in the set too, but a trident takes none of the others. |
| Boots | Frost Walker and Depth Strider | Boots carry one of the two at most. |
| Mining | Fortune and Silk Touch | Any pickaxe, shovel, axe or hoe keeps one of the two. |
| Bow | Infinity and Mending | Only a bow takes both, so a bow is the one place this set shows up. |
| Crossbow | Multishot and Piercing | A crossbow gets one of the two. |
| Riptide | Riptide against Loyalty and Channeling | Riptide goes with neither, but Loyalty and Channeling can share a trident. |
Enchantment weights and how the table picks
Every enchantment has a weight, and the enchanting table draws with it. Of the enchantments an item can get at the enchanting power it rolled, each one is picked first with a chance of its weight divided by the weights of all of them added up.
| Weight | Enchantments |
|---|---|
| 10 | Efficiency, Piercing, Power, Protection and Sharpness |
| 5 | Bane of Arthropods, Density, Feather Falling, Fire Protection, Knockback, Loyalty, Lunge, Projectile Protection, Quick Charge, Smite and Unbreaking |
| 2 | Aqua Affinity, Blast Protection, Breach, Depth Strider, Fire Aspect, Flame, Fortune, Impaling, Looting, Luck of the Sea, Lure, Multishot, Punch, Respiration, Riptide and Sweeping Edge |
| 1 | Channeling, Infinity, Silk Touch and Thorns |
A pickaxe shows how that works out. At a power from 15 to 65, four enchantments are in the draw: Efficiency with weight 10, Unbreaking 5, Fortune 2 and Silk Touch 1. Efficiency comes up first 10 times in 18, and Silk Touch once in 18.
After that first pick, the enchantment and everything in its set leave the draw. The table then rolls a chance of the power plus one in 50: if that fails it stops, and if not it halves the power and picks again from what is left. At power 30 a second enchantment follows 62% of the time, and a third comes after it in 32% of those cases. A book from the table then loses one of them at random if it got more than one.
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