MINING ENCHANTMENTS
Enchantments for pickaxes, shovels, axes, and hoes that improve block-breaking speed and drops. 3 enchantments in this category.
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.
Mined blocks drop themselves instead of their usual drops (e.g., stone instead of cobblestone).
How the mining enchantments fit together
The three mining enchantments below go on axes, hoes, pickaxes and shovels. At full strength they are Efficiency V, Fortune III and Silk Touch I.
Every one of them fits on an axe, a hoe, a pickaxe and a shovel alike.
Weight decides how often the table offers one rather than another: Efficiency sits at 10 and Silk Touch at 1, so on an item that takes both, Efficiency is drawn ten times as often.
Some of them refuse to share an item: Fortune and Silk Touch are mutually exclusive. An anvil turns the second one down instead of overwriting the first.
Room is the other limit. Counting everything that fits and not just the mining ones, a pickaxe holds five enchantments at once out of the six it can take.
All three come straight out of an enchanting table, so none of them needs a chest or a trade first.
| Enchantment | Max level | Weight | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Efficiency | V | 10 | 76.9% |
| Fortune | III | 2 | 15.4% |
| Silk Touch | I | 1 | 7.7% |
What each mining enchantment does, block by block
Efficiency adds the level squared plus one to a tool's mining speed, so 2 at level I and 26 at level V, and only when the tool is the right one for the block. A diamond pickaxe goes from 8 to 34 with Efficiency V, a netherite one from 9 to 35 and a golden one from 12 to 38. A block breaks the moment you touch it once that speed reaches 30 times its hardness.
Stone, andesite, diorite, granite and tuff have a hardness of 1.5 and need 45, which Efficiency V alone does not reach. Haste II from a beacon multiplies the speed by 1.4, and then a diamond pickaxe hits 47.6 and breaks them instantly. Netherrack needs only 12, so any pickaxe with Efficiency V breaks it on contact. Shears take Efficiency as well.
Fortune reads the loot table of the block, and three kinds of rule come out of it. Ores that drop an item multiply that drop: at Fortune III the amount is one to four times the normal roll, 2.2 times on average. Redstone ore, glowstone and melons add up to one extra item per level instead, and glowstone and melons have a cap. Gravel and leaves use a chance per level, which is how Fortune III turns the 10% flint chance of gravel into a sure thing.
| Block | Plain tool | Fortune III | Silk Touch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Diamond ore | 1 diamond | 1 to 4 diamonds | The ore block |
| Lapis lazuli ore | 4 to 9 lapis lazuli | 4 to 36 lapis lazuli | The ore block |
| Copper ore | 2 to 5 raw copper | 2 to 20 raw copper | The ore block |
| Redstone ore | 4 to 5 redstone dust | 4 to 8 redstone dust | The ore block |
| Glowstone | 2 to 4 glowstone dust | 2 to 4, and 4 three times in four | The glowstone block |
| Melon | 3 to 7 melon slices | 3 to 9 melon slices | The melon |
| Gravel | Flint 10% of the time, otherwise gravel | Flint every time | Gravel |
| Oak leaves | Sapling 5%, apple 0.5% | Sapling 10%, apple 0.83% | The leaves |
| Amethyst cluster | 4 amethyst shards | 4 to 16 amethyst shards | The cluster |
| Ender chest | 8 obsidian | 8 obsidian | The ender chest |
| Glass | Nothing | Nothing | The glass |
Silk Touch works the other way round: wherever a loot table has a Silk Touch branch, the block drops itself instead of its loot. That covers the ores, glass, ice, glowstone, sculk sensors and bee nests, which keep their bees inside. Budding amethyst drops nothing with any tool, Silk Touch included.