Best Enchantments in Minecraft – Best Armor, Sword, Pickaxe, Trident Enchantments & More!

If you want to survive in Minecraft, you're going to need to know how to enchant. I'll go over the best enchantments for every weapon, tool, and piece of armor in the game to keep you alive and well.

What are the best enchantments in Minecraft?

Minecraft has around 40 enchantments across all of its weapons, tools, and armor. This makes it difficult to decide which ones you need, especially since the Enchanting Table adds random enchantments to your gear. If you're not sure which ones to go for, our list goes over all of the best Minecraft enchantments you can get.

Best Overall Minecraft enchantments for tools, weapons, and armor

Two enchantments stand above the rest if you want to enchant all of your tools, weapons, and armor in Minecraft. These can be added to everything from pickaxes to boots and Elytra. Their versatility and convenience make them the best overall enchantments in the game.

Unbreaking

Unbreaking is my go-to enchantment for everything in Minecraft. It gives items the chance to avoid taking damage when used, making them last much longer than usual. When combined with Mending, you'll never need to replace your weapons, tools, or armor again!

Mending

While Unbreaking prevents your items from losing durability, Mending helps repair them. Its primary purpose is to replenish your gear's durability by absorbing the XP dropped from each mob. This means you'll never need to use resources to repair your tools as you would when using an Anvil. By creating a mob farm and enchanting your items with both Unbreaking and Mending, your gear will never break.

Best Armor Enchantments in Minecraft

These enchantments will keep you safe in your Minecraft world.

All Armor

Every piece of armor you own should have one of the four Protection enchantments on it. The regular version of Protection will reduce the overall damage you take, while the other three reduce damage taken from specific sources.

One piece of armor can only have one Protection enchantment on it, so you'll want to carefully decide which one you need. While deciding, keep in mind that there are limits to how much Protection can do for you. An enchanted suit of armor can only reduce up to 80% of damage taken, with Blast and Fire Protections having a 60% cap on their knockback and fire time reductions.

• Protection: Reduces damage taken from outside sources, except the Warden's sonic boom attack. It adds 4% of armor protection for each level of the enchantment. If you enchant an entire suit of armor with Protection IV, it will add 64% of armor protection.
• Blast Protection: Reduces the damages taken from explosions only. It provides 8% blast protection per level, plus reduces knockback from explosions by 15% per enchantment level.
• Fire Protection: Reduces all fire damage taken by the player by 8% per enchantment level. It also reduces the time a player is on fire by 15% per enchantment level.
• Projectile Protection: Reduces the damage from projectiles by 8% per enchantment level.

Helmets

The best enchantments for Helmets center around exploring underwater. If you plan on taking on Ocean Monuments and other underwater structures, you'll want these enchantments with you. Even if you don't, they're handy to have in a pinch.

• Aqua Affinity: Aqua Affinity allows you to mine as quickly underwater as you would on land. This one is a must for gathering materials like Prismarine and coral.
• Respiration: Allows you to breathe underwater longer by 15 seconds per enchantment level. It also gives you the chance to not take drowning damage each second. You'll need it for longer underwater tasks like exploring caves and excavating ocean ruins.

Boots

To upgrade your boots, you'll want to use utility enchantments that both protect you from environmental effects and help you move around more easily.

• Feather Falling: Feather Falling is the essential enchantment for boots because it reduces the amount of fall damage a player takes. With the tall cliffs and deep caves of Minecraft, it's sure to save your life while you explore the world around you.
• Depth Strider: Depth Strider removes the speed penalty while moving underwater. It is best used in combination with a Helmet enchanted with Aqua Affinity and Respiration.
• Frost Walker: Frost Walker turns water blocks beneath your feet into ice, allowing you to walk over them easily. It also prevents you from taking damage when walking over magma blocks.

Best Minecraft Shield Enchantments

Unlike the other tools and weapons on this list, there are no enchantments made specifically for the shield. Instead, it can only be enchanted with Mending and Unbreaking using Enchanted Books and an Anvil.

If you try to place a shield in an Enchanting Table, nothing will happen.

Best Weapon Enchantments in Minecraft

Enchanting your weapons properly will help you defeat even the strongest enemies with ease.

Related: How to make an Enchanting Room in Minecraft

Swords

The best enchantments for swords are centered around doing more damage and getting more loot from mobs.

• Looting: Looting both increases the number of items a mob drops and increases the chance for rare items to drop. If you need to gather large amounts of a mob drop, like gunpowder for fireworks, you'll want to use a sword with Looting III to fight Creepers. Additionally, you'll want to use it when trying to get enough Wither Skeleton Heads to take on the Wither.
• Sharpness or Smite: Sharpness increases the amount of damage your sword does against all mobs, while Smite increases the damage done to undead mobs only. The category of undead mobs includes all zombies, skeletons, phantoms, drowned, and even the Wither. If you fight these undead mobs a lot, pick up Smite. If you don't, choose Sharpness instead.
• Fire Aspect: Fire Aspect adds four seconds of burning per enchantment level to the enemy hit by your sword. It is especially handy for killing farm animals as they will drop cooked meat instead of raw. This isn't as ideal for Nether adventures as most of the mobs will be immune to the fire damage.

Bows

Like with the sword's enchantments, most of the best bow enchantments increase the amount and kind of damage a bow does. The only exception is the final enchantment, which helps players with an arrow shortage keep using their bow.

• Power: Increases the damage done by an arrow by 25% times the enchantment level plus one. This means that Power I adds an extra 50% of damage to an arrow, while Power V adds a whopping 150%. If you can only put one enchantment on your bow, Power V is the one to go for.
• Punch: Punch adds three blocks of knockback distance to an arrow per enchantment level. It's great for knocking enemies off of cliffs and can even be used in combination with the Elytra to keep yourself in the air if you don't have fireworks.
• Flame: Fired arrows will set hit mobs on fire, dealing 5 fire damage over 5 seconds. This will not occur if fired through water or in the rain.
• Infinity: Allows a bow to shoot the same regular arrow forever. Spectral and tipped arrows will still be consumed on use. Infinity cannot be combined with Mending, so you'll need to decide which to use based on how easy it is for you to get flint or arrows.

Crossbows

These crossbow enchantments can make the crossbow outshoot a regular bow and arrow any day.

• Quick Charge: This enchantment essentially decreases your Crossbow's reload time. Quick Combine the faster reload with one of the damaging enchantments alone to make your crossbow an extremely powerful weapon against both mobs and other players.
• Multishot or Piercing: You can only have one of these enchantments on your Crossbow. Which one you should choose largely depends on how you play the game.
  • Multishot fires three arrows at once in a triangle, so I would recommend it if you usually play out in the open. It costs extra durability, so you'll want to have Mending and Unbreaking on your crossbow as well.
  • Piercing makes arrows shoot through your opponent into whatever is behind them. The amount of mobs it can shoot through is equal to the level of the enchantment plus one. It's perfect for those who prefer to stick to caves or other narrow areas.

Tridents

Before enchanting a Trident, make sure you know which enchantments cannot be used together. I recommend having two Tridents—one using Riptide for transportation and the other using Loyalty and Channeling for fighting.

• Riptide: Riptide allows for fast transportation for the player under specific conditions. If the player is standing in water, rain, or snow, they can throw the Riptide-enchanted Trident to essentially ride it through the air. When combined with an Elytra, it is one of the fastest methods of transportation in Survival Minecraft.

• Impaling: Impaling adds an extra 2.5 hearts of damage per enchantment level. This only applies to aquatic mobs in Java Edition. However, in Bedrock Edition, this applies to all mobs and players who are in water, including those in the rain. If you are planning to raid an Ocean Monument, this is a great enchantment to have on your Trident.
• Loyalty: Loyalty is a special enchantment that allows your Trident to return to you after a specific amount of time. The Trident will return to you faster as the level of Loyalty increases.
• Channeling: A trident enchanted with Channeling will summon a lightning strike onto the mob it hits. This only occurs if there is an active thunderstorm in the area and the mob is exposed to the sky. If the correct conditions are met, each of the mobs below changes into the following when struck by a lightning strike:
  • Creeper: Charged Creeper
  • Villager: Witch
  • Pigs: Zombified Piglins
  • Mooshrooms: Opposite color Mooshroom

Axes

While axes are traditionally used as a tool for chopping trees, they can also be used as a weapon. In Java Edition, they actually do more damage than swords with a lower attack speed. There are two specific enchantments that can be added to an axe when using it as a weapon.

• Efficiency: As a weapon, axes have a 25% chance of disabling a shield for a duration of 5 seconds. An axe enchanted with Efficiency will have the odds of disabling a shield increased by 5% per enchantment level.
• Sharpness and Smite: Like with swords, Sharpness will increase an axe's damage against regular mobs and Smite will increase its damage against undead mobs.

Best Tool Enchantments in Minecraft

These enchantments will not only keep your tools working longer but will also bring in more loot!

Fortune

Fortune is one of the most popular enchantments because it increases the amount of resources mined blocks drop. Each tool enchanted with this will cause increased drop rates in certain blocks. It's especially important for gathering diamonds.

• Pickaxes: Mined ores will drop more of their minerals.
• Axes: Chopped trees will drop more apples, saplings, and sticks.
• Hoes: Hoes will be able to get more wheat seeds, beetroot seeds, carrots, potatoes, and even saplings from leaves.
• Shovels: Mined gravel will drop flint nearly 100% of the time.

Related: What does Fortune do on an axe in Minecraft?

Efficiency

Efficiency increases the speed at which your tool mines blocks. For the best effect, you'll want to use Efficiency V and combine it with Unbreaking to prevent your tools from being destroyed. The speed added by the Efficiency enchantment is equal to the level of the enchantment squared plus one.

Silk Touch

Silk Touch makes it so the blocks you mine drop the blocks themselves rather than raw materials. An example of this would be that using Silk Touch on a Diamond Ore Block will make it drop a Diamond Ore Block rather than a Diamond. This is especially helpful for players who want to gather dirt-based blocks like Mycelium, Grass, and Podzol.

Best Minecraft Fishing Rod Enchantments

Minecraft only has two fishing rod-specific enchantments. They're both very helpful, so you'll want to get both on your rod as soon as possible.

Lure

Whether you're fishing for food or for treasure, the Lure enchantment is a necessity. Lure decreases the time between catches by 5 seconds per level. This allows fishing rods with Lure III to catch a fish every few seconds.

Luck of the Sea

This enchantment increases the chance of finding rare treasure while fishing by 2% per level. At the same time, it reduces the chance of catching junk by 2% per level. If you want to stock up on nametags and Enchanted Books, you'll want the Luck of the Sea on your side.

Best Minecraft Elytra Enchantments

Like the Shield, the only enchantments that can be added to the Elytra are Mending and Unbreaking. We recommend using both to decrease the resources required to maintain it.

Best Minecraft Enchantments for the Nether

If you're wanting to enchant gear for the Nether, you'll want to use a few specific enchantments to make your life easier. These are in addition to the armor, weapons, and tools enchantments mentioned previously.

• Fire Protection: With all of the fire mobs and lava in the Nether, you'll need to protect yourself from their flames. When enchanting your armor, enchant at least two of the pieces with Fire Protection instead of one of the other variations. As mentioned previously, it will reduce all fire damage by 8% per level. It will also reduce the time a player is on fire by 15%, with the maximum time reduced being 60% of the original time.
• Soul Speed: Soul Speed is a boots enchantment that increases the speed at which you walk on Soul Sand and Soul Soil. However, running on Soul Sand with the Soul Speed enchantment causes the durability of your boots to decrease faster. Because of this, we strongly recommend also having the Mending and Unbreaking enchantments on your Soul Speed boots.
• Knockback: If you're planning on exploring Nether Fortresses and Bastions, you'll want Knockback on your sword. This will increase how far mobs are thrown from you when hit, which can save your life when facing enemies like the Wither Skeletons.

Related: Read about the Minecraft Smite Enchantment on our sister site, Twinfinite.

All conflicting enchantments in Minecraft

There are a few enchantments in Minecraft that cannot be placed on the same piece of equipment in survival Minecraft.

The conflicting enchantments include:

• Protection, Blast Protection, Fire Protection, and Projectile Protection cannot be placed on the same piece of armor.
• Crossbows cannot have both Multishot and Piercing.
• Bows cannot have both Mending and Infinity.
• Sharpness, Smite, Bane of Arthropods, and Cleaving cannot be on the same sword.
• Frost Walker and Depth Strider cannot be on the same pair of boots.
• A Trident cannot combine either Loyalty or Channeling with Riptide.
• Tools cannot have both Fortune and Silk Touch.

How to disenchant items in Minecraft

Disenchantment is the process of removing enchantments from an item. If you've accidentally added a conflicting enchantment to an item or got bad enchantments from the Enchantment Table, you'll need to know how to disenchant. The process of disenchanting involves placing the item into a Grindstone.

This will remove all of the enchantments from the item. You will also get some experience back, depending on which enchantments were removed. However, this will not remove the Curse of Binding or the Curse of Vanishing.

How to get Enchanted Books in Minecraft

Within Survival mode, obtaining specific enchantments for particular tools, like Unbreaking for shields, is exclusively possible through Enchanted Books. Enchanted Books are crafted using an Enchanted Table and experience points.

You can also find them naturally in hidden chests or purchase them from a Librarian villager. These are especially desirable because they can give an item multiple different enchantments, provided those particular enchantments apply to said item.

Combining Enchanted Books

Enchanted books can be combined to create a single book with multiple enchantments.

Additionally, two Enchanted Books of the same enchantment and level can be combined to create one Enchanted Book containing the next highest level of that enchantment.

Using Enchanted Books

To use an Enchanted Book, you'll need an Anvil. Place the item you want to enchant into the first slot of the Anvil and the Enchanted Book in the second slot. If you have enough experience, you'll be able to add the enchantments easily.

How to stack enchantments in Minecraft

Stacking enchantments refers to the process of combining an enchanted item with another item with the same enchantment to raise the enchantment's level on the first item. It is a great way to ensure you get a high-level version of an enchantment, but it's a finicky process. There are two main ways to do this, each of which I'll describe below.

The Enchanted Book method

Of the two methods, this one is the most consistent and requires the least amount of resources. To start, you'll need to enchant books until you get one containing the enchantment you're looking for at the right level. You can then combine this book with your enchanted item for a chance to raise the enchantment's level on the item.

In the image above, I combined a Diamond Sword with the Sharpness III enchantment with a Sharpness III Enchanted Book to give the resulting sword Sharpness IV.

The item combination method

This method requires a lot more resources but is perfect if you've gathered a lot of enchanted gear in your world. It involves combining two items of the same type with the same enchantment at the same level in hopes of creating a new version of the item with the enchantment at the next level.

In the example above, I combined two Diamond Swords with the Looting II Enchantment to create a better Diamond Sword with Looting III.

For more Minecraft enchantments, check out How many bookshelves are needed for Level 30 Enchantments in Minecraft here on Pro Game Guides.