6 Best Minecraft Pickaxe Enchantments

A major aspect of Minecraft’s gameplay revolves around mining. Whether it’s mining for resources, exploring different biomes, or getting to the end-game and defeating the Ender Dragon, you’ll need some powerful tools. To make your standard tools more effective, you will need to enchant them to get the most out of them. But, here comes an important question- what should the most used tool in Minecraft, the pickaxe, be enchanted with? In this guide, check out a detailed explanation of all the best pickaxe enchantments in Minecraft.

List of Pickaxe Enchantments in Minecraft

Enchantment	Description
Curse of Vanishing	Makes your pickaxe disappear from the Minecraft world after death
Unbreaking	Reduces the chances of your pickaxe taking damage
Silk Touch	Makes certain blocks drop as their original form, rather than the item being mined for
Efficiency	Increases the mining speed of your pickaxe
Fortune	Increases the amount of items dropped while mining
Mending	Restores the durability of your pickaxe by using experience points

6. Curse of Vanishing

• Maximum Level: 1
• How to Apply: Using an Anvil

On the best Minecraft PvP servers, the world can get competitive in terms of in-game gear. Some players even go as far as killing you to get your items, including your rare pickaxes. While only the best armor enchantments can protect you from attacks, the curse of vanishing can ensure that no one takes your gear after you die. It makes the pickaxe disappear from the world as soon as you die.

Leaving the competitive side behind, the curse of vanishing is not the best Minecraft enchantment for your pickaxe. Unless you find it naturally, you should avoid applying it to your pickaxe.

5. Unbreaking

• Maximum Level: 3
• How to Apply: Using an Anvil or Enchanting Table

If repairing your pickaxe seems exhausting, the unbreaking enchantment is a better alternative for you. It practically prevents the pickaxe from taking damage and having its durability reduced. Though it can’t make your pickaxe completely unbreakable. Instead, it only reduces the chances of the pickaxe taking damage. Your pickaxe might still take damage every now and then.

The Unbreaking enchantment has three levels (up to Unbreaking III), and you can get all of them in the form of enchanted books as well as use the enchanting table to apply it. Each level reduces the chance of a decrease in the pickaxe’s durability by 25%.

If you are planning to use a pickaxe for a continuous period of time, the unbreakable is easily one of the best Minecraft pickaxe enchantments of all time.

4. Silk Touch – Most Popular Pickaxe Enchantment

• Maximum Level: 1
• How to Apply: Using an Anvil or Enchanting Table

Out of all the Minecraft enchantments, Silk Touch is easily the most unique one. It allows you to mine entire blocks as themselves instead of them dropping items. The best example of this is in the context of ore blocks. Instead of dropping the ores, a pickaxe with silk touch drops the whole ore block. You can even use it to collect delicate blocks, such as web, glass, and even the new sculk blocks.

Unlike others, the Silk Touch enchantment only has one level. Moreover, to keep it from becoming overpowered, the game doesn’t let you combine Silk Touch and Fortune enchantment. They are mutually exclusive. You can get a silk touch from enchanted books and the enchanting table.

3. Efficiency – Most Used Pickaxe Enchantment

• Maximum Level: 5
• How to Apply: Using an Anvil and Enchanting Table

Irrespective of how long the pickaxe lasts, its effectiveness is decided by how long it takes to mine blocks. And as you might expect, the efficiency enchantment allows you to mine faster. It has five levels (Efficiency V), and after a base increment of 25%, each new level adds a 5% efficiency to the pickaxe.

Do keep in mind that it doesn’t affect the blocks that are not compatible with a particular pickaxe. So, you can’t mine obsidian faster with a stone pickaxe, and so on.

Keeping the Minecraft ores distribution in mind, a gold pickaxe with Efficiency V is the fastest pickaxe in the game. It’s perfect to take over all the best Minecraft prison servers.

2. Fortune

• Maximum Level: 3
• How to Apply: Using an Anvil or Enchanting Table

Just like the real world, luck in Minecraft plays a significant role in your gameplay. That’s what this enchantment is based on. It increases the amount of regular mined blocks and the chances of rare drops. But it doesn’t affect any experience orbs from the mining process. You can use it to make the process of finding diamonds worth your while.

This enchantment has 3 levels (Fortune III), with chances of multiple drops being 33%, 75%, and 120% higher, respectively. It affects each ore block differently.

You can obtain it using both the enchanting table and enchanted books. You can also explore the complete dataset of fortune enchantment on the Minecraft Wiki.

1. Mending

• Maximum Level: 1
• How to Apply: Applied through Anvil

Mending is one of the most common enchantments in the game and also the simplest one. Mending in Minecraft allows players to restore the durability of their item by collecting experience orbs. Even if you don’t use any other enchantments, mending is a must-have for, at least, the rarer types of pickaxes. If you choose not to repair your affected pickaxe on time, it will disappear after continuous usage.

Unlike other positive enchantments, mending is a treasure enchantment. That means you can only find it in the form of an enchanted book, and you have to manually apply it on your pickaxe. You can use our guide to learn how to use enchanted books in Minecraft. As for locating this enchantment, you have to rely on chest loot, fishing, raids, and trading with librarian villagers (a type of villager job in Minecraft).

How Many Enchantments Can You Have on Pickaxe?

Out of the six enchantments, the pickaxe in Minecraft can only have 5 enchantments at a time. The simple reason is that Fortune and Silk Touch are mutually exclusive. This means that if you enchant your pickaxe with Fortune, you won’t be able to apply Silk Touch to it.

So, here are the best combinations of pickaxe enchantments to use for two different use cases in Minecraft:

1. For Gaining the Highest Loot

• Mending
• Unbreaking
• Efficiency
• Fortune

2. For Farming Specific Blocks

• Mending
• Unbreaking
• Efficiency
• Silk Touch

Apart from these, you can apply the Curse of Vanishing enchantment on the pickaxe. However, that is only suggested when you are playing a PvP game, or you don’t want any other player to get your tool after death.

So, those are all the enchantments you can apply to a pickaxe in Minecraft. What is your favorite combination of enchantments to use in the game? Let us know in the comments below!