How to Get Looting Enchantment in Minecraft

There are various mob drops in Minecraft, some of which you need in great quantities. Besides gathering them separately, you need something that can make your job easier. That’s where the looting enchantment comes in handy as it multiplies the number of items you get from mobs. Want to have one? Keep reading to learn how to get the looting enchantment in Minecraft.

Get Minecraft Looting Enchantment

In order to get the looting enchantment in Minecraft, you can use an enchanting table, enchanted books, or find looting enchanted swords.

1. Enchanting Table

Looting is only available for swords, so place the sword and some lapis lazuli in the enchanting table grid to see if looting pops up. This enchantment can also be hidden behind the three dots, so if you’re lucky you may get it right away. Also, enchanting costs levels, so pay attention to the level requirement and level cost displayed in the enchanting table’s UI.

The looting level ranges from one to three and all of these are possible to get from the enchanting table. However, if the table is at full power (15 bookshelves around it) then you have greater chances of getting the maximum enchantment level.

2. Enchanted Books

The second way you can get looting is through enchanted books. You may buy them from librarian villagers, fish them out using a fishing rod, or find them inside various in-game structures. The most reliable method is using the librarian villager, who can sell a few looting books every in-game day if they have a looting book as an offer.

Our guide on Minecraft enchantments will help you understand how to apply this enchantment to the sword both using the table adn the books if you’re new to the game.

3. Looting Enchanted Swords

The last method that can leave you with a looting enchantment is if you find a looting enchanted sword while exploring. They may spawn in loot chests of some structures (ruined Nether portals, bastions, and End cities).

However, this way of getting looting is extremely unreliable, as you don’t know if you’ll get looting one, two, or three and the sword may be made of gold, which isn’t good. So, we recommend you stick to the previous two methods for obtaining the looting enchantment.

How Does Looting Work in Minecraft

Looting enchantment can be applied to swords only and it can either multiply the number of items you can get after killing a mob or it increases the item drop chance. For example, by default, you get 0-2 leather when you kill a cow, but with looting 3 you may get 0-5 leather.

Furthermore, by default, you have a 50% chance to get one shulker shell from a shulker, but with looting three, you have a 68.75% chance to get one shell. This is the case only on the Java edition though.

However, there is one special feature of this enchantment. The rule is that the looting effect will trigger when a player is holding the looting sword in their main hand. You can kill the mobs with the sword, but you can also shoot a projectile and very quickly switch to the looting sword before the projectile hits the enemy. This trick can ensure you get the looting enchantment advantage even if you’re far away from a mob.

Although super powerful, the looting Minecraft enchantment doesn’t apply its powers in all scenarios. Here are where the looting enchantment won’t take effect.

• Kills by tamed wolves are not affected.
• Withers, iron golems, cats, and snow golems are not affected.
• Looting does not affect the amount of wool dropped by sheep.
• Looting does not affect sponges or tide armor trims dropped by elder guardians.
• Looting does not affect totems of undying dropped by evokers.
• Looting does not affect the amount of sculk catalysts dropped by wardens.

That said that is how to get and use the looting enchantment in Minecraft. It’s a fairly powerful upgrade to your sword and will make grinding for some items much easier.

So, if you haven’t already, make sure to try out your luck and get this enchantment.