Among all the mechanics and features in Minecraft, enchantments are one of the most important. They make your gameplay easier and more enjoyable while helping you become drastically more powerful to overcome in-game challenges. So, in this detailed guide, we have compiled a list of all the Minecraft enchantments to help you understand what each does, and how you can get and use them. So, let’s not waste any more time and jump straight in!
Editor’s Note: last updated on June 12, 2024, to include mace enchantments and improve the readability
What are Enchantments in Minecraft
In simple terms, enchanting is a way to upgrade and add abilities to a Minecraft item like armor, swords, and tools. An enchantment can not only give your item new features, but it can also push its existing ability to a whole new level. You can use them to mine faster, fight better, and even improve your in-game luck. The best part is that you can apply any of the enchantments easily.
Minecraft Enchantments List in 2024
To help you understand with ease, we have created tables of all Minecraft enchantments separated into different categories. You can use the tables below to learn what each enchantment does along with their maximum levels. However, if you don’t want to read about each of them, use our list of best Minecraft enchantments for some of the coolest upgrades and abilities.
General Enchantments
| Enchantment | Levels | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Mending | 1 | Repairs items using experience points |
| Unbreaking | 3 | Increases the durability of any item |
| Curse of Vanishing | 1 | Despawns item upon player’s death |
Armor Enchantments
| Enchantment | Levels | Effect | Applicable To |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aqua Affinity | 1 | Increases underwater mining speed | Helmets |
| Blast Protection | 4 | Reduces explosion based damage and knockback | Any |
| Curse of Binding | 1 | Disables the ability to remove equipped armor | Any |
| Depth Strider | 3 | Increases underwater movement speed | Boots |
| Feather Falling | 4 | Decreases fall damage | Boots |
| Fire Protection | 4 | Decreases fire-based damage | Any |
| Frost Walker | 2 | Converts water into ice when walked on top of a source block | Boots |
| Projectile Protection | 4 | Decreases projectile-based attack’s damage | Any |
| Protection | 4 | Decreases all types of damage | Any |
| Respiration | 3 | Increases underwater breathing time | Helmets |
| Soul Speed | 3 | Increases walking speed when used on soul soil or soul sand | Boots |
| Thorns | 3 | Gives back damage to the attacker | Any |
| Swift Sneak | 3 | Increases player’s movement speed while sneaking | Leggings |
Weapons Enchantments
| Enchantment | Level | Effect | Applicable To |
|---|---|---|---|
| Channeling | 1 | Hits enemy with lightning bolt during a thunderstorm | Trident |
| Flame | 1 | Sets enemy on fire | Bows |
| Impaling | 5 | Deals additional damage to ocean mobs | Trident |
| Infinity | 1 | Stops bow from consuming arrows | Bows |
| Loyalty | 3 | Returns trident back to the player after the attack | Trident |
| Riptide | 3 | Throws the player alongside trident | Trident |
| Multishot | 1 | Shoots 3 arrows using only 1 arrow | Bows |
| Piercing | 4 | Allows arrow to pass through multiple entities | Bows |
| Power | 5 | Increases attack damage | Bows |
| Punch | 2 | Increases attack knockback | Bows |
| Quick Charge | 3 | Decreases waiting time to reuse weapon | Crossbows |
| Sweeping Edge* | 3 | Increases secondary/sweeping damage | Swords |
| Smite | 3 | Does additional damage to undead mobs | Swords and Axes |
| Sharpness | 5 | Increases attack damage | Swords and Axes |
| Knockback | 2 | Increases attack knockback | Swords |
| Looting | 2 | Makes dropped loot quantity higher and rarer | Swords |
| Fire Aspect | 2 | Sets enemy on fire | Swords |
| Efficiency | 5 | Increases attack damage | Axes |
| Bane of Arthropods | 5 | Increases damage caused to arthropod mobs while slowing them down | Swords and Axes |
| Density | 5 | Increases damage per level per block fallen | Mace |
| Breach | 4 | Ignores some percentage of the enemy’s armor value | Mace |
| Wind Burst | 3 | Launches player in the air upon landing a smash attack | Mace |
Tools Enchantments
| Enchantment | Levels | Effect | Applicable To |
|---|---|---|---|
| Efficiency | 5 | Increases mining speed | Pickaxes and Shovels |
| Fortune | 3 | Increases drop quantity of some items | Pickaxes, Axes, Sickles, and Shovels |
| Luck of the Sea | 3 | Increases looting rate and rarity during fishing | Fishing Rods |
| Lure | 3 | Decreases wait time during fishing | Fishing Rods |
| Silk Touch | 1 | Makes mine blocks drop as blocks instead of items | Pickaxes, Axes, Sickles, Shovels, and Sheers |
While we listed every enchantment that exist in the game, you cannot use many of them alongside other enchantments. So, make sure to follow the next section thoroughly before jumping into the game. Moreover, if the lists above look confusing to you, read our in-depth articles on some of the best enchantments for swords, tridents, and bows linked below.
Conflicting Minecraft Enchantments You Should Know About
As you might have noticed, there are many enchantments that you can apply to the same item. But at the same time, some of the enchantments can have contradicting effects.
To tackle that, Minecraft has a set of conflicting enchantments. You can apply only one of them to the item. Let’s go over some common conflicts in this enchantments guide:
- You can’t apply two or more of the same enchantment on a single item.
- Multiple types of protections can’t be applied to the same item. However, you can apply unique types of protection enchantments to each part of your armor.
- You can’t apply infinity and mending on the same bow.
- Damage-based enchantments conflict with each other (for example – sharpness, smite and bane of arthropods cannot go on the same diamond sword or axe. Similarly, density, breach, smite, and bane of arthropods cannot go on the same mace).
- Silk touch and fortune can’t be applied to the same item.
- Riptide and loyalty cannot go on the same trident.
- Depth strider and frost walker can’t be applied to the same set of boots.
Minecraft Java vs Bedrock: Enchantment Differences
It’s unfortunate that even after 15 years of existence, the Java and Bedrock versions of Minecraft are far from equal. Because of that, you have to face some differences in enchantments as well. None of them are groundbreaking and won’t affect a majority of the enchantments.
However, here are the differences you will across Bedrock and Java when using enchantments with tools, weapons, or armor:
- Sweeping edge enchantment only exists in Java edition.
- Fire Aspect can be used to light TNT, candles, and campfires but only in the Bedrock edition.
- Protection enchantment reduces damage from magic attacks in Java edition.
- Trident with impaling causes damage to any wet mob, not just aquatic mobs in the Bedrock edition.
- Sharpness causes higher damage in the Bedrock edition.
- Soul speed changes the player’s field of view in Java edition.
- Trident with riptide can cause damage to multiple enemies in the Bedrock edition.
- Helmet with respiration also decreases the chance of drowning damage in Java edition.
How to Apply Enchantments to Armor, Weapons, or Tools
Now that you have gone through our Minecraft enchantments list, let’s see how you can apply them to items. There are two ways – using enchanted books and the enchanting table.
1. Using Enchanted Books
Enchanted books are spread throughout the Minecraft world. You can get them by trading with librarians, in loot chests, and by fishing. This type of villager is the most reliable source of enchanted books and usually the main attraction of the villager trading halls.
If there’s an enchantment, there’s definitely an enchanted book for it. Not to forget, some of the enchantments can only be applied through an enchanted book.
To use enchanted books, all you need is an anvil which you can combine these books with the item you want to enchant. Doing so only costs experience orbs, which are easy to collect using Minecraft XP farms. If this method interests you, dive deep using our tutorial on how to use enchanted books in your Minecraft world.
2. Using Enchanting Table
At the core of our Minecraft enchantments guide is the enchanting table. You will need the item you want to enchant, XP levels, and lapis lazuli. Upon placing the item and lapis lazuli in the enchanting table, you will see all the possible enchantments you can apply to it. It shows up to three enchantments at a time, as shown in the screenshot below.
Comparatively, this method mostly takes less time to utilize than the first one but is also a lot more unreliable. The enchanting table therefore needs a lot more love since it’s an old feature that hasn’t been updated in a while.
But if it still attracts you, you can quickly make an Enchanting table in Minecraft using our linked tutorial. Moreover, you might encounter text in the SGA script in this block. It’s a popular symbolic language that many video games use. Even though it doesn’t hold any real function in Minecraft, it still has an interesting story attached to it. So, you can learn to read Mionecraft’s Enchanting table language using our guide.
How to Level Up Minecraft Enchantments
Enchantments on enchanted books or inside an enchanted table might not be of the highest level. If the level is maximum, then that certain enchantment will provide the best results. So, if you want a higher level enchantment, you can upgrade the enchantments on enchanted books or on items by combining them.
We have a dedicated guide on how to combine enchantments to get the highest possible level, so you can be as powerful or protected as possible.
Where to Find Enchanted Items in Minecraft
If you are not in the mood to do manual work of applying enchantments to each of your equipment, you can also obtain enchanted items through the following methods:
- Trading with villagers
- Fishing in oceans and large rivers
- By killing mobs like zombies or skeletons that might be carrying an enchanted item
- In rare Minecraft chests, which spawn in almost every popular in-game structure. However, the chances of chests spawning with an enchanted item are highest in end cities
- Bartering with Piglins in the Nether
- Bedrock users can also obtain enchanted items by killing vindicators and pillagers in raids.
How to Remove Enchantments in Minecraft
Now that you know how enchantments work, it’s time to understand how to remove them. It can be for leveling up the item or removing a wrong enchantment. Fortunately, Minecraft makes it simple to remove an enchantment. You just need to place it on a grindstone.
Grindstones are a common in-game block that you can use to repair and disenchant items. All you need to do is place your enchanted item in the grindstone and then click on the disenchanted item on the right.
To dig deeper into disenchanting, use our guide on how to remove enchantments in Minecraft. Keep in mind that all enchantments will be removed from the item, not just one that you don’t want. Also, you can’t remove Curse of Binding and Curse of Vanishing in any way.
With that, you are ready to explore and make the most out of all the in-game enchantments. Our Minecraft enchantments guide is here to help you learn about the enchantments one at a time. You can bookmark it to keep coming back and digging deeper. That said, don’t waste a moment more and start enchanting!
The greatest enchantment is the mending enchantment. Although it doesn’t provide you with OP buffs or abilities, it allows you to repair your armor, tools, and weapons with XP. This way, it saves a whole ton of resources that would have been used to craft new gear.
The treasure enchantments are the hardest to get since you cannot obtain them through the enchanting table. Those include – wind burst, mending, frost walker, soul speed, swift sneak, and curse enchantments. Out of these, the hardest ones to get are swift sneak and wind burst because of the dangerous structures and low odds.
You’ll need 15 bookshelves around the enchanting table to get the highest tier of enchantments.
Enchanting was added all the way back in Minecraft 1.0.0.
