Enchantments

Enchanting is a mechanic that augments armor, tools, weapons, and books with one or more of a variety of "enchantments" that improve an item's existing abilities or imbue them with additional abilities and uses. A special "glint" animation appears on items that are enchanted.

## Enchanting equipment

 Bookshelf
 Lapis Lazuli
 Anvil
 Grindstone
 Enchanted book

## Enchanting methods

There are four ways to enchant an item in Survival mode:

* Through an enchanting table in exchange for experience points and lapis lazuli. Only unenchanted items may be enchanted this way.
* Through an anvil, combining an enchanted book with an item.
* Through an anvil, combining two of the same item with different existing enchantments into a single item that has the enchantments of both.
* Through a librarian villager, which may enchant books respectively for emeralds instead of lapis lazuli and experience.

A player may also obtain items already enchanted:

* Through a villager, who may trade some enchanted items for emeralds.
* By fishing, which gives a chance of obtaining enchanted items.
* Through a zombie, drowned, husk, piglin, skeleton, stray, wither skeleton, and zombified piglin if they have enchanted items and are killed by a player. They have an 8.5% chance to drop each individual item.
* By finding them in treasure chests in locations such as end cities, ancient cities, shipwrecks, mineshafts, dungeons, desert temples, jungle temples, woodland mansions, ocean ruins, strongholds, ruined portals, and bastion remnants.
* Due to bartering with piglins. When given gold, piglins have a small chance to drop an enchanted book or iron boots with the Soul Speed enchantment (random level 1-3).
* Through killing pillagers and vindicators in raids.‌

Server operators and players in singleplayer worlds with cheats enabled can also enchant items using commands such as `/enchant`. When enchanted with the `/give` command, the maximum enchantment level is 255‌. In Creative mode, items can be enchanted via an anvil and enchanted books, with no experience points required. Enchanted books are available in the Creative mode inventory, with individual book displays for the highest level of each enchantment and other levels available via the "Search" tab.

### Enchanting table

An item can be enchanted by using an enchanting table and placing the item in the input slots and 1–3 Lapis Lazuli in its dedicated slot. Upon placing the item, three (pseudo)randomized options appear on the right of the GUI. The glyphs here do not affect the enchantment, but hovering over a presented enchantment shows one enchantment to be applied (on mobile devices, the player can tap an enchantment before putting in the lapis lazuli or hold the enchantment before release). The only choices available have a level requirement equal to or below the player's current level and a lapis lazuli requirement equal to or below the number of lapis lazuli placed in the table. Each option imbues the item with a randomized set of enchantments that are dependent on the number of experience levels required (e.g. a level 10 enchantment can give a pickaxe the "Efficiency II" enchantment); the actual level cost and the number of lapis lazuli required have no effect.

Although the player must have at least the level requirement to get an enchantment, the number of levels that the player is charged is the same as the lapis lazuli requirement. For example, if the third enchantment listed is a level 30 enchantment, the player must have at least 30 levels, but pay only 3 levels and 3 lapis lazuli.

The level requirement influences the quantity, type, and level of enchantments instilled in the item, with a higher experience level generally resulting in more and/or higher-level enchantments. Nevertheless, there is a significant random factor, and even a level 30 enchantment (the maximum) doesn't guarantee more than one enchantment, or even that enchantments are "maximum strength" — a level 30 enchantment can still yield Fortune II or Efficiency III alone, for example. On the other hand, it is possible for multiple different enchantments to be given from one use of the enchanting table. For example, a level 30 enchantment applied to a pickaxe may yield both Efficiency lV and Unbreaking lll.

To increase the enchantment level, bookshelves can be placed next to the enchanting table while keeping one block of air between them. To gain access to the previously mentioned level 30 enchantments, a total of 15 bookshelves need to be placed around the enchanting table. See the Enchantment Mechanics page for more detailed information on this.

Enchanting a book produces an enchanted book, which does nothing on its own, but effectively "saves" the enchantment for later application to another item with an anvil.

Unlike with an anvil, using the enchanting table while on Creative still costs experience. However, if the player doesn't have enough experience, then experience reduces to zero and the enchantment still works, even when using the enchanting table while already at level zero.

### Affecting offered enchantments

Enchanting any item at any enchantment level changes the player's enchantment seed, which changes the possible enchantments for every item at every enchantment level. Thus, if none of the available enchantments for a tool are desired, 1 lapis lazuli and 1 level could be spent to enchant a book or a different tool to refresh the list.

The possible enchantments depend on the player's enchantment seed, the item type, and material, and the enchantment level (1–30). The following actions do not affect the possible enchantments:

* removing the item and putting it back in
* clicking on the item slot with a different item
* using a different item of the same type and material
* replacing or moving the table (but keeping the same number of bookshelves)
* using a different table with the same number of bookshelves, or
* replacing or rearranging the bookshelves without changing their total number.

Changing the enchantment levels offered by adding, removing, or blocking bookshelves alters the enchantments shown, but does not change possible enchantments; using another enchanting table with the previous bookshelf number still shows the previous enchantments. The enchantments for a particular enchantment level (with the same seed and item) do also differ depending on which row they appear in, but they are not "better" or "worse" based on the row despite the different resource costs.

### Anvil combinations

An anvil can be used to combine the enchantments of two items, sacrificing one of them and repairing the other. The items must be compatible; they must either be the same type and material (such as two iron swords) or an item and an enchanted book with an applicable enchantment (such as a bow and an Infinity enchanted book).

Combining two enchanted items, books or one of each with the same enchantment at the same level produces an item or book with the next higher level of that enchantment up to the maximum allowed in survival mode; for example, a book with Thorns I and Unbreaking II combined with a book with Unbreaking II produces a book with Thorns I and Unbreaking III.

To combine items, the player places the target item in the anvil's first slot and the sacrifice item in the second slot. If the combination is allowed, the resulting enchanted item appears in the anvil's output slot and an experience level cost, labeled "Enchantment Cost", appears below (green if the player has enough experience levels, red if they don't). To complete the enchanting, the player removes the enchanted item from the anvil's output slot, and their experience level is reduced accordingly.

The experience cost depends on the enchantments, with highly enchanted items costing more. If the target item is also being repaired, that costs more as well. The target item can also be renamed, at additional cost. There is also an accumulating surcharge for prior work done on anvils. In Survival mode, work that costs more than 39 levels of experience is refused although it may still be possible to perform the same work in steps. For example, a damaged enchanted bow may be repaired on an anvil with an ordinary bow, and then another enchanted bow may be used to combine enchantments with the repaired bow.

### Enchanted books

Enchanted books can be made by enchanting a book in an enchanting table at the cost of experience points. They can also be found in the chests of several structures, purchased with emeralds from a librarian villager, or caught while fishing.

Enchanted books can be applied to tools, weapons, and armor, or combined with other enchanted books in an anvil. In this way, some enchantments that cannot normally be obtained on an item through use of the enchanting table can still be applied to those items, such as applying Thorns to boots.

Although enchanted books can have multiple enchantments of any type, only enchantments appropriate to a given item type are applied to that item when combined in an anvil. For example, an enchanted book may have both the Respiration and Power enchantments, but the Respiration enchantment is lost if the book is applied to anything but a helmet. Likewise, the Power enchantment is lost if the book is applied to anything but a bow.

In Creative mode, enchanted books can be used to apply any enchantment to any item, such as a stick having Knockback II.‌ However, mutually-exclusive enchantments, such as Infinity and Mending, cannot be applied this way or even via `/enchant` (though both enchantments function as normal when obtained on a bow through the `/give` command).

The experience costs for *using* books are considerably less than for combining items with similar enchantments since the books themselves cost levels to create. However, it's still an extra cost, and enchanting items directly has a chance to get multiple enchantments. The advantage of books is that they can be stockpiled for use on an item of choice and allow for *controlled* combinations. For example, a Silk Touch book can be used on an axe, pickaxe, or shovel, and the player can decide which item receives which enchantment.

## Disenchanting

The only way to disenchant items is via the grindstone or by repairing the items via the crafting grid. Using the grindstone removes all enchantments (except Curse of Binding and Curse of Vanishing) but gives some experience back based on the level of the enchantment(s) and their value.

## Curses

### Curses

Curses add a negative effect to a piece of equipment, as opposed to a beneficial one. Curses only reveal themselves after you put them in your inventory, meaning there's no way to tell if an item is cursed from the get-go.
Curses can be removed in a Grindstone just as well as Enchantments.