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How to Enchant in Minecraft

Here's how to Enchant in Minecraft.

Updated: Jun 9, 2022 2:48 pm
How to Enchant in Minecraft

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Once players have gotten accustomed to mining, crafting, and farming, it’s time to get into a new and exciting aspect of the game. Enchanting objects in Minecraft allow you to add special properties and capabilities and can range in difficulty levels according to the materials required.

Enchanting becomes all the more necessary as players get to end-game levels where equipment starts getting insufficient in fighting off undead mobs and bosses. Especially when planning larger raids or taking down the Ender Dragon, Minecraft enchantments become a necessity.

There are a couple of ways to enchant in Minecraft, and we’ll take you through each one. We’ll also include a list of enchantments for you to refer to in the game.

How to Enchant in Minecraft? Three Different Methods for Enchanting Objects in Minecraft

You can enchant most weapons, armor, tools, and books in Minecraft.

Method 1: Enchanting Table

This is the most common method for enchanting objects in Minecraft. Build an Enchanting Table using four obsidian, two diamonds, and one book. Obsidian has to be made by pouring water into a lava source, and diamonds must be mined. The book can be crafted with paper and leather. Here’s how to get each of the ingredients: 

Diamonds: Diamonds have to be mined in Minecraft, and there’s no other way to obtain them, except as a pillager for village treasure chests (though this method is less reliable). Use a branch digging strategy so that you can cover more ground without having to break multiple blocks when searching for diamonds. You’ll need five diamonds to make the enchanting table in total.

Obsidian: In order to mine Obsidian, players will need a diamond axe. To make a diamond pickaxe, collect diamonds by digging to level 16 or lower. Craft the pickaxe with three diamonds by placing them with two sticks in the second slot according to the recipe in a 3×3 Crafting Grid. You can now use this diamond pickaxe for greater mining speed to get obsidian. 

Obsidian is found when a lava source meets a water source. You’ll naturally find obsidian blocks in a location like this, but you can also manually create obsidian with a bucket of water and a bucket of lava. Pick up your obsidian using the diamond pickaxe, and keep an eye out for hostile mobs like a skeleton, wither, zombie underground. Try not to get burned by the lava!

Book: Making a book requires pieces of paper and a piece of leather. You’ll have to kill a few cows for the leather — cows generally spawn in grassy biomes. Paper can be crafted from sugarcane. Place three pieces of paper and one piece of leather in the crafting grid to get a book.

You can now place all your materials in a crafting grid to create the enchantment table. Once you have an Enchanting table, you can power it with Lapis Lazuli and enchant objects.

However, you will also need to surround the enchanting table with a bookshelf for it to be fully powered. You will need 15 bookshelves in total, and each shelf uses 3 books and 6 wooden planks. You can either obtain books through crafting or as a pillager.

Method 2: Anvil

You can travel to a Minecraft Anvil, and combine an enchantment book with the object in mind. This method is great if you don’t want to build an Enchanting Table, but it uses a lot of XP to power up. This is also useful for up-leveling your enchantment to its Maximum level.

Using an anvil allows you to combine two enchantments on a single enchanted item, as long as they do not conflict with each other. For example, you can use fortune enchantment and unbreaking, along with the mending enchantment using an anvil. Different combinations of enchantments will cost varying XP so make sure to check this and swap items around before you use the anvil. 

Method 3: Game Commands

If you enabled cheats while generating your Minecraft world, you can skip the extra steps and get right down to enchanting. 

You can do this by holding the object you want to enchant and then entering in /enchant <targets> <enchantment> <level>. You will have to enter in syntax /enchant <targets> <enchantment> <level> for bedrock and java editions. For example, /enchant @p blast_protection 5 will enchant the nearest weapon with level 5 of blast protection.

Make sure you’re entering in an enchantment that’s compatible with the object you’re holding. Even though this is a cheat, you won’t be able to transfer an armor enchantment to a pickaxe!

These are the three different ways to enchant an object in Minecraft. While Game Commands are undoubtedly the easiest and quickest way, they steal a big portion of the gameplay experience. Most of the fun in enchanting an object is finding the rare materials necessary and acquiring enough XP to use wisely.

Infinity Enchantment

The infinity enchantment is one of the most popularly used enchantments in the Minecraft game. It gives the player an infinite number of arrows and can be enchanted to one single feather arrow in the inventory. However, it does not protect the bow from taking in damage, and players will not be able to retrieve an arrow that hits a block. 

Respiration Enchantment

Respiration gives your player more time underwater in the game. It must be added to a helmet or leather cap. Open up the enchantment table and add in your helmet along with enough lapis lazuli to power the table up. You usually need 3 lapis lazuli for this enchantment. 

There are three levels of Respiration, and you can get new levels for more breathing time according to the amount of lapis lazuli and player level in the game.

Projectile Protection Enchantment

This enchantment reduces the damage a helmet takes from weapons like arrows. You can uplevel this enchantment for up to 80% damage protection from shooting weapons. This enchantment cannot be applied to a weapon like a bow, but only to a helmet. 

Thorns Enchantment

​This enchantment is not commonly used but delivers a lot of damage to foes. When this is used on another player, all mobs and players in the vicinity receive damage. It also depletes armor quickly. 

Fire Aspect Enchantment

This enchantment sets the target on fire. As you level up, you can increase the time spent on fire, therefore increasing the damage delivered. 

There are many more useful enchantments like the bane of arthropods, knockback, fire protection, smite, and depth strider that are worth checking out and spending XP on. Since enchantments are an end-game activity, it’s a good idea to figure out what you spend most of your gameplay on and invest in related enchantments according to that. A player focusing on melee combat with mobs will need different enchantments from a player aiming to defeat the Enderdragon.

More Minecraft Enchantment guides

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