Enchanting Table

The Enchantment Table is a block that is 3/4 blocks high. Enchanting works in three stages, (explained in the main Enchanting article). Each enchantment costs the player experience levels but in return grants useful enhancements to armor and tools. The sprites and icons of enchanted items have a purple luminescence.

The Table will enchant swords, bow, shovels, pickaxes, and axes made of wood, stone, iron, gold, and diamond, as well as all armor. The hoe, bucket, shears, fishing rod and flint and steel cannot be enchanted.

If the table is surrounded by Bookshelves, with one block of air in between, arcane glyphs (letters from the Standard Galactic Alphabet) float from the bookshelves into the book. This animation occurs only when a player is nearby (verifiable?). Having Bookshelves near an enchantment table will increase the potency of enchantments.



Crafting
Crafting an enchantment table requires 4 blocks of Obsidian, 2 Diamonds, and 1 Book arranged as shown above. An Enchantment table is one of the more costly items to craft, as all of its constituents are moderately difficult to obtain.

The ingredients for an Enchantment Table can also be found in villages. Obsidian and diamonds can be found in village chests, and a book can be obtained by breaking the bookshelves in a library. Collecting these resources from villages may be less time consuming than cultivation and mining, depending on world seed.

History
Notch first tweeted about the Enchantment Table on September 30th 2011.

In 1.9 Pre-Release 3 through 5 the Enchantment Table can be destroyed with a single punch, but only drops as a block if it is harvested with a Pickaxe, due to a bug. This is now fixed in Minecraft 1.0.0 (the full version).

In 1.0.0 the Enchantment Table drops the block only when mined by a pickaxe.

In 1.1.0, bows can also now be enchanted.

In 1.2.3 the enchantment glyphs show up.

Before enchantments were added, the items would say "Enchanted!", and Hoes could be enchanted.

Enchantments
Enchantment names are randomly constructed from a long list of words. Three to five words are chosen from the list and appended to each other, creating the enchantment name. Any name can be chosen for any item. Note that the names are not actually saved with the item, they are only displayed in the Enchantment Table interface, albeit with the Standard Galactic Alphabet. The words in the Standard Galactic Alphabet have nothing to do with the enchantment.



All enchantments have a level associated with them, from I to V. The code supports displaying levels up to X, and for some enchantments will continue to boost the power of the enchantment indefinitely if the level is increased with an external editor. This has been confirmed to work on both single player and multiplayer.

Enchantments as shown in the table have an associated level, but this is actually the cost, in terms of skill points or levels, to apply this enchantment. The actual enchantment given is randomly selected based on the cost, where a higher cost equates to more powerful enchantments.

A normal table can only enchant up to a cost of 5, but surrounding the table with bookshelves will increase the power up to a maximum of 50 (as of 1.9pre4). In snapshot 12w22a, the maximum was lowered to 30.

Weapons with enchantments may have particle effects when they are used to attack, depending on the enchantment.

Trivia

 * To craft the 30 Bookshelves needed to maximize an enchantment table's power, you need 180 Wooden Planks (nearly 3 stacks) and 90 Books (which, unless found naturally, require 270 — over 4 stacks — of Sugar Cane). This doesn't count the book used in crafting the table itself.
 * According to the first image that Notch posted of the Enchantment Table, they were originally crafted with Cobblestone instead of Obsidian.
 * Notch commented on Reddit "Oh, it's more magical than that! It automatically opens up and turns towards players who get close to it. When nobody is around, the book is closed and spins slowly."
 * Notch comments on other book animations. "Yes, the pages flip randomly every now and then."
 * On October 1st 2011, Notch tweeted an image of the enchantment screen, with enchantments written in the Standard Galactic Alphabet. The first enchantment translates onto "Well Played Internets You Are Good", the second translated into "These Names Will Be Random And Confusing", and the third translates to "Each Spell Costs Experience Levels". The Standard Galactic Alphabet or SGA was originally created by Tom Hall for use in the Commander Keen series of computer games.
 * Although the bottom texture would at first glance appear to be the obsidian texture, it is in fact slightly different.
 * Clicking on an item in the enchantment slot, with an identical item or any stack of two or more items allows you to quickly cycle through available spells without the item being removed from the enchantment slot. This keeps you from having to click twice.
 * A convenient way to block the effect of nearby bookshelves to obtain low-level enchantments is to place torches between the bookshelves and the enchantment table. Any other block will also work.
 * Enchantments were disabled in Beta 1.9 Pre-release 3's SMP. If a player attempted to enchant an item, it appeared enchanted for the client, but updated with the un-enchanted status once the player logged out and then back in again.
 * On a Beta 1.9 pre-release 3 server, if an enchantment table was broken and replaced with another Tile Entity block, the enchantment table's book would continue to be rendered on the client, and activating it would crash the client.
 * Breaking the Enchantment Table without using a pickaxe will not yield a block.
 * By replacing the alternate.png with a copy of the font.png renamed to match the original file, you can read the enchantments in English.
 * When crouching on the Enchantment Table, you can walk off its edge, due to being less than 1 block high.
 * The Enchantment Table actually produces the particles emitted from the bookshelves. These particles originate inside the Enchantment table and are relocated to the bookshelf almost immediately, but travel slow enough to be briefly visible. The particle that enters and leaves the bookshelf is always the same "letter", but the ones traveling into the bookshelves are black.
 * Enchantment tables are mostly made of obsidian, and thus have a blast resistance of 6,000 and cannot be destroyed by TNT.
 * Strangely, even though it's made of Obsidian, it doesn't require a Diamond Pickaxe to mine. In fact, it can be mined with a simple wooden pickaxe.
 * Any enchantments before 1.9pre4 would show up as Feather Falling I.
 * If a redstone torch is placed next to the enchantment table, it goes to its off-state, looking burnt-out. (the torch does not actually burn out like an overused torch)
 * Enchantment Tables cannot be moved by pistons.
 * If an Enchantment Table is placed on ice, the player will slide on it as though it is an ice block, just like slabs.