Enchanting



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.

Enchanting methods
There are four methods of enchanting items:
 * Via an enchantment table in exchange for experience points.
 * Via an anvil: Combining duplicate items with different existing enchantments into a single item that has the enchantments of both. This also costs experience points.
 * Via an anvil: Combining an enchanted book with an item, which also costs experience points.
 * Via a Priest Villager in exchange for emeralds.

Items can also be enchanted using the  command for OPs on a multiplayer server, which allows enchantments unavailable via normal enchanting. In Creative Mode, items can be enchanted via an anvil and enchanted books, with no experience required. All possible enchanted books are available in the Creative Mode inventory.

Enchantment table
An item can be enchanted by first right-clicking on an enchantment table, which will display a GUI with one item slot. Upon placing the item in the item slot, three randomized options will appear on the right of the GUI. The names here are meaningless, and the only real choice is how many experience levels to spend. Only choices with a cost equal or below the player's current level can be chosen. Each option will imbue the item with a randomized set of enchantments that are dependent on the number of experience levels spent.

The level cost influences the quantity, type, and level of enchantments instilled in the item, with a higher experience level generally resulting in more enchantments and more potent forms of those enchantments. Nevertheless, there is a heavy random factor, and even a level 30 enchantment (the maximum) doesn't guarantee more than one enchantment, nor even that enchantments will be "maximum strength"—a level 30 enchantment can still yield Fortune II or Efficiency III alone, for example.

Enchanting a book will produce an enchanted book, which follows the same rules, except that it can never have more than one enchantment.

In general, it makes sense to spend the maximum number of levels possible to enchant an item, because you will gain levels back faster when your level is dropped lower. It takes increasing quantities of experience points (ie. more experience orbs) to level up, as your level increases. Therefore, while purchasing a level-2 enchantment when you're at level 2 will drop you back to level 0, where leveling up is very quick, purchasing a level-2 enchantment at level 10 will set you back to level 8, where it will take several times more experience points to gain back those two spent levels (a whopping 73 experience points to level from 8 to 10, vs 17 points to level from 0 to 2).

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 of the same type (for example, an iron pickaxe and a diamond pickaxe cannot be combined), and there are limits to what enchantments can be combined and how much work can be done in one operation.

To combine items, the player places the target item in the first slot of an anvil, and the sacrifice item in the second slot. If the combination is allowed, the resulting enchanted item will appear in the anvil's output slot and an experience level 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 cost in levels depends on the enchantments, with highly enchanted items costing more. If the target item is also being repaired, that costs more&mdash;often much more for diamond items. The target item can also be renamed, at additional cost. There is also an accumulating surcharge for prior work done on the anvil, which is limited by renaming the item. In survival mode, there is a limit of 40 levels for any work performed on the anvil&mdash;if a job would cost more, it will be refused (though it might be do-able in steps: rename, repair, then combine enchantments).

Enchanted books
Enchanted books can be found in generated chests, can be purchased with emeralds from a villager librarian, or can be made by using an enchanting table. They are used to add enchantments to items, including some items which can't be enchanted on a table. This is done on an anvil similarly to combining items, but with the book in place of the sacrifice item.

The experience costs for using books are considerably less than for combining items with similar enchantments. This is appropriate, since the books themselves cost levels to create. However, enchanted items cost both levels and materials, and have a chance to get multiple enchantments. Therefore, creating an enchanted item by only using books is generally a large waste of experience. There will be no repair done on the target, though renaming is an option.

Some enchanted books can give enchantments to items that could not get them from an enchantment table (e.g., Unbreaking on a sword, Silk Touch on shears, Thorns on boots). In creative mode, books can be used to enchant any item.

Villager priest
A villager priest may offer to trade enchanting for emeralds. The offers will be very specific, a certain enchantment for a specific item (for example, Projectile Protection IV and Thorns I for an iron chestplate). To enchant an item, the player places it and the requested emeralds in the priest's trading slots and moves the resulting enchanted item to their inventory.

Unlike enchanting by enchantment table or enchanted book, enchanting by village priest has no experience level cost.

The priest does not technically enchant the item, but rather exchanges it for a new one with the enchantment (even if the old one is damaged). This means that priest-enchanted gear can be effectively "repaired" by buying the enchantment again on the same item, which is usually much cheaper than any other kind of repair. However, any other enchantments will be lost; a priest cannot augment an already-enchanted item.

Priests can enchant iron and diamond swords, pickaxes, axes and chestplates. There are several sets of enchantments for each of these, but a particular priest will only offer one option for each.

Enchantments
The table below describes the enchantments that are possible for the player to acquire legitimately in Survival mode. Other combinations are possible in Creative mode or with cheats, mods, or third-party software.


 * EID: Effect Identification Number, an internal code used in the software.
 * Name:The enchantment's name will appear under the item's name when the player hovers the mouse over the item along with its level.
 * Max Level: The maximum level that can be received legitimately. Higher levels are possible with third-party software, like NBT structure editors.
 * Primary Items: The items that can receive the enchantment legitimately in Survival mode, by any of the four possible enchanting methods. Items of any material can be enchanted (some more easily than others).
 * Secondary Items: Items which cannot receive the enchantment from an enchanting table, but can from an anvil or villager priest.
 * Effect:A description of the capability improved or added by the enchantment.

in  can change the glow accordingly. On past versions of Minecraft and only on certain graphics cards, enchanted items would cause the hotbar to become semi-transparent whilst they were the selected item.
 * Notes
 * On October 1, 2011, Notch tweeted an image of the enchantment screen, with enchantments written in the Standard Galactic Alphabet. The first enchantment translates into "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". For more information on the Standard Galactic Alphabet see the Commander Keen Wikipedia page.
 * Three of the possible words for enchantments are "the elder scrolls," likely a joke at Bethesda, creator of "The Elder Scrolls" series and whose parent company, Zenimax, attempted to sue Mojang for the name of their upcoming game Scrolls.
 * The words "klaatu berata niktu" are a (misspelled) reference to "Klaatu barada nikto", a phrase that originates from the 1951 movie The Day the Earth Stood Still and has been since used as a reference in many other movies, cartoons and games, more popularly in Army of Darkness, Star Wars Episode VI, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles(1987) and Duck Tales. Similarly, "Xyzzy" is a magic spell in the game "Colossal Cave Adventure" and has been used in several other games as an Easter Egg or cheat code.
 * "Embiggen" is a fictitious word from The Simpsons, from a quote attributed to Springfield's founder, Jebidiah Springfield: "A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man".
 * All tools, swords and armor enchanted before 1.9 Prerelease 4 will only have Feather Falling I as their enchantment.
 * The Silk Touch enchantment is possible on all levels of enchantment when enchanting a golden pickaxe, although extremely rare on enchantments below level 20.
 * Shears with the Silk Touch enchantment can harvest cobwebs.
 * Enchanted items still pulsate while you pause the game.
 * Along with torches, any snow on top of a block next to the enchantment table will decrease the enchantment levels.
 * In 1.2 and later Zombies, Zombie Pigmen and Skeletons are able to drop rare items, this includes enchanted weaponry on higher difficulties.
 * It's not possible to get more than 4 glowstone dust from a glowstone block using the fortune enchantment.
 * Before 1.4.4, if a pig, chicken, or cow was killed instantly using a bow with the Flame enchantment, it would drop cooked food. However, if one was killed instantly using a sword with the Fire Aspect enchantment, it would not drop cooked food. This is because the sword applied the damage first, and then the enchantment, but the arrows apply the enchantment first.
 * You can only enchant an item one time, but it is possible to get 2 or more enchantments on an item when first enchanting it.
 * It is not possible to get a Feather Falling IV and a Protection IV enchantment on any kind of boots without the use of an anvil, but it is possible to get a Fire/ Blast/ Projectile Protection IV and Feather Falling IV enchantment
 * The Enderdragon does not take extra damage from the Sharpness, Smite, or Bane of Arthropods sword enchantments, but does take extra damage from the Power bow enchantment.
 * It seems the Xbox version of Minecraft has a different looking enchantment effect. It is more pixelated, and is white instead of purple.
 * If you kill a Ghast by reflecting its fireball with a Looting III sword, the Looting effect does make the Ghast able to drop 3 tears.