Tutorials/Best enchantments guide

This guide will give you an explanation and walk-through of the best enchantments you can apply to everything that can be enchanted in the game.

For your armor, the following enchantments cannot be combined: Protection, Projectile Protection, Blast Protection, and Fire Protection. Protection prevents half the damage that would be blocked by the other three. In general, Protection is better, but in certain situations it could be useful to have something else. If you fall often in lava, it could be better to put Fire Protection on some of your armor. If you have died a lot to creeper explosions, put Blast Protection armor on.

Note: More than 20 Enchantment Protection Factor (EPF) is useless. 1 Level of Protection = 1 EPF, 1 Level of specific type of Protection = 2 EPF. For example, two pieces of armor with Blast Protection IV (EPF 8 each) and a single piece with Protection IV (EPF 4) would give a total EPF of 20 versus explosions.

For your sword and axe, the following enchantments cannot be combined: Sharpness, Smite, and Bane of Arthropods. Depending on what you want to do with the sword or axe, you can choose the most suitable. Sharpness is useful for general use, Smite is useful against undead mobs (skeletons, zombies, withers, wither skeletons, zombified piglins, skeleton horses, strays, husks, phantoms, drowned, and zoglins), Bane of Arthropods is useful against Arthropods (spiders, cave spiders, bees, silverfish, and endermites). Each level of Smite and Bane of Arthropods deals 2.5 extra damage to the specific group of mobs. Sharpness deals 1.25 extra damage $$ and  extra damage $$. If you are going to battle a lot of undead mobs (with the same sword or axe) more than every third[ Bedrock Edition / fourth[ Java Edition, level I to II] / fifth[ Java Edition, level III to V] time, choose Smite to deal the most damage. The same rule is not fully valid for choosing Bane of Arthropods, as Arthropods have low health, meaning Sharpness should be enough. Sharpness is the best choice, so have another sword with Smite for zombie farming (optional), or carry both a sharpness sword and a smite sword (optional, only if you have good inventory management).

For any other tools, there aren't any enchantments the player should avoid, aside from curses.

This page assumes that the world is created and played in the latest game version. However, it is possible to obtain different and more extreme enchantment combinations on prior versions; early 1.14 releases notably allow more than one protection enchantment to be applied to a single piece at a given time.

The enchantments are sorted from highest to least priority.

Armor
Have at least one piece with protection, preferably the pants, or just enchant your entire armor set with protection (save for one situational enchantment on the chestplate).


 * Unbreaking III
 * Mending
 * Protection IV or Projectile Protection IV or Blast Protection IV or Fire Protection IV
 * Respiration III
 * Aqua Affinity
 * Thorns III (consumes extra Durability)


 * Unbreaking III
 * Mending
 * Protection IV or Projectile Protection IV or Blast Protection IV or Fire Protection IV
 * Thorns III (consumes extra Durability)


 * Unbreaking III
 * Mending
 * Protection IV or Projectile Protection IV or Blast Protection IV or Fire Protection IV
 * Thorns III (consumes extra Durability)


 * Unbreaking III
 * Mending
 * Protection IV or Projectile Protection IV or Blast Protection IV or Fire Protection IV
 * Feather Falling IV
 * Depth Strider III or Frost Walker II
 * Soul Speed III (consumes extra Durability)
 * Thorns III (consumes extra Durability)


 * Unbreaking III
 * Mending
 * Sharpness V (for general use) or Smite V (for fighting undead, such as wither and wither skeleton farms) or Bane of Arthropods V
 * Looting III
 * Fire Aspect II (makes Endermen a hassle to fight; cooks food dropped by cows, pigs, hoglins, sheep, chicken, cod, and salmon)
 * Knockback II Optional (can make Drowned and Skeletons a hassle to fight)
 * Sweeping Edge III (Deals more damage to multiple mobs while standing still, useful for XP farms, though you may accidentally hit your pets if they're too close)


 * Unbreaking III
 * Mending
 * Efficiency V
 * Silk Touch (useful for beehives, bookshelves and campfires) or Fortune III (useful for cocoa beans and melons)
 * Sharpness V or Smite V  (allows 1-hit killing of most undead mobs) or Bane of Arthropods V (allows 1-hit killing of arthropods) [note that axes are only useful for combat on the Java Edition of Minecraft] or Cleaving III


 * Unbreaking III
 * Infinity or Mending
 * Power V
 * Flame
 * Punch II

* Note: Infinity means without Unbreaking you need 383 less arrows. With Unbreaking I / II / III you need on average 767/1151/1535 less arrows (1536=24 stacks). Mending means your bow will never break if you continually gain enough experience, which will likely happen. If you have an enchanting setup and a lot of iron for anvils, infinity is better, unless you have fletcher villagers, skeleton grinders, Piglin trading hall (Spectral Arrows), or a lot of feathers and flint. Another exception would be if you got a powerful bow early game, for example from fishing. Mending would be better because you won't have a lot of iron or an enchanting table early on.


 * Unbreaking III
 * Mending
 * Quick Charge III
 * Multishot or Piercing IV *

* Note: You are more likely to hit another mob with Multishot or the same one when its a larger mob, but the chance that you hit something else unintentionally increases with both enchantments (a villager to make an iron golem angry or a zombified piglin or bees). Piercing allows to reuse arrows which hit a mob, so it almost substitutes Infinity, and it can be useful for achieving an advancement or killing at spawners. Piercing is usually better because you use less arrows, and with multishot, you can only see where one arrow will land, not all three.


 * Mending
 * Unbreaking III
 * Loyalty III and Channeling or only Riptide III *
 * Impaling V

* Note: Loyalty can be useful for fighting mobs in any weather conditions, just don't throw it into the void. Loyalty will make your trident come to you automatically unless you throw it into the void. Riptide is useful for fast transportation in certain weather conditions or underwater, it can also be used as a reliable substitute of firework rockets for elytra as long as there is a water source nearby. Channeling makes a lightning strike on any mobs you attack with your trident (only works under thunderstorms). This can be used to turn villagers into witches, pigs into zombified piglins, red mooshrooms into brown mooshrooms, and creepers into charged creepers. A charged creeper's explosion will cause a nearby mob to drop its head (such as zombies, skeletons, and other creepers) so this enchantment is useful for farming mob heads. But beware of that as charged creepers' explosions are 50% more powerful than an explosion of TNT. Now you can get an idea about how dangerous it is.


 * Unbreaking III
 * Mending
 * Fortune III (useful for ores) or Silk Touch (useful for ice, stone, etc.)
 * Efficiency V

Note: Fortune III has the highest priority if you mine for diamonds


 * Unbreaking III
 * Mending
 * Efficiency V
 * Silk Touch (useful for Grass Block) or Fortune III (useful for Flint)


 * Unbreaking III
 * Mending
 * Efficiency V
 * Silk Touch or Fortune III


 * Unbreaking III (needs in Bedrock Edition)
 * Mending
 * Efficiency V
 * Silk Touch (useful for leaves) or Fortune III (useful for apples and saplings)


 * Unbreaking III
 * Mending
 * Luck of the Sea III
 * Lure III

Unbreaking III Mending


 * Unbreaking III
 * Mending


 * Unbreaking III
 * Mending


 * Unbreaking III
 * Mending


 * Unbreaking III
 * Mending


 * Mending
 * Unbreaking III

Conflicting Enchantments
Conflicting enchantments are enchantments that cannot be combined on the same tool. The following enchantments cannot be combined:


 * Sharpness, Smite, and Bane of Arthropods cannot be combined
 * Silk Touch and Fortune cannot be combined
 * Infinity and Mending cannot be combined
 * Piercing and Multishot cannot be combined
 * Loyalty or Channeling and Riptide cannot be combined