Enchanting Table

An enchantment table is a block that allows players to spend their experience point levels to enchant tools, books and armor. Enchanting works in three stages. The sprites and icons of enchanted items have a purple luminescence.

The table will enchant all tools and armor except the hoe, shears, and horse armor. The hoe and shears cannot be enchanted by the enchantment table and require an anvil and an appropriate enchanted book.

If the table is surrounded by bookshelves, with one block of air in between, arcane glyphs float from the bookshelves into the book (if particles are turned on). Having bookshelves near an enchantment table will increase the potency of enchantments.

The enchantment table is $3/4$ blocks high.

Crafting
The ingredients for an enchantment table can also be found in villages. Obsidian and diamonds can sometimes be found in village chests. A blacksmith's shop contains two lava source blocks, which can be converted into obsidian. Books can be obtained by breaking bookshelves in a library or stronghold.

Usage


When the player right-clicks on an enchantment table a blank enchanting screen is presented with a slot to receive an item and three rectangular buttons. Once an item is placed into the slot the three buttons display cryptic runes and numbers; the runes have no effect on the enchanting process. The numbers represent experience level costs that are randomly chosen based on the number of bookshelves placed around the enchantment table. The more bookshelves, up to a maximum of 15, the more potent an enchantment hence greater experience level cost. Removing the item and replacing it in the slot will re-randomize the enchantment and cost.

To enchant the item the player chooses one of the three buttons, paying the displayed experience level and one or more random enchantments are placed on the item. The higher the cost, the more likely that multiple enchantments will be added.

Standard Galactic Alphabet
The arcane glyphs that float from bookshelves to the enchanting table and the cryptic runes in the enchantment table's interface are written in the Standard Galactic Alphabet, which is a simple alphabet substitution cipher used in the Commander Keen series of computer games.



The runes are randomly constructed from the following list of words:

the elder scrolls klaatu berata niktu xyzzy bless curse light darkness fire air earth water hot dry cold wet ignite snuff embiggen twist shorten stretch fiddle destroy imbue galvanize enchant free limited range of towards inside sphere cube self other ball mental physical grow shrink demon elemental spirit animal creature beast humanoid undead fresh stale

Three to five words are chosen from the list and appended to each other, then displayed in the Standard Galactic Alphabet. The words chosen are random and are purely cosmetic: they have no relation to the enchantments that will be applied to the item and are not saved on the enchanted item (meaning they will tell you nothing about what the resulting spell will be), and they are only displayed in the enchantment table. They are just decoration for a choice among random enchantments, for each of which only the cost is known.

Trivia

 * Only 15 bookshelves are now required to achieve the maximum enchantments (lowered from 30 prior to update 1.3). Creating these bookshelves from scratch will require a total of 45 pieces of leather, 135 pieces of sugar cane (two stacks plus 7), and 23 logs of wood (with 2 planks left over) — not including the 1 leather and 3 sugar cane for the book on the enchantment table itself.
 * 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.
 * Breaking the enchantment table without using a pickaxe will not yield a block.
 * When sneaking 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 is made of obsidian, it doesn't require a Diamond Pickaxe to mine. In fact, it can be mined with any pickaxe.
 * 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.
 * An easy way to list enchantments faster if you only have one item to enchant is to place the item you want to enchant into the enchanting table, then right- and left-click on it at the same time. This will pick the item up and place it immediately back down, resulting in a new list of possible enchantments. This also works by using a non-enchantable item such as food.
 * Enchanting tables are midway between slabs and full blocks height-wise, so they could be potentially used as a TNT cannon's range-amplifier instead of slabs or trapdoors
 * Even though a book is visible when placed and when crafted, the enchantment table shows no book as an item.
 * If you place carpet between an enchantment table and a bookshelf, the bookshelf will not enhance the enchantments.
 * In an enchanting gui you can duplicate enchantable items by quickly clicking on the slot with something. What you clicked might have doubled but clicking the item will get rid of it.