Enchanting

Enchanting grid. Top: Without item. Bottom: With item and possible enchantments.

Enchanting is a game mechanic that involves using an Enchantment Table to add special bonuses to tools, weapons or armor. To enchant an item, you will need the required Experience level for the enchantment and an Enchantment Table.

Notch has stated that Enchanting will work in three stages and the benefits will be based on the spell you choose, but a random loot element will be included as well. Each spell will cost the player experience levels but in turn allows the player to enchant armor, swords and tools with one or several random bonus attributes as well as making the items glow with a brilliant hue.

History

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

Enchanting was added to the game in 1.9 prerelease 3. WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTT

Enchanting basics

To enchant an item, craft an Enchantment Table, place it on the ground, right-click on it and drag an enchantable item from your inventory onto the square under the book icon. Three randomly chosen enchantments will appear on the menu on the right. The only thing you can know for sure about them is their level, which appears as a number; the foreign text is random. You can take the item off and place it on the table again for a different set of enchantments. Or, you can attempt to replace the item on the table with a stack of two or more of any other item from your inventory.

File:Enchantment histogram.png

A chart showing the relative probabilities of the different enchantment levels in the bottom slot with 30 bookshelves.

Once you choose an enchantment ENCHANTMENT A SDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD, it will be applied to your item, giving it a glow and one of the special powers detailed below, and you will lose a number of experience levels equal to the level of the enchantment. Enchantments cannot be undone (unless you repair the item, which removes enchantments) and an item can only be enchanted once (although you may receive multiple enchantments during one instance of enchanting, determined randomly).

Whenever you place an eligible item on the table, the enchantment levels available are randomly generated for each slot using the formula below. The enchantment level is dependent upon the numbiuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuat 30) and a "slot factor" of 0.50 for the topmost enchantment slot, 0.66 for the middle slot, and 1.00 for the bottom slot. (If the number of bookshelves is 0, the second two random integers will always be zero. When placing bookshelves around the Enchanting Table they CANNOT be touching the table or the table will not change from 5.

Enchantment level available = (1..5 + 0..(b/2) + 0..b) × s,

where b is the number of nearby bookshelves (maximum of 30), s is the slot factor for the given enchantment slot, and x..y generates a random integer between x and y inclusive. (Note that however many bookshelves are being used, 1 is still available as the lowest level.)

Bookshelves	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24	25	26	27	28	29	30
Max Level	5	7	8	10	11	13	14	16	17	19	20	22	23	25	26	28	29	31	32	34	35	37	38	40	41	43	44	46	47	49	50

Bookshelf placement

Nearby bookshelves increase the level of enchantments further. As of Beta 1.9 Pre-release 4, no enchantments costing above five Experience levels are available unless you place bookshelves near the Enchantment Table. In order to have an effect, a bookshelf must be placed within 2 blocks, laterally, of the enchantment table and be on the same level or one block height above the table. A bookshelf generally has to have a line of sight to the table, although bookshelves placed on the corners of a square will still have an effect. An enchantment table can be surrounded by 30 bookshelves by placing them in a square around the table, with each wall measuring 5 blocks wide and 2 blocks high, with a 2 block high doorway. This arrangement gives access to level 50 recipes.

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.

scrolls klaatu berata niktu xyzzy bless curse light darkness fire air earth water hot dry cold wet elder 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

Repairing an enchanted weapon/tool will remove the enchantment on it.

When an enchanted weapon deals bonus damage to a mob, circular blue particles fly off of that mob, similar to getting a critical hit.

There are several levels on most enchants, and when you enchant you can get several enchants on each weapon/tool/armor.

Enchantable Items

Items such as swords, shovels, pickaxes, axes, and every part of armor of any material can be enchanted. Hoes, shears, fishing rods, bows and flint and steel are not enchantable.

Enchantment Types

EID is the item's Effect Identification Number in the game code.

EID	Enchantable item	Name	Effect	Max. Enchantment Power	On level up	Notes
Armor Enchantments
ch as coal, diamond, redstone, glowstone, lapis lazuli and nether wart. When used on Wheat, only the Seeds' drop rate is affected. When used on a Melon Block, the drop rate of melon slices are increased. Increases the chance for Gravel to drop Flint instead of itself, up to 100% at III. It doesn't affect clay ball drop rates (it is always 4).

How Enchantments Are Chosen

"Enchantment level" is the cost of the enchantment in experience levels (the green number on the button). "Enchantment power" is the strength of the particular enchantment. For example, "Sharpness IV" has power 4. The enchantment algorithm uses a three-step process.

Step One - Applying modifiers to the enchantment level

The first thing that Minecraft does is apply two modifiers to the base enchantment level. Each modifier is restricted to a certain range, with numbers close to the middle of the range more common than those near the ends.

The first modifier is based on the item's "enchantability," which depends on the material and the type of the item (see the table below). Minecraft picks a number between 0 and the enchantability, then adds that number plus one to the enchantment level.

modified enchantment level = enchantment level + Random(0, enchantablility) + 1

Material	Armor enchantability	Sword/Tool enchantability
Wood	N/A	15
Leather	15	N/A
Stone	N/A	5
Iron	9	14
Chain	12	N/A
Diamond	10	10
Gold	25	22

Next, Minecraft picks a value between 0.75 and 1.25. The modified enchantment level is multiplied by this value (so it could increase or decrease by up to 25%) and then rounded to the nearest integer.

Step Two - Find possible enchantments

Now, based on the modified level, Minecraft makes a list of all enchantment types that can be applied to the target item along with the power that each enchantment will have.

minimum and maximum level that can produce the enchantment at that power. If the modified enchantment level is within the range, then the enchantment will be assigned that power. If the level is within two overlapping ranges for the same enchantment type, the higher power value is used.

Min level power ≤ enchantment level ≤ Max level power => enchantment power = range respective enchantment power

Armor Enchantment	Modified Enchantment level
	I	II	III	IV	V
Protection	1 - 21	17 - 37	33 - 53	49 - 69	—
10 - 22	16 - 30	26 - 38	34 - 46	—
Feather Fall	5 - 15	11 - 21	Blast Protection	5 - 17	13 - 25	21 - 33	29 - 41	—
Projectile Protection	3 - 18	9 - 24	15 - 30	21 - 36	—
Respiration	10 - 40	20 - 50	30 - 60	—
Aqua Affinity	1 - 41	—
Weapon Enchantment	Modified Enchantment level
	I	II	III	IV	V
Sharpness	1 - 21	17 - 37	33 - 53	49 - 69	65 - 85
Smite	5 - 17	13 - 25	21 - 33	29 - 41	37 - 49
Bane of Arthropods	5 - 17	13 - 25	21 - 33	29 - 41	37 - 49
Knockback	5 - 25	25 - 75	—
Fire Aspect	10 - 60	30 - 80	—
Looting	20 - 70	32 - 82	44 - 94	—
Tool Enchantment	Modified Enchantment level
	I	II	III	IV	V
Efficiency	1 - 51	15 - 66	33 - 81	46 - 96	61 - 111
Silk Touch	25 - 75	—
Unbreaking	5 - 55	15 - 65	25 - 75	—
Fortune	20 - 70	32 - 82	44 - 94	—

Note: that extremely high modified enchantment levels can fall outside the ranges of all valid enchantments for the item. If this happens, the item is left un-enchanted, but you are not charged any experience levels and can try enchanting it again.

Step Three - Select a set of enchantments from the list

Now that it's got a list of the possible enchantments for the item, Minecraft has to pick some of them that will actually be applied.

You always get at least one enchantment. The first enchantment is picked from a list of statistical "weights" - the enchantment with the higher weight has a higher chance of being selected.

P(enchantment) = (enchantment weight) / (∑i=1number of possible enchantments〖enchantment weighti 〗)

Armor Enchantments	Weight
Protection	10
Fire Protection	5
Feather Fall	5
Blast Protection	2
Projectile Protection	5
Respiration	2
Aqua Affinity	2
Weapon Enchantments	Weight
Sharpness	10
Smite	5
Bane of Arthropods	5
Knockback	5
Fire Aspect	2
Looting	2
Tool Enchantments	Weight
Efficiency	10
Silk Touch	1
Unbreaking	5
Fortune	2

After the first element is selected, there is a chance of receiving more, based on this algorithm:

1. Divide the modified level in half, rounded down. (This does not affect the possible enchantments themselves, because they were all pre-calculated in Step Two.)
2. With probability (modified level + 1) / 50, keep going. Otherwise, stop picking bonus enchantments.
3. Remove from the list of possible enchantments anything that conflicts with previously-chosen enchantments.
4. Pick one enchantment from the remaining possible enchantments (based on the weights, as before) and apply it to the item.
5. Repeat from step 1.

Conflicting Enchantments

Some enchantment conflict with other enchantments and thus both can't be enchanted into the same item, Effectively taking down the possibility for one to get an overpowered weapon.

The rules for enchantment conflicts are:

• Every enchantment conflicts with itself. (So you can't get a tool with two copies of the Efficiency enchantment.)
• All protection enchantments conflict with each other, so an item can only have one at a time. (In the code, Feather Fall is implemented as *A protection enchantment, but it doesn't conflict with the others.)
• All damage enchantments (Sharpness, Smite, and Bane of Arthropods) conflict with each other.
• Silk Touch and Fortune also conflict with each other. (The Fortune enchantment has no effect on a pickaxe that also has Silk Touch, such as could be obtained in a 1.9 prerelease or with an inventory editor, since a Silk Touch pickaxe cannot mine resources such as diamonds or coal -- only their ore blocks.)

Examples

• A level 50 diamond pickaxe would have a 16.10% chance to have 3 enchantments, a 48.09% chance to have exactly 2 enchantments and a 35.80% chance to have exactly 1 enchantment. The resulting enchantments would have a 75.43% chance to include Efficiency (9.26% for 3, 39.97% for 4 and 26.21% for 5), a 54.85% chance to include Unbreaking 3, a 28.88% chance to include Fortune (27.22% for 3 and 1.66% for 2) and a 15.06% chance to include Silk Touch 1.
• A level 30 iron pickaxe would have a 6.34% chance to have 3 enchantments, a 34.65% chance to have exactly 2 enchantments and a 59.00% chance to have exactly 1 enchantment. The resulting enchantments would have a 68.08% chance to include Efficiency (22.60% for 2, 41.59% for 3 and 3.89% chance for 4), a 65.53% chance to include Unbreaking (57.98% for 2, 7.55% for 3), a 21.05% chance to include Fortune (5.36% for 1, 13.08% for 2, 2.60% for 3) and a 10.72% chance to include Silk Touch 1.
• A level 1 stone pickaxe would have a 0.23% chance to have 3 enchantments, a 6.04% chance to have exactly 2 enchantments and a 93.73% chance to have exactly 1 enchantment. The resulting enchantments would have a 84.84% chance to include Efficiency 1 and a 18.86% chance to include Unbreaking 1.
• A level 50 diamond helmet would have a 0.28% chance to have 3 enchantments, a 35.03% chance to have exactly 2 enchantments and a 64.70% chance to have exactly 1 enchantment. The resulting enchantments would have a 83.09% chance to include Protection (16.66% for 3 and 66.43% for 4), a 5.05% chance to include Fire Protection (0.02% for 3 and 5.03% for 4), a 38.33% chance to include Respiration 3, a 0.96% chance to include Aqua Affinity 1 and a 0.32% chance to include Blast Protection 4. It would also have a 6.65% chance of being left "un-enchanted" (see note above).
• A level 37 diamond helmet would have a 0.32% chance to have 3 enchantments, a 37.05% chance to have exactly 2 enchantments and a 62.63% chance to have exactly 1 enchantment. The resulting enchantments would have a 64.44% chance to include Protection (2.37% for 2, 40.93% for 3 and 21.14% for 4), a 17.59% chance to include Fire Protection (6.65% for 3 and 10.93% for 4), a 43.00% chance to include Respiration (0.12% for 2 and 42.88% for 3), a 11.66% chance to include Aqua Affinity 1, a 4.55% chance to include Blast Protection 4 and a 1.84% chance to include Projectile Protection 4.

How Enchantments Are Attached to an Item

The Enchantments of an item are determined by an extra set of data attached to the item.

The extra data is a "compound" labeled "tag"; Which contains a "list" of data named "ench"; in which is a series of "compound"[s] (one compound for each enchantment); Each of of the "compound"[s] contains a pair of "short"[s] named "id" and "lvl";

The "id" short represents the EID of the enchantment and the "lvl" short represents the level of the enchantment.

Hacking Enchantments

It is possible to edit enchantments via an external program such as NBTEdit by using a process such as that shown here.

Standard Galactic Alphabet

The enchantments are written in the Standard Galactic Alphabet which is a simple alphabet substitution code used in the Commander Keen series of computer games (see that page for the code key). However, if you want to decode the names more quickly you can replace alternate.png in .minecraft\bin\minecraft.jar\font (or in ~/Library/Application Support/minecraft/bin/minecraft.jar/font for OSX, ~/.minecraft/bin/minecraft.jar/font for linux) with the default.png NOTE: this does not work if you're using a texture pack.

There is something that may help you decode the language: File:Sga.gif

Note: Decoding the alphabet will allow a player to read the enchantment phrases in his or her native language, although these phrases remain arbitrary, as of client version 1.0.0.

Gallery

• YA2DD.png

  Enchantment Table enchanting grid

• 

  Blank enchanting grid

• EnchantmentTableLevel50.png

  An Enchantment that is priced at level 50

• 2011-10-21 19.12.38.png

  A sword with 4 enchantments on it.

• 

  Place Bookcases in this shape around the Enchanting table to get higher level enchantments

Trivia

• The Feather Falling enchantment could be from the Dungeons & Dragons wizard spell of the same name.
• Looting enchantment does not process on Wool, Spider Eye, Raw Chicken and Cooked Chicken.
• Items that are enchanted will receive a glowing aura around them. Editing glint.png in .minecraft\bin\minecraft.jar\misc can change the glow accordingly. Enchanted items also cause the hotbar to become semi-transparent whilst they are the selected item. The hotbar will revert to its opaque format when you select a new item.
• Repairing an enchanted item using another item will remove the enchantment it has.
• 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.
• 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, was suing Mojang.
• 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 armour 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.
• Enchanted items still pulsate while you have paused the game
• An enchanted stone shovel or pickaxe with the efficiency level of 1 will do the same efficiency as a standard stone axe
• It is worth noting that when using third-party software it is possible to enchant the Bow, while it is not possible to enchant items such as minecarts, apples etc. This could mean there are future enchantments planned for the bow.

Bugs

• In Beta 1.9pre4 it's possible to get Silk Touch and Fortune on the same tool. (It's a bug! --Jeb 09:58, 15 October 2011 (UTC)) (proof)
• Using the "Silk Touch" enchantment, it is possible to obtain either Redstone Ore or Glowing Redstone Ore, depending on the block's state when broken. These are different blocks and do not stack, but appear to be identical in the user's inventory.
• Mining gravel with a tool with Fortune IV or greater causes the game to crash.
• When a normally unobtainable block is mined using the Silk Touch enchantment, the tile entity of the block is not kept. Therefore when a mob spawner is picked up, (was possible in pre-4, but was removed in pre-5) it will revert to a pig spawner.
• Mining ender dragon egg with Efficiency V will crash the game.

See also

• Brewing
• Crafting
• Smelting