Enchanting

Enchanting grid. Top: Without item. Bottom: With item and possible enchantments. The last enchantment is unavailable due to the lack of XP, and the first enchantment is currently selected.

Enchanting is a mechanic which utilizes an Enchantment Table to add special abilities to armor, tools, and weapons. Enchantments require the usage of experience points, with successively higher enchantments requiring more experience.

Enchanting Basics

See also: Enchantment Mechanics

An item can be enchanted by first right-clicking on the 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. Only enchantments with a required level less than or equal to the player's can be selected. Each option will imbue the item with a randomized set of enchantments which are dependent on the number of experience levels spent.

The text on the three options of the enchanting GUI is meaningless, but the level number influences the amount, type, and level of enchantments gained on the item, with a higher experience level resulting in more enchantments and more potent forms of said enchantments.

Enchantable items are currently limited to all kinds of armor, tools (limited to pickaxes, shovels, and axes), swords, and bows.

There are several levels on most enchantments, and obtaining multiple enchantments is a possibility, with the probability increasing with higher experience levels.

Enchantments

EID is the item's Effect Identification Number in the game code. (This allows "Out of place Enchantments")

EID	Enchantable item/s	Name	Effect type	Max. Enchantment Power	Per-level bonus	Notes
Armor Enchantments
Protection enchantments stack, up to an upper limit cap. For the "x protection" enchantments, "Protection" always protects just as well against fire damage as "Fire Protection" does. "Feather Falling" sometimes works better than plain "Protection", unless the sum of your protection enchantments are already at the upper limit cap. See this page for details.
0	Enchanting/image Enchanting/image Enchanting/image Enchanting/image	Protection	Converts all damage from all sources (except from The Void and the /kill command) to armor damage.	IV	See Armor article	Armor with this enchantment cannot receive any other type of Protection, apart from helmets, which can receive the Respiration and Aqua Affinity enchantments and boots which can receive feather falling.
1	Enchanting/image Enchanting/image Enchanting/image Enchanting/image	Fire Protection	Protection against fire	IV	See Armor article	Armor with this enchantment cannot receive any other type of Protection, apart from boots, which can receive the Feather Falling Enchantment.
2	Enchanting/image	Feather Falling	Protection against fall damage	IV	See Armor article	This is a great way to prevent the fall damage from Ender Pearl teleportations.
3	Enchanting/image Enchanting/image Enchanting/image Enchanting/image	Blast Protection	Protection against explosions	IV	See Armor article	Armor with this enchantment cannot receive any other type of Protection, apart from boots, which can receive the Feather Falling Enchantment.
4	Enchanting/image Enchanting/image Enchanting/image Enchanting/image	Projectile Protection	Protection against projectile entities (e.g. arrows and ghast/blaze fireballs (only the initial impact)).	IV	See Armor article	Armor with this enchantment cannot receive any other type of Protection, apart from boots, which can receive the Feather Falling Enchantment and helmets which can receive the Aqua Affinity Enchantment.
5	Enchanting/image	Respiration	Decreases the rate of air loss underwater; increases time between damage while suffocating.	III	Underwater breathing time +15 seconds; time between suffocation damage +1 second.
6	Enchanting/image	Aqua Affinity	Increases underwater mining rate	I
Sword Enchantments
16	Enchanting/image	Sharpness	Extra damage	V	Up to 1.5 hearts extra damage per level.	Extra damage is random for every hit, but will always be at least 0.5 heart. A sword with this enchantment cannot receive Smite or Bane of Arthropods.
17	Enchanting/image	Smite	Extra damage to zombies, zombie pigmen, and skeletons.	V	Up to 2 hearts extra damage per level.	Extra damage is random for every hit, but will always be at least plus 0.5 heart. A sword with this enchantment cannot receive Sharpness or Bane of Arthropods.
18	Enchanting/image	Bane of Arthropods	Extra damage to spiders, cave spiders and silverfish.	V	Up to 2 hearts extra damage per level.	Extra damage is random for every hit, but will always be at least 0.5 heart. A sword with this enchantment cannot receive Sharpness or Smite.
19	Enchanting/image	Knockback	Increases the knockback dealt when attacking mobs and players.	II	More knockback.	Does not stack with knockback caused by attacking while sprinting. Note that this enchantment can sometimes make experience harder to obtain, as it knocks the mob's body back, causing the orbs to spawn farther away.
20	Enchanting/image	Fire Aspect	Lights the target on fire.	II	Affects duration of burning.	Dropped meat will be cooked if an animal is killed by fire damage, but not if killed by the sword hit.
21	Enchanting/image	Looting	Mobs have a chance to drop more loot.	III	+1 to max loot drop per level.	This also increases the chance of getting a rare drop.
Tool Enchantments
32	Enchanting/image Enchanting/image Enchanting/image	Efficiency	Faster resource gathering while in use.	V	+50% mining speed per level.	Efficiency V gives a 250% speedboost, breaking some blocks instantly. The speed increase applies to blocks that the tool is appropriate for and those that can be mined by hand.
33	Enchanting/image Enchanting/image Enchanting/image	Silk Touch	Blocks mined will drop themselves, even if it should drop something else (e.g. Stone will drop stone, not Cobblestone).	I		Allows the collection of normally unobtainable blocks such as Ores, Grass, Mycelium and Huge Mushrooms. The normal requirements for mining blocks still applies: e.g. An iron or better pickaxe must still be used to retrieve diamond ore blocks etc.
34	Enchanting/image Enchanting/image Enchanting/image	Unbreaking	At each use, there's a chance the tool's durability will not decrease.	III	The tool will last an entire tool durability longer.	For example, an Unbreaking III item has a chance to use up a use of (100/(3+1))% = (100/4)% = 25%, so Unbreaking III should, on average, make a tool last 4 times as long.
35	Enchanting/image Enchanting/image Enchanting/image	Fortune	Can multiply the drop rate of items from blocks	III	I: 33% * 2 (33% more) II: 25% * 2, 25% * 3 (75% more) III: 20% * 2, 20% * 3, 20% * 4 (120% more)	Only applies to coal, diamond, and lapis lazuli. Also affects the drop rates of Nether Wart, wheat (seeds only), Tall Grass, Glowstone, Melons, and Redstone, and increases the chance for gravel to drop flint instead of itself (see #Notes).
Bow Enchantments
48	Enchanting/image	Power	Extra damage	V	Extra damage is dealt	Multiplies base damage by 1.5 at Power I. Additional levels increase the multiplier by .25 each for a maximum of 2.5. At Power V and with the bow fully drawn it will kill most mobs with a single shot (11-12.5 hearts damage).
49	Enchanting/image	Punch	Knockback effect on mobs and players	II	Mobs and players are knocked back farther.
50	Enchanting/image	Flame	Sets arrows, mobs, and players on fire.	I		Sets arrows on fire when shot, and players and mobs when hit.
51	Enchanting/image	Infinity	Gives unlimited shots with a single arrow (The bow still loses durability).	I		This can be extremely useful against the Ender Dragon when fighting it in The End, since the player no longer needs to return for more arrows once their supply runs out. However, arrows fired by a bow with this enchantment cannot be retrieved, similar to the arrows fired by Skeletons.

Standard Galactic Alphabet

The enchantments are written in the Standard Galactic Alphabet which is a simple alphabet substitution cipher used in the Commander Keen series of computer games.

Enchantment names are randomly constructed from the following list of words. Three to five words are chosen from the list and appended to each other, then displayed in the Standard Galactic Alphabet. Note that the names have no meaning 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 interface.

The following list of words contain all the possible enchantment words after deciphering.

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

You can use this program http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1265144-enchanting-program/.

History

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

Enchanting was added to the game in 1.9 prerelease 2. However, enchanting was not the same in the 1.9 prerelease 2. Enchanting did NOT require bookshelves to get maximum enchantments. Also, many enchantments were not added back then. Enchantments are labeled in the enchanting table as random words in the Standard Galactic Alphabet.

In 1.1, four bow enchantments (Power, Flame, Punch and Infinity) were added to the game.

As of snapshot 12w05a, enchanting no longer requires experience in creative mode.

As of snapshot 12w06a, Golden Swords and Bows have a small chance of being already enchanted when dropped by their respective mobs.

As of snapshot 12w17a, Ice and Glass Panes can again be collected with a Silk Touch-enchanted tool.

As of snapshot 12w22a, the maximum enchantment power was lowered from 50 to 30 and the experience is collectable with mining and cooking in furnace.

As of snapshot 12w23a, enchanted tools and armor are now visible on multiplayer.

Bugs

• In multiplayer, players can only see their own enchantment auras, and not those of other players. (Fixed in 12w23a)
• In multiplayer, items that cannot normally be enchanted will not appear as enchanted when they are, however they still work as enchanted.
• In singleplayer and multiplayer, hitting an Enderman with an arrow from a Flame enchanted bow will set the Enderman on fire even though it does not take damage from the arrow itself.
• If you quit after enchanting an item, but before taking it off the enchantment table, you may lose the item.
• In multiplayer, leaves obtained with a silk touch enchanted tool will appear singularly and will not stack in your inventory.
• In Creative Mode, provided you have enough levels, your levels will deplete after enchanting. (ex. If you enchant a sword at level 50 and you have 55 levels in creative then you will have 5 remaining after enchanting, but you can continue enchanting high level items.)

Trivia

• 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.
• Looting enchantment does not process on Wool, Spider Eye, Raw Chicken, and Cooked Chicken.
• Similarly, using console commands to place the Fortune enchantment on Shears will not cause more wool to drop from Sheep when used.
• 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. 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.
• On October 1st 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". 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 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.
• Enchanted items still pulsate while you have paused the game.
• It was mentioned that, in a future update, the properties of an enchanted item may give it a random yet unique name or even an exciting look in order to add more of an RPG-like effect.
• The Protection enchantment converts hunger damage to armor damage.
• In 1.2 Zombies, Zombie Pigmen and Skeletons are able to drop rare items, this includes enchanted weaponry.
• It's not possible to get more than 4 glowstone dust from a glowstone block using the fortune enchantment.
• If a pig, chicken, or cow is killed instantly using a bow with the Flame enchantment, it will drop cooked food. However, if one is killed instantly using a diamond sword with the Fire Aspect enchantment, it will not drop cooked food.
• 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.
• Jeb_ has stated that Enchanting may change. He has talked about making the highest level enchantment cost 30 rather than 50 (This has been added in 12w22a snapshot, and will be in 1.3).
• As of 12w23a, killing 100 mobs will allow you to reach level 30, as will smelting 13 stacks of ore.

Gallery

• 2011-10-21 19.12.38.png

  A sword with 4 enchantments on it.

• 

  A diamond pickaxe with multiple high level enchantments.

• YA2DD.png

  Enchantment Table enchanting window.

• 

  Enchanting window without (top) and with (bottom) an item to enchant placed in it.

• 

  Place bookshelves in this shape around an enchantment table to get the highest level enchantments.

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  A golden pickaxe with the Silk Touch enchantment from level 20.

Mods from the community

Several people have built mods for making the enchanting system less random and more rewarding at higher enchantment levels. Among these are:

• Enchantment Grid

• Superior Enchantment System

• Enchanting Plus

See also

• Enchantment Mechanics
• Brewing
• Crafting
• Smelting

External links

• Minecraft Enchantment Guide - Various enchantment calculation tools