How to Enchant Items in Minecraft

Enchanting is the way to make magic armor, weapons or tools.

To enchant an item, you need to gain experience levels. The more levels you have, the stronger the enchantments you can do, but you won’t know exactly what you’re getting until after it’s done!

Enchantable Items

You can enchant all kinds of armour, swords, bows and tools including shears, fishing rods and flint-and-steel.

Enchantments

There are many types of enchantments: see the full list here.

How to Enchant Items

Get some experience points

Enchanting works by trading in experience levels (the green number above your toolbar) for enchantments. You get experience points (XP) in several ways, the main ones being killing mobs and from cooking or smelting things in furnaces.

Build an enchantment table

You will need obsidian, two diamonds and a book (made from paper, which is made from sugar cane, and leather, for which you will have to kill a cow or some rabbits).

enchanting table in minecraft

Enchant your item

The final things you will need are an item to enchant, and some Lapis Lazuli - the blue ore that you can find when mining.

Right-click on the enchantment table to bring up the enchanting interface.

enchanting interface in minecraft

Place the item you wish into the slot, and three potential enchantments will be offered.

enchanting in minecraft

The number in green on the right is how many levels you need to have to be able to do the enchantment. However, doing the enchantment will not cost you all of those levels.

The top enchantment will cost you 1 level and 1 piece of Lapis Lazuli; the middle one will cost you 2 of each and you will need 3 levels and 3 pieces of Lapis lazuli for the bottom enchantment.

In this example, the middle enchantment says 13. I would need to have more than 13 levels to do this enchantment, but it would only actually cost me 2 levels (leaving me with 11 levels after I did the enchantment).

Place 1, 2, or 3 pieces of Lapis Lazuli in the slot and the enchantments you have enough levels to perform will light up. Choose your enchantment and click!

enchanting in minecraft

The mysterious characters can be decoded, but they are not helpful. If you mouse over the enchantments, you can see one of the enchantments you will get on your item. There may or may not be additional enchantments, but you will only find out after you perform the enchantment.

enchanting in minecraft

Generally, the more levels you need to do the enchantment, the better the enchantments you will get, and the more of them there will be.

If you don’t want any of the enchantments offered (perhaps you wanted to spend a particular number of levels), you will need to enchant a different type of item, or maybe a book, and then you will get a different set of 3 choices next time.

Higher Level Enchantments

A basic Enchantment Table will only allow enchantments up to 8 levels. For more powerful enchantments, you will need to build bookshelves and place them near the enchantment table.

Enchantment Table

Each bookshelf increases the maximum available enchantment by 1 or 2 levels, up to a maximum of 30 levels (15 bookcases).

Bookshelf placement

Bookshelves should be 2 blocks away from the table, on the same level or one higher. There must be nothing between the bookshelf and the table.

Enchanted Books

Instead of enchanting an item, you can enchant a book instead. The enchantment can be saved for later, and applied to an item using an Anvil.

Why would you want to do this?

  • Maybe you have a lot of experience levels but don’t have anything to enchant at the moment.
  • Maybe you really want a Fortune enchanted pickaxe and don’t want to waste diamonds on yet another Silk Touch tool.

Combining Enchantments

Once an item is enchanted, it can’t be further enchanted using an Enchanting Table.

However, you can combine two enchanted items, or add a second enchantment from an enchanted book, using an Anvil.

Repairing Enchanted Items

You can repair enchanted items with an Anvil.