Mending Enchantment in Minecraft: Explained (2022)

Mending is a unique enchantment that requires players to put in some work for its activation. So, we have divided our guide into different sections to cover all aspects of this powerful enchantment. You can navigate through the topics using the table below.

What Does Mending Do in Minecraft

As the name reveals, mending repairs your items and restores their durability. They will still lose durability when used again, but with mending enchantment applied, you can restore the durability easily. It is one of the most common enchantments in the game that you can apply to every item that has durability in Minecraft.

What Items Can You Put Mending On

You can apply the mending enchantment on the following items within Minecraft:

HelmetChestplateLeggingsBootsPickaxeShovelAxeSwordHoeFishing RodBowShearsFlint and SteelCarrot on a StickWarped Fungus on a StickShieldElytraTridentTurtle ShellCrossbow

Do keep in mind that you can’t apply mending on any item that already has infinity enchantment on it. Both of them are incompatible due to similar functionality.

How Does Mending Work in Minecraft

Certain activities like breeding, killing mobs, and breaking specific blocks drops experience orbs in the game. Mending is directly related to collecting these experience orbs. Each time you collect experience in the game, your gear with mending enchantment gets its durability restored.

Rules for Mending in Minecraft

The process of Mending in Minecraft works on the basis of the following principles:

This enchantment repairs the items when they are in players’ hands (main or offhand) or their armor slots. In other words, mending only repairs equipped items.It ignores the items that are already at their maximum durability.Each experience orb point repairs two durability points.Lastly, if there is no item left to repair, the experience orbs get added to the player’s experience level as usual.

What Happens If You Have Multiple Items with Mending

If you have equipped multiple items with mending enchantment, then the game selects and targets one randomly. You can’t control its choice, but it follows these rules:

Irrespective of their level of damage, the selection doesn’t prioritize any item. However, mending does ignore items that are at their full durability.While experience is getting collected, it only goes towards one selected item. So, even if there is experience left over, it won’t go towards repairing another item. Instead, Minecraft adds all leftover points to the player’s experience bar.

How to Get Mending Enchantment in Minecraft

Now that you know how mending works, it’s time to discover how to get the mending enchantment in-game. Unfortunately, mending is a treasure enchantment. If you didn’t already know, treasure enchantments can’t be applied using an enchanting table. Instead, you have to look for enchantment books with mending enchantment. You can find enchanted books with mending in the following situations:

Trading with librarian villager at any level.Looting chest loots in the overworld and the Nether. Strongholds have the highest chances of spawning with chests with enchanted books.Fishing in water bodies around the overworld. Thunderstorms are the best weather for fishing in Minecraft.Pillager raids also have mobs that drop enchanted books when killed. But this is exclusive to the Bedrock edition.

Among these options, trading with a librarian villager is the most reliable way to get mending in Minecraft. You can use our best Minecraft village seeds to find a suitable village easily. Alternatively, you can also breed villagers to get a librarian manually for better trades.

Command to Obtain Enchanted Book with Mending

You can also use the following command to obtain an enchanted book with mending enchantment:
/give @p enchanted_book{StoredEnchantments:[{id:mending,lvl:1}]} 1 Alternatively, you can use this command to directly obtain an item enchanted with the mending enchantment.
/give @p diamond_sword{Enchantments:[{id:mending,lvl:1}]} 1 You can replace the “diamond_sword” part in the command with any other in-game item. Both of these commands work on the Java edition. We have tested them on Minecraft 1.18.2.

How to Use Mending Enchanted Book in Minecraft

Once you find an enchanted book with mending enchantment, you can use it on any eligible item with ease. Follow these steps to do so:

  1. To begin, craft an anvil by using 3 iron blocks and 4 iron ingots with the following recipe on a crafting table.
  2. Then, place the anvil on a solid block and use right-click or secondary action key to access it. Also, make sure you have at least level 1 in your experience bar to apply mending enchantment.
  3. Finally, place the item you want to enchant in the left cell of the anvil and the enchanted book in the middle cell. Then, within no time, the book will be consumed, and your enchanted item will be ready for use.

Get Mending Enchantment Without Books

If you’re unable to find an enchanted book with mending, you can also look for already enchanted items. Such items can be commonly obtained by:

Looting end cities in the end dimensionKilling mobs with enchanted items

The best way to find mobs with enchanted items is to set up a mob farm in Minecraft. You can use one to kill mobs to collect experience, and hopefully, some enchanted items with mending on them.

Combine Enchanted Items

If you find an enchanted item that has the mending enchantment on it, you can combine it with a copy of that same item. So, if you have a diamond sword with mending and a diamond sword with another enchantment, you can use an anvil to combine the two.
The combined item will consume the original two items, and it will have the enchantments from both of those items. But since mending is incompatible with infinity, you can’t combine these enchantments even with an anvil.
Q. Can You Get Mending from Enchanting a Book? Mending is a treasure enchantment, so you can’t use the enchanting table to manually get mending on books or any other item in the game. Instead, you have to look for naturally spawning enchanted books. Q. What Is the Fastest Way to Get Mending? Fishing is usually the fastest way to obtain enchanted books with mending enchantment. But trading with a librarian villager can be much more effective if you spawn at the right place and have enough resources.
Q. How to Increase the Chances of Getting a Mending Enchantment? If you are fishing, you can use the luck of sea III enchantment on your fishing rod. It will increase the chances of you catching a rare loot. Thus, you will have higher chances of getting enchanted books with mending enchantment.
Q. How Rare is a Book of Mending in Minecraft? As per tests by Minecraft players, the chances of getting an enchanted book with mending enchantment are only 0.8%.
Q. Can a Level 1 Villager Have Mending? Librarian villagers of all levels can offer enchanted books with mending enchantment.
Q. Which is the Best Place to Find Mending Enchantment? Chest in the ancient cities and strongholds libraries have high chances of having enchanted books. You can get mending enchantment in Minecraft in the chests of these locations. Q. How to Reset a Libraian Villager? If you don’t get your desired enchantment from the librarian, you can reset that villager by breaking and replacing its lectern.

Use Mending Enchantment in Minecraft Today

With that, you can now give your gear unlimited durability. You just have to get a mending enchantment in Minecraft for everything that can be destroyed. And once you are done, you can move on to learn about other enchantments in the game. Our Minecraft enchantments guide can help you make the most out of them. In case you wish to push your equipment further, the best Minecraft mods can help unlock even greater potential. Though, you will first have to install Forge in Minecraft to run mods. But if you aren’t confident in installing third-party add-ons in your game, you can also try them on the best Minecraft modded servers. With that said, on which item are you going to use mending enchantment? Tell us in the comments!