How to Do Enchantments in Minecraft

Have you ever been fighting mobs in Minecraft and wished your diamond sword was even stronger? That’s possible with enchantments! Enchantments are special abilities you can add on to your tools and armor. While there are quite a few steps to enchant your items, it is easier than it seems!

Crafting Your Enchanting Table

Enchantments are done using an enchanting table, similar to how you need a crafting table to craft certain items! You can craft an enchanting table with four obsidian, two diamonds, and one book.

Enchanting table crafting recipe.

Bookshelves and Enchanting Tables

You will commonly see bookshelf blocks surrounding enchanting tables. This is for a good reason!

Enchanting table surrounded by bookshelves.

The enchantments you receive from an enchanting table have a very large range. If you place an enchantment table alone, without any bookshelves, you will get the lowest enchantment levels available. The more books you surround your enchanting table with, the more powerful your enchantments will be!

Required Materials for Enchanting

There are a lot of elements that play into using your enchantment table. Sadly, you cannot use an enchantment table whenever you want, like a crafting table. 

First, you need to gain experience. Have you ever wondered what those green numbers between your food bar and health bar mean? That’s your experience level!

Where to find your experience level.

You gain experience in many different ways. Smelting, killing mobs, and mining all can give you experience. Be careful, if you die, you will lose your experience. 

Lower level enchantments usually only take around one to five experience levels, but higher level enchantments can take up to thirty levels. The green number to the left is the amount of levels needed for the enchantment!

Different enchantments for different experience levels.

Lapis Lazuli is also needed for enchantments. You can find lapis in caves while mining.

An example of lapis lazuli ore.

And lastly, you will need the item you plan on enchanting!

Enchanting Table Menu

When you right-click an enchanting table, a menu should pop up that looks like this:

What you see when you right click an enchanting table.

In the left corner there are two boxes. In the first box, you put what you plan on enchanting. In this screenshot I put a diamond sword. In the second box, you put your lapis lazuli. To the right you will see three bars. The first is the lowest level enchantment, it has a three in the box, so it takes three experience levels. The third box is the highest level enchantment available. It takes thirty experience levels.

When you hover over the enchantment options, you will not see all of the available enchantments, only one. Higher levels can put a lot of different enchantments on your item, and you will not be able to see all of the enchantments until you are done.

Choosing Your Enchantments

Once you’re ready to enchant, click on the enchantment option you want. The lapis lazuli and your experience levels will be taken away. 

To see all of the enchantments you got, hover over your item in your inventory!

A sword with enchantments on it.

Then you’re done! Your item is enchanted.