How to put multiple enchantments on an item in Minecraft

Enchanting in Minecraft opens up to many new possibilities, and if one enchantment can change an item completely, more than one enchantment can make it absolutely unique!

You can put multiple enchantments on an item by using an Enchanted Table or an Anvil. Let’s see how to do it both ways!

Enchanting Table

When you use an Enchanting Table to put enchantments on your items, you usually get more than one enchantment. The problem is that those enchantments will be random.

When you put an item on the Enchanting Table, this will show you 3 options for that specific tool. Each one will require a certain amount of XP and Lapis Lazuli as cost of the enchantments. You can see only one of the enchantments that those 3 options would apply to your item by going on the icon with your mouse.

For example, in the screenshot above you can see that the cheapest option will give Efficiency I to my Iron Pickaxe, but I don’t know what else will be on it once I enchant it with this option.

You can craft an Enchanting Table with 4 Obsidian blocks, 2 Diamonds and one Book. Keep in mind that the Obsidian blocks will require a Diamond Pickaxe to mine them.
This is how you craft it.

If you want to know more about enchanting with an enchanting Table you can check How to get Silk Touch easily in Minecraft?, where we explain how to get any enchantment in the game.

Instead, keep on reading to see how to get the enchantments that you want and then applying them to your items.

Anvil

The best and more predictable way to put multiple enchantments on your items is represented by the Anvil.

Before seeing how to use it, let’s see how to craft an Anvil. It’s quite an expensive item, it will require a lot of Iron. You will need 4 Iron Ingots and 3 Blocks of Iron. Just in case you don’t know it, to obtain a Block of Iron you need to put together 9 Iron Ingots in a Crafting Table like this:

This means that an Anvil will require the equivalent of 31 Iron Ingots! If you don’t want to spend all these resources, you can try to find one in a Village and steal it from the Villagers.
You will need a Pickaxe to break and take an Anvil.

If you want to craft an Anvil, this is the crafting recipe:

How to combine enchantments with an Anvil

There are two ways to put multiple enchantments on an item using an Anvil:

• you can combine two enchanted items
• you can combine an item (enchanted or not) with an Enchanted Book

Combining two enchanting items with an Anvil

If you combine two enchanted items, the Anvil will try to combine all the enchantments of the two items. “Try” because sometimes this will not be possible because of two reasons:

• some enchantments can’t coexist in the same item (like, for example, Protection and Blast Protection. You can also see how Axe’s enchantments can be incompatible with each other)
• the Anvil has a cost limit of 39 levels of experience

Even if it sounds like a lot, 39 can be reached and surpassed by combining two heavily enchanted items.

Combining an item with an Enchanted Book with an Anvil

First of all, you can get Enchanted Books by trading, fishing and by using the Enchanting Table.

To make an Enchanted Book with an Enchanting Table, you will just need to enchant a Book (instead of a Tool) with the Enchanting Table:

The problem with this method is that you will have Enchanted Books with the enchantment that you wanted plus other random enchantments. As we already said, some enchantments cannot be combined on the same item, and this could create a problem. Let me explain what I mean with an example.

Let’s say that you want to combine Smite and Unbreaking on a Diamond Sword. You manage to get two Enchanted Books with both the enchantments. But, as extra random enchantment, the Book with Unbreaking got Sharpness as well. Sharpness is incompatible with Smite, so you will not be able to combine those Enchanted Books on a single item (related topic: Smite vs Sharpness in Minecraft: which one is better?)

Trading is usually a better way to get the Enchanted Books that you need. You can also obtain some enchantments only by trading, like Mending for example (see more in How to repair your enchanted items in Minecraft). Those are called Trasure enchantments, you can see the full list here.

To know more about trading in Minecraft, you can check How to reset Villager trades in Minecraft?.

Once you have the Enchanted Books with the enchantments that you want to apply to your item, you will need to put the item and the Enchanted Book (or Books) on the Anvil.

Do this for all the Enchanted Books that you collected, and you will get your multiple enchanted item.

Conclusions

You can put multiple enchantments on an item by enchanting it on an En chanting Table or by combining different enchantments using an Anvil. It’s usually better to obtain the enchantments that you want by trading and then combining them with an Anvil, since it is a more predictable method. Thank you very much for reading the article this far and I hope I’ll see you again around here. See you and take care!