Tridents are very rare in Minecraft, expecially in the Java version. That’s why we want to do our best to keep them from breaking.
You can repair a Trident using an Anvil, a Grindstone, through crafting or by enchanting it with Mending. If the Trident is enchanted, avoid crafting or the Grindstone since they will remove all the enchantments. Being Tridents so rare, Mending is probably the best option because it will not require a second Trident as repairing material.
Today we are here to see why a Trident breaks, how to craft an Anvil and a Grindstone, and how to repair a Trident with an Anvil, with a Grindstone, through crafting and with the Mending enchantment. Let’s start!
Why does a Trident break?
A Trident has a limited amount of uses, which is 250. This means that every time you throw it or hit a mob with it, you consume 1/250 of its durability. When this number goes from 250/250 to 0/250, the Trident breaks.
You can check a Trident’s durability from its icon in your inventory, like for every other tool. It doesn’t tell you the exact number, but it will give a good enough idea of how damaged it is. The icon of a tool that has never been used will not have any durability bar visible.
There are 4 ways to repair a Trident:
- using an Anvil
- through crafting
- using a Grindstone
- with the Mending enchantment
If the Trident is enchanted and you want to keep it that way, you should avoid crafting or the Grindstone: they remove all the items enchantments in the repairing process.
How to craft an Anvil
Before seeing the 4 methods in detail, 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 resurces, 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 repair a Trident with an Anvil
To repair a Trident with an Anvil you will simply need to put the damaged item in the Anvil like this:
Then you will have to put another Trident in the other slot:
Now you will be able to take the repaired Trident from the output slot and put it in your inventory. Repairing a Trident (or any other item) by using an Anvil will require you to spend levels of experience, just like enchanting. The Anvil will show you the levels of experience needed in the Enchantment Cost.
If you repair an enchanted Trident, this will keep its enchantments at the end of the process. If you put 2 enchanted Trident in the Anvil, the Anvil will try to combine all the enchantments of the two Tridents. “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)
- 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 Tridents.
Few things worth knowing about repairing with an Anvil:
- by using the Anvil you can also rename your Trident. This will costs a little extra experience
- the Anvil will lose durability as well while using it. This is important since it requires so much Iron to craft
- if you repair an item a second time, a third time and so on, this will cost you more and more experience every time, eventually making your item “Too expensive!”
How to get a Trident
You can’t craft a Trident. You can only obtain it as loot when you kill a Drowned, that you can easily find underwater. You can also turn a Zombie into a Drowned by making them… drown in water (related topic: Can Zombies break Doors in Minecraft?)
Drowned have an 8.5% chance of dropping Tridents in Minecraft. Only Drowned holding a Trident will drop one in Minecraft Java edition. Since the chance of a Drown spawning with a Trident is only 6.25% in the Java edition, Tridents are particularly rare and valuable in this Minecraft edition.
How to craft a Grindstone
Like we did for the Anvil, let’s see how to craft a Grindstone first. You will need 2 Sticks, 2 Wooden Planks and a Stone Slab. Before crafting a Stone Slab you will need 3 Stone blocks, that you can obtain by smelting 3 Cobblestone blocks in the Furnace.
Once you have all the materials, just put them in the Crafting Table this way:
How to repair a Trident with a Grindstone
Note: Grindstones can do two tasks: repairing and disenchanting. Keep in mind that it will always remove every non-curse enchantment from the items you use it on. So if your goal is to repair an enchanted Trident, don’t use a Grindstone.
Using a Grindstone is very easy, you simply need to put the Trident that you need to repair in one of the two slots:
Then put another Trident in the second slot. The result will be a Trident with better durability that you can put in your inventory.
How to repair a Trident through crafting
This is very similar to the Grindstone: you need to put two Tridents in the Crafting window (or in a Crafting Table) and the final product will be a more durable non-enchanted Trident.
Why to use a Grindstone
As we saw, Grindstone and Crafting Table can repair Tridents, but they both end up removing every enchantment from them. So why should you use a Grindstone instead of a Crafting Table? Why would you need a Grindstone at all?
If your goal is to repair a non enchanted Trident, there is literally no difference. And you don’t want to repair an enchanted Trident using them.
What the Grindstone is good for, is that it gives you some experience when you disenchant an enchanted item, while the Crafting Table doesn’t. So if you accumulated many enchanted items that you don’t need, a Grindstone can turn them in a good source of experience.
How to repair a Trident using the Mending enchantment
The last method is a bit different, but it can be considered better than the others. You are not going to suddenly improve a big chunk of a Trident’s durability, but this will recover slowly over time.
Keep in mind that you can’t get the Mending enchantment through an Enchanting Table, but only by fishing, trading with Villagers or in Chest loot. You can check the article where we covered how to get Silk Touch: other than the Enchanting Table one, all the other methods will do just fine for Mending as well.
If you hold a Mending enchanted Trident (or any Mending enchanted tool) in your hands, every time that you get an experience orb, this will be used to repair the Trident instead of going into your experience. To see how exactly this process works you can check here.
This method is considere by many players the best one, since it is completely automatic and it doesn’t have all the Anvil drawbacks. Finding a Mending enchanted Book can be quite tedious, but it’s worth the hassle.
Conclusions
These were the 4 ways to repair a Trident. Keep in mind that if the Trident that you want to repair is enchanted, you will need an Anvil or the Mending enchantment. Otherwise, a simple Crafting Table will be more than enough. If you are playing Minecraft Java version Tridents will be very rare, so it will be more difficult to find a second one to use as repairing material. That’s why Mending is probably the best option in most cases. Thank you very much for reading the article till the very end and I hope I’ll see you again around here. See you and take care!