How to repair your enchanted items in Minecraft

An entire set of enchanted armor and weapons can take many hours to make. First you need to mine Diamonds or Netherite, and this alone takes a while. Then you need to farm XP, maybe using a Mobs farm that you built. After that you need to first craft and then enchant all your equipment.

If you want to put a specific enchantment on one of your items (like Protection, which is always a good choice on armor) it will take some of your time as well, especially if you do it for multiple enchantments on multiple items.

All this considered, enchanted items can be very valuable in Minecraft. And you surely don’t want to lose them all by breaking them. That’s why you want to know how to repair enchantend items, and that’s why we are here today. Let’s see it.

minecraft repair enchanted items

How NOT to repair enchanted items

There are basically 4 ways to repair a damaged item in Minecraft:

  • using a Crafting Table
  • using a Grindstone
  • using an Anvil
  • with the Mending enchantment

As we saw in 4 ways to repair a Trident, using a Crafting Table or a Grindstone will remove ALL the enchantments from the repaired item. That’s why you want to avoid them.


How to craft an 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:

iron block crafting recipe

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:

minecraft anvil crafting recipe

Other than for repairing damaged items, you can also use an Anvil to put multiple enchantments on an item.


How to repair an enchanted item with an Anvil

To repair an enchanted item with an Anvil you will simply need to put the damaged item in the Anvil like this:

minecraft repair with anvil

Then you will have to put some of the resource it is made of in the other slot:

minecraft anvil enchantment cost

In this example we are repairing an Iron Sword using an Iron Ingot. If it was a Golden Sword we would put a Gold Ingot, if it was a Diamond Sword we would put a Diamond and so on (related topic: How to make a Diamond Sword in Minecraft?). You can check here what material you need to put in the second slot, but keep in mind that this isn’t always possible.

We could also have put another Iron Sword in the second slot. You can always put another one in the second slot (if you need to repair a Bow you need to put another Bow, if you want to repair a Diamond Helmet you need to put another Diamond Helmet and so on). This option is always possible.

minecraft repair enchanted sword

Now you will be able to take the repaired item from the output slot and put it in your inventory. Repairing an item by using an Anvil will require you to spend levels of experience, just like enchanting.

If you repair an enchanted item, this will keep its enchantments at the end of the process. If you consume another enchanted item in order to repair the first one, the Anvil will try to combine all the enchantments of the two. “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.

A few things worth knowing about repairing with an Anvil:

  • by using the Anvil you can also rename your items. This will costs a little extra experience
  • the Anvil will lose durability as well while using it. This is important since it would require so much Iron to craft another one
  • if you repair an item a second time, a third time and so on, this will cost you more and more every time, eventually making your item “Too expensive!”

How to repair an enchanted item with 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 an item’s durability, but this will recover slowly over time.

minecraft mending

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 Sword (or any Mending enchanted tool) in your hands, or if you wear Mending enchanted armor, every time that you get an experience orb, this will be used to repair the damaged item instead of going into your experience. To see how exactly this process works you can check here.

This method is considered 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.


Video Guide


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