Enchanted books in Minecraft

Enchanted books are a key part of the enchanting system in Minecraft. Unlike enchanting directly at the enchanting table, enchanted books let you control exactly which enchantments end up on your items. With them you can get specific enchantments (for example Mending or Sharpness V) and put them on exactly the item you want, using an anvil. In this chapter we cover every way to get enchanted books and strategies for getting the most out of them.

Librarian villagers: the best and most reliable source

Villagers with the librarian profession are by far the best way to get specific enchanted books. A librarian appears when an unemployed villager has access to a lectern, a block you can craft from 4 wooden slabs and 1 bookshelf. Once the villager takes the librarian profession, it trades enchanted books for emeralds.

The key mechanic is "rerolling" the librarian's trade. If a newly employed librarian (one you haven't traded with yet) offers an enchantment you don't want, you can break their lectern and place it again. The villager loses the profession and immediately takes it back with a new, random offer. Repeat this until the librarian offers the enchantment you need, for example Mending, Fortune III or Protection IV.

This method takes patience, but it's extremely effective. At the lowest trade level (Novice), a librarian offers one enchantment for 5-64 emeralds plus a book. The rarer the enchantment, the higher the price: Mending usually costs 20-40 emeralds. It's worth building a whole "trading hall" with lots of librarians, each offering a different enchantment, so you always have access to the full range of enchantments.

Enchanting at the enchanting table

You can put an ordinary book on the enchanting table and enchant it just like any other item. The book gets random enchantments from the pool of all available enchantments: anything from Sharpness to Aqua Affinity. At level 30 (with 15 bookshelves), your chances of valuable enchantments are highest.

Enchanting books at the table is less efficient than enchanting items directly, because a book can get enchantments from every category (weapons, armor, tools), which dilutes the pool. Still, the method has its uses: if you have spare XP and lapis lazuli, enchanting books "for luck" can give interesting results. And if you're after an enchantment that's hard to get from a librarian, enchanting books at the table can be faster.

Fishing: slow but free

A fishing rod with Luck of the Sea III and Lure III is a free source of enchanted books. Luck of the Sea raises your chance of catching "treasure" (including enchanted books), and Lure makes fish bite faster. With an optimally enchanted rod, the chance of an enchanted book is about 1.9% per catch, which works out to 1 book every 50-60 catches on average.

Version 1.16 added a restriction: you can no longer catch treasure in small, covered pools of water. That slows down fishing farms, but the method still works for patient players. Enchantments from fishing are random and can be any level, so you might get Mending or just as easily Bane of Arthropods I.

Exploring structures: chests with enchanted books

Many generated structures in Minecraft have chests with enchanted books. Here are the best places to look:

• Ancient Cities: chests in the underground cities at Y=-51. They often hold rare enchantments, but exploring them is dangerous because of the Warden. Move quietly.
• Mineshafts: chests in minecarts on the rails. They often hold low- to mid-level enchantments.
• Jungle Temples: chests hidden behind traps. Easy to loot, but the enchantments are usually low-level.
• Ocean ruins: chests under water, so you'll need Respiration or Potions of Water Breathing. A common source of mid-quality enchantments.
• Bastion Remnants: chests in the bastions in the Nether. A source of Soul Speed.

Bartering with piglins

Piglins in the Nether accept gold ingots in exchange for random items, including enchanted books with Soul Speed. The chance of an enchanted book from bartering is about 1.09%. It's a niche method, but it gets you Soul Speed I-III for your boots: the enchantment that speeds you up on soul sand.

The most valuable enchanted books, ranked

Not all enchanted books are created equal. Here's a ranking of the most valuable enchantments to go after first:

1. Mending: the most valuable enchantment in the game. You can't get it at the enchanting table, only from librarians, fishing or chests. It repairs items with XP, so they last forever.
2. Fortune III: doubles or triples the ore you get. It changes the economy of your whole game.
3. Protection IV: all-round defense. You need 4 books (one for each piece of armor).
4. Sharpness V: maximum sword damage. You can get it by combining two Sharpness IV books.
5. Silk Touch: collects blocks in their original form. Essential for lots of strategies.
6. Efficiency V: lightning-fast mining. It makes the game dramatically more comfortable.
7. Unbreaking III: four times the durability. You need lots of copies for all your gear.
8. Feather Falling IV: saves your life when you fall. An absolute must-have on boots.

Storing and organizing enchanted books

If you collect enchanted books seriously, you'll pile up a huge number of them fast. It's worth setting up an organized storage system, for example chests sorted by category (weapons, armor, tools, universal) or by specific enchantment. You can also use item frames to label what's in each chest.

Remember that you can combine enchanted books with each other on an anvil to make books with several enchantments. For example, you can combine a Sharpness V book and a Looting III book into one book with both enchantments. That cuts the number of operations needed to enchant an item and saves on the prior work penalty. There's more on this in the chapter on combining order.