Unlock the Secret to Getting Mending in Minecraft – A Beginner’s Guide

Looking to enhance your gameplay in Minecraft with the powerful Mending enchantment?

In this article, we will explore how to obtain Mending through enchanting books, trading with villagers, fishing, chest loot, and mob drops.

We will also discuss the benefits of having Mending, alternatives to consider, and tips on using Mending effectively in your tools and armor.

Discover how Mending can revolutionize your Minecraft experience!

What is Mending in Minecraft?

Mending in Minecraft is a popular special enchantment that is applied to most items and contains magic that allows items to absorb experience points (or XP) while they are being held or worn. When the item is not at full durability, it will repair itself by consuming some of the stored XP. Mending provides infinite use, eliminating the need to repair items via crafting with replacement materials.

Mending can be applied to armor, elytra, tools (including fishing rods, bows), and weapons. One drawback of mending is that it can be difficult to upgrade other enchantments as the XP that would be used to upgrade other enchantments instead repairs the mending item. This is particularly relevant for fishing rods, which can only get Mending +Unbreaking II where the Unbreaking II is to avoid frequent breaking to repair an enchant, as only the Mending will draw in XP making progress to the next enchant very slow. Mended armor cannot also be given the important thorn or protection enchantments, as it instead steers the XP to repairs.

How to Get Mending in Minecraft?

To get Mending in Minecraft you can either catch an already enchanted Mending book while fishing, or switch your villagers to Clerics or Librarians and cycle through trades. Every librarian has a chance to offer an enchanted Mending book trade at the master level, and most clerics have an enchanted Mending book trade at the apprentice level. Mending is also far more likely to show up when you name or rename an item using an anvil. This is referred to by the community as reforging.

Fishing is the simplest way to receive an enchanted Mending book in Minecraft and requires only a fishing rod. With a higher Luck of the Sea level, it should happen more frequently but may often take many hours and a large number of casts.

Librarians have a 1.75 chance to offer a Mending book, while Clerics have a 11⁄3 chance at the apprentice level when their only 2-item trade unlocks. A Librarian having this trade in their three trade choices is by the far most likely with a 2.79% chance, compared to the 1 in 318 chance that a Cleric would have the book available at the same level.

Enchanting Books

This is the most common way to get the Mending enchantment. Make an Enchanting Table with four Obsidian Blocks in the corners, two Diamonds placed to the two center blocks in the bottom row, and a Diamond in the center block of the middle row. Then add four blocks of wood planks. Using this workbench, you can add Lapis Lazuli and an item you wish to enchant. You will have to use an enchantment option created by four bookshelves or similar block set up elsewhere in the house, but they are obtainable.

Keep enchanting items such as armor, tools, weapons, and fishing rods until you find Mending. Enchanting an item in survival Minecraft for the first time will require a lot of experience and many levels, which will help to ensure Mending will not appear the first few times. If necessary, make new stone gear for the minimum cost of two, rather than your iron tools, which require seven. Pick out other low-level items and keep retrying to find the magical Mending enchantment.

If you prefer a guaranteed Mending book, go fishing. One in a hundred books you catch will have a mending enchantment. You can adjust your fishing rod’s fortunes by pre-enchanting it with any level one item for the minimal expense of two levels. But, make sure you do not catch any of those fish.

Trading with Villagers

Mending is a rare enchantment that cannot be obtained from a normal enchantment table by any tool. The most certain way to obtain a Mending enchanted item is by trading with a Librarian villager. Librarians are a type of Villager, the scientist of the village, and these types of Villagers can spawn randomly into the world in villages or as part of Villager breeder/food farm setup from a Brown robe villager claiming a profession workstation.

When successfully claimed, the player can access 3 or 4 unique trade grids each hold one Mending enchanted book with dreams more than a full enchanted tool. These trades can be locked in permanently by breaking and replacing their job block (the Lectern). This kind of trader does tend to be hard to get, though there are methods to try to encourage their appearance. However, some traders often visit when other villagers are offered a good discount trading showcase of diamond armor, weapons, or high-level items for emeralds, which can draw them to the village. Mending books will always cost 1 emerald + 1 book and new trades will always be unlocked before the player trades for a Mending record.

Fishing

Fishing in Minecraft refers to catching or collecting fish or other animals underwater via the use of a fishing rod (namely the fishing segment). Fishing is the activity of casting one’s fishing rod and pulling out the line once an entity bites. After the fish is reduced to 1 health point or less, players can collect the animals by attacking or heading towards them. Attachments like a bow, healing potion, and experience point appear quite frequently. The methods used in fishing can provide impressive results for the generation of these survival mechanisms. Whether through the existence of generator loot, pick locking, or else becoming a popular way to capture lost items.

Chest Loot

Mending cannot be obtained in chests. The logical reason for this is that if the book appears in a chest in falling sand or dungeon, it will have a pretty low spawn rate when it drops out. Since it must enchant all other books and if it appears early on, it would potentially allow players to shift many of the other enchanting books they are collecting. It seems mending has been specifically excluded from appearing in chests on purpose.

Mob Drops

Mobs used to give experience points before version 1.9 in Minecraft. As such, these mobs – including suffocated mobs like drowned, experience orbs, animals, and fish – were and continue to be sources of experience drops when killed. By killing them, players get their own experience. This was how most people first found they could get mending on gear as well.

Mobs drop experience points whenever they are killed, with larger and more powerful mobs giving more experience points. Experience orbs form as shiny points of light, and players can collect these into themselves (they only last 5 minutes before disappearing, so chop to it). If a player has specialized gear targeted for a drop, ge can speed up the experience accumulation process, and thereby speed up how soon he will get mending.

What Are the Benefits of Having Mending in Minecraft?

The biggest benefit of having mending in Minecraft is that armor and weapons with the enchantment do not need to be replaced. The item never breaks, and instead of experience adding levels to the enchantment, experience from gathering and hunting tasks is used to restore durability.

Mending items are the cheapest, easiest-to-use, and most resource-friendly form of limitless item durability in the world of Minecraft, as they can be quickly repaired with minimal time drain as long as they are kept on the character to passively collect the required experience. This makes mending the most efficient way in the game to repair items and keep them useful in an ongoing capacity.

Infinite Durability

Items equipped with Mending have infinite durability in that they can continue to provide their high level service for as long as the player wishes. The implications of this are particularly relevant to key combat and tool items. As long as a player has experience orbs to spare, they can freely, with no cost, use their best items at all times. No tools need to be wall, chest, or item frame hanged for future sparing use; no best armor set has to be saved for impending extremely challenging battles. All their best items should be used at all times.

The Infinite Durability scholarly study of Mending shows that it is completely free to engage in all normal combat or resource collection activity from which the keys of taking quickly identifiable damage, no loss of exp orb, high risk of item loss, or necessity of permanent hiding or continuity of item replacement have been removed. All possible Mending items which are being worn or used that can have further exp orbs directly go towards them – including any backup pieces of armor/weaponry – should be equipped to ensure their experience goes towards the best items as much as possible.

Cost-effective Repairing

When an item has the Mending enchantment, it does not get experience points but rather stores them up. When it needs repair, it uses the stored experience points out of the enchantment and returns the stored experience to its maximum holistically. For items that get used frequently, they can get repaired as needed and continue to be used. Time and effort can be saved without needing to upgrade the item regularly.

A great demonstration of how mending works in Minecraft is illustrated in the YouTube video by Pixlriffs “Realistic Anvil Repairs in Minecraft”. Here we see an example of repair and usage of diamond gear.

Any time an item is not needed and is only taking up experience points, simply put it in one’s inventory and use the item or tuck it away, there is no need to repair it. Players often die and lose their inventory, so it makes sense to avoid Mending on low-tier gear that might easily be lost.

Mending can save time and resources by boosting armor and weapons through farming, mining, or mob hunting to constantly return them to maximum durability. This saves resources because they are not constantly producing new items to replace ones that have been used up.

Enchantment Compatibility

Mending incompatibility implies that mending cannot be used along with other enchantments because the total number of possible enchantments already in use exceeds the total equipment cap of seven. In fact, this is only a partial truth.

In Minecraft Java, it is possible for an item to fully occupy all the slots, have mending equipped, and still be enchanted with other types. Mending automatically assumes the next slot below the seven is a valid mending item. Provided that wearing said item prevents further enchanting, other fully enchanted items will not be compatible.

In Minecraft Bedrock, seven-item slots subverts getting mending, as none can be combined with another unrelated item.

For Minecraft worlds generated on rare biomes, the probability of getting enchantments on more than seven items is quite low, so mending incompatibility is not a question that arises for average gameplay.

What Are the Alternatives to Mending in Minecraft?

Alternatives to mending in Minecraft include upgrading tools to Netherite, adding durability with an enchantment, and spending experience levels to combine the tool or armor with something that has mending. These alternatives to mending do not make your items unbreakable, but they can ensure they have a longer life. Upgrading your tools and armor to Netherite in the Nether update (1.16) increases item durability and grants knockback resistance, plus it can be set on fire and still survive. The best way to increase the durability of your tools and armor is to make sure they have Unbreaking Enchant on them. Other potential unofficial solutions include purchasing a mending book from a librarian, using the creative mode command to obtain a mending book, or obtaining mending from a villager.

Unbreaking Enchantment

The Unbreaking enchantment is available for the player to enchant their tools or gear. As one of the few non-enchantment sources of extra strength tools, the Unbreaking enchantment is quite recommended for all tools and armor the player intends to use for a reasonable amount of time on Minecraft.

Its progression is similar to Mending in that an essential resource is needed to obtain it, experience points. Unbreaking reduces the chance of experiencing durability losses that Mending would heal.

For a more detailed look at the Unbreaking effect, tools, and weapons breakdown with images, see the entry on the Minecraft wiki.

Anvil Repairing

Anvils are blocks that are widely used early in the game to create and repair weapons, armor, and tools. In Minecraft, items such as bows, tools, and weapons sometimes will be in disrepair depending on how much they were used and their tendency to lose value. So, using the anvil’s interface, a second mending item enchanted tool can be used to smelt the first item at a ratio of 2 durability points.

This is the same technique as with the grindstone but with a multiplier, being less recommended. To repair through the Minecraft anvil method, right click on the anvil to display its three inventory boxes. Place the Mending item under the ‘Enchanted Book’ tab, then grab the target item and pull it to the central ‘Item’ box to repair it. The final step is to move the item that needs repair to the adjacent box over the ‘Result’ tab.

Crafting New Tools/Armor

You can get Mending in Minecraft by crafting wooden, stone, iron, gold, diamond, and netherite tools and weapons. This is because, other than elytra, the trident, carrot on a stick, shears, flint and steel, fishing rod, shield, crossbow, and lyre, all other tools and weapons in the game can have the Mending enchantment applied to them.

Including these items, this is a full list of the different tools, weapons, and armor that can have the Mending enchantment (courtesy of the Minecraft Wiki):

How to Use Mending in Minecraft Effectively?

Use mending in Minecraft by wearing or wielding the tools that need mending while collecting or using the experience points that heal the tool. Though players can choose to store the experience and use it when they want to repair their tool, this is not as efficient. If mending cannot be obtained, repairing is still possible using various repair methods such as combining two damaged items in a crafting table, using Netherite ingots, or placing them in a Grindstone or Anvil with the relevant materials.

For players who have mending, bowmen can be some of the best candidates. They are using their bows frequently for either mining, fighting monsters, or in PvP and each time they gain experience points. Armor was not previously able to have unbreaking and mending on the same piece because one was mutually exclusive of the other in previous versions, but this limitation has been removed and any piece can now have both.

Prioritize Mending Tools/Armor

Another method that can be used to get mending in Minecraft is to prioritize spending experience points on tools and armor rather than weapons. Tools and armor wear out faster with use, so players tend to want mending on these items to get rid of the inconvenience of having to repair them continually. Weapons, by contrast, tend to last a while longer.

Avoid Combining Mending with Other Enchantments

You should avoid combining Mending with higher-tier enchantments as any XP earned by the player is distributed in a ratio to both. Combining Mending with multi-enchant items forces both gear and tool swapping to keep both well repaired and in use. If combining with another enchantment, avoid combinations from the Enchantment Compatibility table above that line up with the combined gear and tools player usage pattern. Mending and Unbreaking is one of the best enchantment combinations as tools never really break before Unbreaking gives less direct XP to Mending. This upgrade is good with weapons and tools so that players must ‘use it or lose it’ by fighting or mining to allow continued repairing. Looting and Fortune are both good for purely resource gathering. Note that combining tools or gear items will require double the effort on average to keep them alive based on the experience required to repair from until the break point. More overpowered multi-enchant such as Mending and ViesCraft are more difficult to maintain.

Use AFK Fishing Farms

AFK fishing farms are contraptions where a player can automatically fish while they are away from the computer, sometimes overnight. Knowledge of these contraptions and the ability to create or download one circumvent much of a player’s display and memory constraints which are typical concerns for most casual players looking for minecraft mending.

Vergel520 lists the many reasons AFK fishing farms are valuable for players besides mending, such as the plentiful resources that players receive from fishing, used for enchanting and repairing other weapons. But they are particularly useful for obtaining mending for multiple pieces of gear, armor, leiashas, and tools. Mending enchanted books are available at similar fishing rates. The method is as follows:

1. Acquire a hopper chest, note block, slab, or string, barracuda bobber (optimal for drops of valuable loot), a fishing rod and for fishing flexibility, multiple water sources. You can have the farm indoors.
2. Your AFK farm will typically consist of 22 of which at least 3 are higher CV requirements. Build the frame structure of the farming with different blocks at non-position places. This will help you to calculate fewer item holding chests than many uses found on the internet.
3. Put the slab on the top block, then the half-slab, a note block from the same block position. Drop the fishing line into the water filled with water or lava, and make sure not to touch the water below the block (angle will be higher or lower and fix as such to start fishing).

Use a Mending Villager for Trading

A Mending Villager has a special trade where you can get the Mending enchantment book. It is rare to find but allows you to add mending to all your items of the same kind. You add the Mending enchantment to a diamond helmet and future diamond helmets. Very rarely you may find a villager selling the Mending enchantment for up to 40 emeralds.

If you are having trouble finding a librarian with Mending, try finding a librarian with at least one of the other enchantments you want, such as Unbreaking III, Respiration III, Aqua Affinity, and Depth Strider III. Then trap the librarian in its house so you can ensure it will survive for several days. That way you can repeatedly break its Lectern and re-enable it in order to have it cycle through different trades. One of the new trades is likely to be Mending, which you can lock in to keep on trading until you have a supply of Mending books.

Position a lectern next to the librarian so you can easily break and lift it, and trap the librarian so it cannot exit its home. It is best to make the librarian’s house easily accessibly so you waste less time. It offers you infinite mending through Nether Star-donated emeralds. Buying 1-2 villagers weekly will eventually get you Mending.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Mending in Minecraft?

Mending is an enchantment in Minecraft that allows you to repair your tools and armor as you gain experience points.

How do I get Mending in Minecraft?

You can obtain Mending by trading with villagers, fishing with a fishing rod, or finding it in loot chests.

Can I enchant my tools and armor with Mending?

Yes, you can enchant your tools and armor with Mending by using an enchanting table or an anvil.

Is Mending a rare enchantment?

Yes, Mending is considered a rare enchantment in Minecraft, making it more difficult to obtain.

Can I combine Mending with other enchantments?

Yes, you can combine Mending with other enchantments on your tools and armor using an anvil.

What happens if I have multiple items with Mending?

If you have multiple items with Mending, the experience points you gain will be divided between them, so it is best to only have one item with this enchantment.