Every sword enchantment ranked
There are ten enchantments that can go on a sword in 1.21. Not all of them are worth the anvil levels. This is how they rank for normal survival play, from must-have to situational.
Sword enchantment table
- Sharpness (max V) — +1.25 damage per level against every mob. The default damage pick. Incompatible with Smite and Bane of Arthropods.
- Looting (max III) — +1 max common drop per level and +1 percentage point of rare drop chance per level. Best farming enchantment in the game.
- Mending (max I) — repairs the sword with collected XP orbs instead of banking them. Incompatible with Infinity, but Infinity is a bow enchantment, so there is no conflict here.
- Unbreaking (max III) — roughly triples effective durability by giving each hit a chance to skip durability loss.
- Fire Aspect (max II) — sets targets on fire for 4 seconds per level. Adds around 3 to 7 damage over time and auto-cooks meat drops.
- Sweeping Edge (max III, Java only) — raises sweep attack damage from 12.5 percent to 75 percent of base damage. Huge for crowd control in mob farms.
- Knockback (max II) — pushes mobs away. Great for PvP and for surviving creepers, actively harmful in mob-grinder farms.
- Smite (max V) — +2.5 damage per level against zombies, skeletons, wither skeletons, zoglins, phantoms, drowned, husks, strays, and the Wither.
- Bane of Arthropods (max V) — +2.5 damage per level against spiders, cave spiders, silverfish, endermites, and bees, plus a slowness effect.
- Curse of Vanishing (max I) — the sword disappears on death. Only useful on a PvP server if you want to deny loot.
Sharpness vs Smite vs Bane of Arthropods
These three share the same slot, so you can only have one at a time. The maths decides it for you depending on what you fight.
- Sharpness V on a netherite sword: 8 base damage + 3 bonus = 11 damage to every mob in the game.
- Smite V on a netherite sword: 8 base + 12.5 = 20.5 damage to undead, but only 8 damage to a creeper, spider, or player.
- Bane of Arthropods V: 8 base + 12.5 = 20.5 damage to arthropods, plus Slowness IV for up to 8 seconds.
Sharpness is the correct default because it never has a dead matchup. Smite V is the right answer for a Wither fight, where it cuts the fight roughly in half, and for skeleton or zombie farms. Bane of Arthropods almost never earns its slot outside of a spider spawner.
Why Looting III is the most valuable enchantment
Looting does two separate things. It raises the maximum count of common drops by 1 per level, and it raises the chance of rare drops by 1 percentage point per level. Both matter more than raw damage once you have a working farm.
- Wither skeleton skulls go from 2.5 percent to 5.5 percent with Looting III — more than double the beacon progress per hour.
- Ender pearls from endermen go from 0 to 1 up to 0 to 4 per kill, which is the difference between one End trip and several.
- Gunpowder from creepers goes from 0 to 2 up to 0 to 5, feeding TNT and firework production.
- Blaze rods, slimeballs, and mob heads all scale with Looting, so it multiplies the output of nearly every mob farm you build.
If you are choosing between one more level of Sharpness and Looting III, take Looting. You can plan the farm those drops feed with our mob farm planner.
Best mace enchantments in 1.21
The mace, added in the 1.21 Tricky Trials update, is crafted from a breeze rod and a heavy core from a trial chamber vault. It deals 6 base damage, but its real damage comes from fall distance: every block you fall before landing the hit adds damage.
- Density (max V) — adds 0.5 damage per block fallen per level. With Density V and a 20-block drop you deal well over 100 damage in one hit. This is the core mace enchantment.
- Wind Burst (max III) — launches you upward after a smash attack, letting you chain hits without touching the ground. Only obtainable from ominous vault loot.
- Breach (max IV) — reduces the effectiveness of the target's armour by 15 percent per level. Best for PvP and armoured mobs; competes with Density for the same slot.
- Smite, Bane of Arthropods, Fire Aspect, Unbreaking, and Mending all work on the mace as normal.
Density and Breach are mutually exclusive with each other and with Smite and Bane of Arthropods. Density V is the survival pick; Breach IV is the PvP pick.
The cheapest enchanting order on an anvil
Every time you use an anvil on an item, its prior work penalty doubles. Get the order wrong and the game shows Too Expensive at 40 levels. Follow this sequence.
- Enchant a book, not the sword, at a level 30 enchanting table surrounded by 15 bookshelves. Books can be rerolled cheaply and never waste a good roll on the wrong tool.
- Combine books with books first: Sharpness V + Looting III into one book, Unbreaking III + Mending into a second book, Fire Aspect II + Sweeping Edge III into a third.
- Combine those three books into one master book, cheapest pair first.
- Apply the single master book to a fresh netherite sword in one anvil use. The sword now has a prior work penalty of 1 instead of 6.
Run the level costs through our enchanting calculator before you spend anything — it shows the anvil cost for each combination order so you can find the cheapest path.
How to get level 30 enchantments fast
You need 15 bookshelves placed one block away from the enchanting table, with air between the shelf and the table, to reach level 30 options. Reaching level 30 XP repeatedly is the slower half.
- Trade with a librarian villager — a leveled librarian sells Sharpness, Looting, Unbreaking, and Mending books for emeralds with no XP grind at all.
- Build an XP farm — an enderman or mob grinder produces level 30 in a couple of minutes. Check throughput with our XP farm calculator.
- Smelt in bulk — furnaces bank XP and release it all when you collect, which is a useful passive top-up.
- Mine ancient debris, quartz, and lapis, all of which drop XP directly.
Librarian trading is the single fastest route to Mending, which does not appear in the enchanting table at all in most seeds. Use the villager trade optimizer to reroll a librarian onto the book you want.
Netherite vs diamond sword
A netherite sword deals 8 damage versus a diamond sword's 7, has 2,031 durability versus 1,561, is knockback resistant, and floats in lava. Upgrade with a netherite ingot and a smithing template before you sink enchantments into a blade.
Related tools and guides
Pair this with our enchanting calculator for anvil costs, the bookshelves guide for enchanting room layout and the armor and sword enchantment overview, and the mob farm planner to build the farm your Looting III sword will drain.
