If you’ve ever stumbled on a glowing enchanted book while looting a desert temple, fishing, or trading with a librarian villager, you’ve probably wondered how do you use a enchantment book in Minecraft to make your tools, armor, or weapons stronger. Most new players waste their first few rare enchanted books by trying to combine them with gear in a regular crafting table, which doesn’t work at all. It’s a frustrating mistake I made my first three months playing survival mode, back when I kept dying to endermen because my iron sword did basically no damage. This guide breaks down every step of the process, plus pro tips to avoid wasting your most valuable enchants on useless combinations.
How Do You Use a Enchantment Book in Minecraft With an Anvil
The only way to apply the effects of an enchanted book to your gear is with an anvil, not a regular crafting table. You can craft an anvil using 3 iron blocks and 4 iron ingots arranged in the crafting grid, or find one naturally generated in villages, ruined portals, or bastion remnants. It’s one of the first utility blocks I recommend making once you get a steady supply of iron, as it unlocks so many progression opportunities.
The process is straightforward once you know the interface: first, place the anvil on the ground and right-click to open its menu. Put your base gear (it can be unenchanted or already have existing enchants) in the far left slot. Next, place the enchanted book you want to apply in the middle slot. The right slot will show you the finished enchanted item, plus the number of XP levels you need to spend to complete the combination. If you have enough XP, just click the finished item to move it to your inventory.
You can only combine enchanted books with compatible gear types, so don’t try to put a sword enchant on a pickaxe, it won’t show up as a valid combination. Also, note that anvils take damage every time you use them, and will eventually break after about 25 uses. I keep a stack of extra iron blocks in my storage to repair or replace my anvil whenever it breaks, especially when I’m doing a big batch of gear upgrades.
Key Rules to Follow When Using Enchanted Books to Avoid Wasting Resources
Enchanted books, especially rare variants like Mending or Sharpness V, are incredibly hard to find, so you don’t want to waste them on avoidable mistakes. The first rule I always stick to is checking compatibility before I even open the anvil menu. Some enchants are mutually exclusive, meaning they can’t be applied to the same item. For example, you can’t put both Protection and Blast Protection on the same chestplate, or Sharpness and Smite on the same sword. Trying to combine them will just waste the second book, as the game won’t recognize it as a valid combination.
Higher tier enchants will always override lower tiers of the same type. If you have a sword with Sharpness II, combining it with a Sharpness IV book will replace the lower tier enchant entirely, you won’t get both effects. It’s never worth applying a lower tier of an enchant you already have on a piece of gear, so save those lower tier books to combine into higher tiers instead. You can combine two identical enchanted books of the same tier to get one book of the next tier up: two Sharpness III books make one Sharpness IV, and two Sharpness IV books make the max tier Sharpness V.
XP costs increase with each anvil use on a single item. If you’ve already enchanted your netherite pickaxe three separate times, the fourth enchant will cost way more XP than the first one did. To cut down on total XP costs, I always combine multiple compatible enchanted books into one single book first, then apply that one combined book to my gear. That way, I only pay the increased anvil use cost once, instead of four separate times.
Creative Ways to Use Enchanted Books Beyond Basic Gear Enchanting
Most players only use enchanted books to upgrade their combat or mining gear, but they have far more uses than that, especially in multiplayer or creative mode. For starters, enchanted books are one of the most common forms of currency on survival multiplayer servers. Rare enchants like Mending or Silk Touch are so valuable that you can trade them for rare resources like netherite ingots, shulker boxes, or even access to protected base areas.
You can also use enchanted books to add niche utility enchants to specialty gear for specific builds or tasks. For example, a Silk Touch book on a diamond shovel is perfect for collecting grass blocks to build a custom floating garden, or a Feather Falling IV book on a pair of boots lets you jump off high cliffs while building tall structures without taking fall damage. In creative mode, you can use enchanted books to make custom gear for adventure maps, like a sword with Knockback X to send mobs flying across your build, or a helmet with Respiration III for long underwater base builds.
If you’re new to survival and not sure which enchants to prioritize first, here are the most valuable ones to look for:
Common Mistakes New Players Make With Enchanted Books
I’ve made almost every possible mistake with enchanted books in my 8 years of playing Minecraft, so I know exactly what to warn new players about. The first and most common mistake is trying to use enchanted books in a regular crafting table. I did this so many times when I first started, I thought I was missing a hidden crafting recipe until a friend told me I needed an anvil. Don’t waste your time moving items around the crafting grid, it will never work.
Never apply a Mending or Sharpness V book to iron gear if you plan to upgrade to diamond or netherite later. You can transfer enchants from diamond gear to netherite using a smithing table, but you can’t transfer enchants from iron gear at all. You’ll lose the entire enchant if you discard the iron gear, so save your rare enchants for diamond or netherite gear that you’ll use long-term.
Another common mistake is not checking the XP cost before you try to combine items. If you only have 5 XP levels, don’t try to apply a Fortune III book to your pickaxe, because it might cost 8 levels, and you’ll end up with nothing to show for it. I always grind for 10 extra XP levels before I start any enchanting session, just to make sure I don’t run out mid-process.
The last mistake I see all the time is storing enchanted books in unsorted chests. I once spent 20 minutes digging through a chest of 100+ random books looking for my only Mending book, so I now use labeled shulker boxes to sort my books by enchant type and tier. It takes 10 extra seconds to put a book in the right box, and it saves you hours of searching later.
Figuring out how do you use a enchantment book in Minecraft doesn’t have to be confusing, once you get the hang of using anvils and following basic compatibility rules. Take your time to collect the enchants that fit your playstyle, don’t waste rare books on low tier gear, and you’ll be geared up enough to take on any boss or build any project you can think of in no time. I still keep a chest full of sorted enchanted books right next to my anvil station, so I never accidentally grab the wrong one when I’m upgrading my gear. If you’re still unsure, test out the process with a common enchanted book like Unbreaking I on a spare iron tool first, to get used to how the anvil interface works before you use your rare finds.