If you’ve ever spent 10 minutes chipping away at a diamond ore block with an unenchanted pickaxe while a creeper creeps up behind you, you know how frustrating slow tool speed can be. Many new players stumble across the efficiency enchantment early on, either from a random enchant table roll or a librarian trade, but don’t fully understand how to use it to their advantage. We’re breaking down exactly what does efficiency do in Minecraft, how it interacts with other enchantments and status effects, and which tools you should apply it to for the biggest payoff in your playthrough, no matter if you’re a casual builder or a competitive speedrunner.
What Does Efficiency Do in Minecraft for Different Tool Types?
At its core, efficiency boosts how fast your tool breaks compatible blocks, with the speed boost scaling depending on the enchantment level. Each level adds a 20% speed multiplier to your tool’s base mining speed, so efficiency I makes you 20% faster, efficiency V makes you 100% faster, or twice as fast as an unenchanted tool. But that boost only applies to specific blocks for each tool type, and there are hard limits to how fast you can mine no matter how high your efficiency level is. Efficiency only applies to blocks that your selected tool is intended to break, so slapping efficiency V on a pickaxe won’t help you chop down oak trees any faster, and an efficiency enchanted sword won’t make breaking cobwebs quicker. If you’re still asking what does efficiency do in Minecraft for tools you use less often, the short answer is it only provides value if you use those tools for large batch tasks. For pickaxes, efficiency speeds up breaking all stone-type blocks, including cobblestone, stone, ores, netherrack, and deepslate. That makes it the most valuable tool to apply efficiency to for almost all players, since mining is one of the most time-consuming tasks in survival mode. For axes, efficiency speeds up breaking all wood-type blocks, including logs, planks, and wooden structures, as well as organic blocks like pumpkins and melons. For shovels, it boosts breaking speed for dirt, sand, gravel, clay, and snow blocks, which is perfect for flattening terrain for a base or gathering sand for glass. For shears, efficiency makes breaking leaves, cobwebs, wool, and vines far faster, which is a game-changer for exploring abandoned mineshafts or harvesting large amounts of wool for builds. For hoes, it speeds up tilling dirt and breaking crop blocks, hay bales, and moss blocks, which is great for large scale farming projects. Higher efficiency levels will never make a tool break a block faster than the game’s 0.05 second per block hard cap, so you don’t need to chase efficiency levels higher than V even if you use mods, since you won’t see any additional benefit.
How to Get and Apply Efficiency Enchantments
You don’t need to be late into your playthrough to get a high level efficiency enchantment, unlike more rare enchantments like mending or protection IV. There are a few reliable ways to get it, no matter what stage of the game you’re in. The most common way is through an enchanting table, which can give you up to efficiency III at lower levels, and efficiency IV at level 30 enchants. To get efficiency V, you can either combine two efficiency IV enchanted books or tools in an anvil, or get it directly from a librarian villager trade. You can get efficiency V for emeralds from novice level librarian villagers, making it one of the easiest top-tier enchantments to farm early game. All you need to do is place a lectern next to an unemployed villager, check their trades, and break and replace the lectern until they offer efficiency V as one of their first trades. You can also find efficiency enchanted books or tools in loot chests across the world, including in dungeons, mineshafts, desert temples, and nether fortresses, but that’s far less reliable than trading or using an enchant table. When applying efficiency, prioritize your most used tools first: almost all players should start with their main mining pickaxe, then move to a shovel for terrain clearing, then an axe for wood gathering, then shears or a hoe if you do a lot of farming or exploration. It’s also fine to apply efficiency to a diamond tool first, then upgrade that tool to netherite later, since the enchantment will carry over during the upgrade process. I remember wasting my first efficiency III enchantment on a wooden pickaxe when I first started playing, thinking it would make mining diamond faster - I broke the pickaxe after 10 blocks and kicked myself for hours afterwards, so don’t make that same mistake. Stick to iron, diamond, or netherite tools for efficiency enchants, since they have enough durability to make the investment worth it.
Best Use Cases for Efficiency Across Game Modes
Efficiency has value for almost every playstyle, but it shines in specific scenarios where you need to break a lot of blocks in a short amount of time. Even if you mostly play on creative servers, you might still find uses for it when you’re playing on survival servers with friends or doing challenge runs. The most impactful use cases for efficiency include:
- Clearing large areas for base building, including mining out underground bunkers, hollowing out a mountain for a hidden base, or flattening terrain for a large surface house or farm complex
- Gathering large stacks of building materials like cobblestone, wood, or sand in a short time for large builds, redstone projects, or trading with villagers for emeralds
- Escaping dangerous situations like being trapped in gravel after a cave-in, running from a warden in the deep dark, or getting away from a group of creepers by quickly mining through blocks to make an exit
Common Efficiency Mistakes to Avoid
Even though efficiency is a pretty straightforward enchantment, there are a lot of common mistakes new players make that waste their experience points or emeralds. The first mistake is applying efficiency to low durability tools that you’ll only use a few times, like stone or golden tools, unless you’re doing a short speedrun where you don’t care about tool longevity. The second mistake is assuming efficiency works on all block types, even when you’re using the wrong tool. For example, an efficiency V pickaxe will still take just as long to break a dirt block as an unenchanted shovel, so make sure you’re using the right tool for the job to get the full benefit. The third mistake is forgetting to pair efficiency with other buffs to get even faster mining speeds. Efficiency and the haste status effect stack, so pairing an efficiency V pickaxe with a haste II beacon lets you mine stone blocks instantly, which lets you clear out entire chunks of cobblestone in minutes. You can also pair efficiency with unbreaking and mending to make your tool last forever, so you never have to re-enchant a new pickaxe again. Another common mistake is prioritizing efficiency over other more important enchantments for specific tasks. For example, if you’re mining for diamonds, you’ll want to add fortune to your pickaxe before you upgrade from efficiency IV to efficiency V, since fortune will give you far more diamonds per ore than a small speed boost will. If you’re mining blocks you want to keep in their original form, like ice or grass blocks, efficiency works perfectly with silk touch, so you don’t have to choose between the two enchantments.
At the end of the day, efficiency is one of the most accessible, high-impact enchantments you can get in Minecraft, no matter what your playstyle is. You don't need to beat the ender dragon or farm dozens of diamonds to get a top-tier efficiency enchantment, and it will shave hours off your resource gathering and building time over the course of a playthrough. It works well with almost every other tool enchantment, and has very few downsides as long as you apply it to the right tools. Now that you know what does efficiency do in Minecraft, you can pick the right tools to apply it to, avoid common mistakes, and start getting more done in every session you play.