Sword Enchantment Guide and Tips

Today, you will learn about Sword Enchantment in Minecraft. You can use the table of contents above to navigate quickly.

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Bane of Arthropods

This enchantment increases the damage of your Sword (or Ax) when you attack the Arthropod mobs. Arthropod mobs are mobs that have jointed legs such as Bees, Cave Spiders, Spiders, Endermite, and Silverfish.

Bane of Arthropods has levels from 1 – 5 and incompatible with Sharpness and Smite

Curse of Vanishing

This enchantment is not designed for Sword only. Instead, every enchantable item has this enchantment.

Unlike any other enchantment, you can’t get this enchantment from the Enchanting Table. Instead, you only can find it inside a Chest. This enchantment has a negative effect or “Curse” on your items.

What it does is that your items will disappear instead of dropping on the ground when you die.

Curse of Vanishing is compatible with other enchantments and only has 1 level.

Fire Aspect

You can make your target burn if you attacked them (unless you attack the fire-resistant mobs). You can get instant cooked meals from Chickens, Pigs, Sheep, or Cows if they get killed by burning using this.

Fire Aspect has levels from 1 – 2 and is compatible with any other enchantments.

Knockback

Your attack will knock back the target further. Knockback has levels from 1 – 2 and is compatible with other enchantments.

Looting

This enchantment will increase the maximum dropped items from mobs and also increase the chance of rare items to drop.

Looting has levels from 1 – 3 and is compatible with any other enchantments.

Mending

Every collected XP will be stored in your Sword to increase its durability. You need to hold your Sword while collecting the XP to make it work. 

Just like the Curse of Vanishing, you can’t get it directly from the Enchanting Table (you can actually get it using Enchanting Table in Minecraft Bedrock, but it’s very hard to get). But you got other options: you can get it from Chest, fishing, raids (bedrock only), or trade from the Librarian.

Mending only has 1 level and is incompatible with Infinite (Bow’s enchantment).

Sharpness

Sharpness increases the damage of your Sword (this will affect any mobs). It also can be equipped for Ax. This enchantment has levels from 1 – 5 and is incompatible with Smite and Bane of Arthropods.

Smite

Smite increases the damage of your Sword. But only for undead mobs, this includes Zombies, Skeletons, Strays, Wither Boss, Wither Skeletons, Drowned, Husks, Zombified Piglins, Zombie Villagers, Phantoms, Skeleton Horses, Zombie Horses, and Zoglins.

Smite is limited to undead mobs only, and it gives more damage compared to Sharpness. Smite has levels from 1 – 5 and is incompatible with Sharpness and Bane of Arthropods.

Sweeping Edge (Java Edition Only)

This enchantment increase damage to the sweeping attack. It has levels from 1 – 3. This enchantment is compatible with any other enchantments.

Unbreaking 

Unbreaking increases your Sword’s durability. Any other enchantable items can have Unbreaking. It has levels from 1 – 3 and is compatible with other enchantments.

Which Sword Enchantments Should You Pick?

Try to have all these:

Smite + Looting + Fire Aspect + Unbreaking + Knockback + Mending + Sweeping Edge (Java Edition only). With the maximum level of each enchantment and using the Netherite Sword.

If you had to choose between Sharpness and Smite, choose Smite. Even though Smite is limited to undead mobs only, it performs better than Sharpness because it gives more damage. Besides, most of the hostile mobs are undead.

Looting is a must-have, especially when you try to get Wither Skeleton Skull from Wither Skeleton. It won’t give you 2 Wither Skeleton Skull at once, but it increases the chances of getting it. Other than that, you can get multiple items from mobs as well as rare items.

Fire Aspect is essential. You can hurt mobs without attacking them repeatedly since they get damage from burning. It will save your Sword’s durability. Also, you can get cooked items from mobs too, such as Chicken, if it dies from burning.

Knockback keeps the enemy away from you. So you will get extra time and space. It will make combat effortless and safer.

Sweeping Edge (Java Edition only) will make your sweep attack stronger, which leads to multiple damages and kills to adjacent mobs.

Unbreaking and Mending are also important. They will keep your Sword in good shape. You don’t want your powerful Sword broken or even destroyed earlier than you want.

Obtaining those enchantments can be tough and required a lot of times, so here are my tips:

1. Before you enchant your Sword, make sure the Enchanting Table is fully optimized (properly surrounded by Bookshelves).
2. Try to enchant books instead. Books give you more enchantments to choose from.
3. Try XP farming in Dungeon or Nether Fortress (see below). 
4. Try mine Nether Quartz. It has many XP compared to ore blocks.
5. Explore your Minecraft World. Not only will you discover new items, new areas, and new structures, you might have a chance to find rare enchantments too.

Keep in mind, that all this is just my suggestion to pick enchantments that I think are great for Sword. You can still select Sword enchantments the way you want. It’s up to you.

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So, that’s all the Sword enchantments in Minecraft. For more guides like this, see Item Enchantments Guide. Thank you for reading the article.