7 Best Boot Enchantments in Minecraft

Every adventurer needs a good boot. | Image: Mojang via HGG / Nathan Hart

Human Made

I'm a stand-up comic by night and write for HGG by day. Most of my gaming happens at an improvised desk at the Days Inn right outside whatever small town I'm in for the night.

Reviewed by Ashley Johnson

Boots are the first piece of real armor you’ll likely acquire in an average game of Minecraft. They take the least number of components to create — only four pieces of leather, iron, or diamond. Armor is important for your overall protection, but boots especially play a vital role beyond keeping your hearts full and happy. Leather boots, for example, can keep you from sinking through loosely-packed powdered snow!

The benefits to boots don’t stop there. In fact, they only truly become obvious once you develop an enchanting table. But with so many varied options, what should you pick? We’ll help you decide which shoes to wear for your next adventure in this guide to the best boot enchantments in Minecraft.

7 Best Boot Enchantments in Minecraft

Our picks for the best boot enchantments in Minecraft are sure to fit your needs. Let’s break it down.

1. Protection

First up on our list of the best boot enchantments in Minecraft is Protection. Protection is mutually exclusive with all other forms of Protection enchantment, as is true for all other forms of armor. But among the various kinds of Protection enchantments — like Blast, Fire, or Projectile Protection — the regular old Protection enchantment will reduce the most damage overall from the widest variety of sources. It can also overlap with almost every other enchantment on this list, so it’s always a good pick.

Protection is very easy to acquire, being one of the most common enchantments you’ll be presented with at the enchanting table.

2. Thorns

The Thorns enchantment deals retaliatory damage to any mob that hits you. This can be a lifesaver in big battles, especially if you spread high levels of the Thorns enchantment across the rest of your armor. The only downside that it also damages your equipment a little bit extra every time it activates.

There is a slightly complex equation for determining how much, and how often, an enemy is hurt by Thorns. Each piece of Thorn-enchanted armor you wear gives you a 15% chance to deal 1–4 hearts of retaliatory damage. Each level of Thorns enchanted on your armor increases this chance by 15%, so if you wear even two pieces of Level 3 Thorn armor, you’ll have a 90% chance of dealing damage. The max damage that can be dealt by a Thorns strike is 4 total.

Thorns are a fairly common enchantment to find at the enchanting table, but the Level 3 version can only be found as a loot drop. Occasionally, you will even find armor that is already enchanted with Thorns, as well.

3. Mending

Mending will always be one of the best enchantments in Minecraft, regardless of which item it’s being applied to. It allows the XP orbs to absorb directly into the durability damage of an enchanted item, rather than being absorbed by the player to enchant new ones. Adding mending to a set of boots that already have a good number of desirable enchantments is a great idea. Mending can make your favorite items last forever, giving you a good excuse to give them all very fun names (like any other magical-based RPG would).

It’s also one of the most difficult enchantments to get ahold of. It can appear as chest loot, while fishing, or from trading with a Librarian villager. If you’ve built a full set of bookcases around your enchanting table, any Level 30 enchantments you apply to your gear comes with a 1% chance of including Mending as a side enchantment.

4. Feather Falling

Feather falling is one of the best boot enchantments in Minecraft for insurance purposes. It helps you take significantly less damage from a long drop. It’s also a unique enchantment to boots, making it a very important pick for overworld exploration.

Every Minecraft player can remember a time they accidentally fell into a deep, dark pit and couldn’t recover all of their hard-won gear. With Feather Falling, you take 12% less damage from a fall for every level of the enchantment you have. This can total up to a 48% reduction, almost cutting your fall damage in half. It can be further reduced by stacking Protection enchantments onto various pieces of armor. With maximum Protection, you can fall a little more than 100 blocks at a time without dying, though we wouldn’t recommend a base jump like that.

Feather Falling can be very difficult to acquire. Its fourth level is one of the rarest enchantments to appear at the enchanting table, with only a 2.7% chance of appearing in a fully developed library.

5. Depth Strider

The Depth Strider enchantment is a must-have for all your underwater adventures. If you see a water temple or a sunken ship in the distance, you’ll want a bit of extra speed to avoid the difficult Guardian and Elder Guardian mobs. That’s where Depth Strider comes in. You’ll move a lot faster underwater with this enchantment — it reduces 1/3 of water’s slowness effect for every level you have applied.

This can be a huge bonus in some environments, with the water temples being some of the hardest places in the game to navigate typically. Depth Strider does only affect horizontal movement, though, so it won’t make getting to the surface any faster. This is important to remember, especially if you don’t have any kind of water breathing aid applied. It can also overlap with the Dolphin’s Grace buff, allowing you to massively outpace the speed of a boat. You can turn yourself into a blocky Aquaman!

You can acquire Depth Strider at the enchanting table.

6. Soul Speed

Soul Speed is an invaluable enchantment for adventuring in the nether. Massive chunks of the nether are made of soul sand or soul soil. These areas can be difficult to traverse, as soul sand slows your movement and makes you more susceptible to Ghast blasts.

Not only does the Soul Speed enchantment negate the movement slowing effects of soul sand, it also boosts your speed when you’re running on either of the “soul” blocks. Level 1 boosts your speed by a whopping 40%, increasing to 51% at Level 2 and 61.5% at Level 3. You can use this to create quick passages for yourself, such as corridors of soul soil between nether portals. You can even place carpets on top of the soul blocks and still receive the speed bonus if you want to hide the ghastly look of the soul sand.

The Soul Speed enchantment is most commonly found by bartering with the piglins inside the nether. You’ll need to throw a bunch of gold in their direction so they’ll exchange random pieces of nether loot back to you. This could be boots with the Soul Speed enchantment, or books that allow you to apply it at an anvil.

7. Frost Walker

Frost Walker may be the most useful travel enchantment you can add to your boots. Whenever you step on a water block using this enchantment, it will freeze solid under your feet. This helps with transit between water-bound places, and can even keep you from taking damage from magma blocks or walking onto a campfire (though it doesn’t negate lava damage). The ice left behind will melt gradually after you step away from it, taking longer to melt at night. Any ice it does put out will melt rapidly around lava or other heat sources.

Frost Walker can be hard to get ahold of, as it is only accessible as a treasure drop. You can find it in the various treasure chests distributed among jungle temples, and strongholds, occasionally from fishing, or possibly from trading with a high-level Librarian.

Join the High Ground

That’s it for our guide to the best boot enchantments in Minecraft — thanks for reading! Tell your favorite in the comments, or let us know which enchantments we should cover next. Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter for more guides on Minecraft and your other favorite games.

Happy gaming!

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