5 Best Pickaxe Enchantments in Minecraft, Ranked

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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 Benjamin Barr

Minecraft requires a lot of resource gathering, and the most important tool in your block-breaking and retrieving arsenal is the pickaxe. The pickaxe is used to mine stone and ore blocks, and it can be enchanted with a variety of different abilities to make it better at this singular task. In today’s article, we’re taking a look at the best pickaxe enchantments in Minecraft, ranking them from least to most useful.

Let’s get started!

Best Enchantments for Pickaxes in Minecraft

Enchanting is possible after you’ve achieved some level of success in Minecraft, requiring some obsidian, diamonds, and a book to construct. Afterward, you can use experience points and Lapis Lazuli to add powerful magical powers to your tools. You can also find books with enchantments inside them. Any enchantment that works on a pickaxe also works on a shovel.

5/5

Efficiency

Efficiency increases the speed at which you can mine blocks, which means you can gather resources more quickly and efficiently. With Efficiency V, your pickaxe can mine almost any block in the game in just one or two hits, which saves a lot of time and effort. Especially if you’re mining out very tough blocks like obsidian, or trying to blast through a lot of blocks at once like the Netherite-concealing Netherrack blocks.

This enchantment is particularly useful for gathering large quantities of cobblestone and other materials that are essential for building and crafting. It comes in five levels, with the following speed enhancements:

Efficiency I: 33% faster mining
Efficiency II: 66% faster mining
Efficiency III: 100% faster mining
Efficiency IV: 133% faster mining
Efficiency V: 166% faster mining

Note that the Efficiency enchantment does not increase the number of resources you get from mining a block, only the speed at which you can mine them. This means that if you mine a block with an Efficiency-enchanted pickaxe, you will still get the same amount of resources that you would have gotten without the enchantment, but you will get them significantly faster.

4/5

Unbreaking

Unbreaking is another valuable pickaxe enchantment. Each time you strike a block with a tool in Minecraft, the durability of your tool decreases. This is true for pickaxes like any other tool. The unbreaking enchantment applied to a pickaxe will give you a chance to avoid any durability damage to your item when you use it, with the effect becoming more pronounced with each level you apply to your pickaxe.

It’ll improve your pickaxe with the following levels and values:

Unbreaking I: 25% chance reduction
Unbreaking II: 33% chance reduction
Unbreaking III: 50% chance reduction

With Unbreaking III, your pickaxe can last up to four times longer than a regular pickaxe, which is a huge advantage if you’re using a Diamond or Netherite pickaxe. This enchantment helps you to save time and resources by reducing the number of times you need to repair or replace your pickaxe. Note that the Unbreaking enchantment does not prevent the tool from eventually breaking — an easy assumption to make given the name. It simply reduces the rate at which it loses durability.

3/5

Fortune

Fortune is an enchantment that increases the number of items you get from certain blocks when you mine them. For example, with Fortune III, you can get up to four diamonds from a single ore block, instead of just one. Each level of Fortune increases the chance that you will receive more ores from a single block that you mine out, along with the maximum number of resources that you receive.

This enchantment only works on ores, meaning you won’t get anything extra from stone blocks, or some other blocks you might expect it to work on like glowstone or sea lanterns. It’s invaluable for diamond mining since otherwise you’ll likely only receive a single diamond per ore block. This can rapidly expand your entire cache of resources.

2/5

Silk Touch

Silk Touch is another one of the best pickaxe enchantments in Minecraft, allowing you to gather certain blocks without destroying them. With Silk Touch, you can mine glass, ice, and grass blocks without breaking them. This enchantment is particularly useful for gathering blocks that are otherwise nearly impossible to obtain in Survival mode, like glowstone. It can save you a lot of time and energy on processing cobblestone into regular stone, which can then be traded to stonecutter villagers for massive supplies of emeralds.

Silk Touch can’t harvest everything, though. Despite what you may hear elsewhere, it cannot be used to pick up monster spawners — they will still shatter into XP orbs like usual. Silk Touch is the only enchantment on this list that can’t mix with everything else, forcing you to choose between either Silk Touch or Fortune enchantment. Keeping two different pickaxes around can be a smart strategy. Leave the Fortune pickaxe at home, and use the Silk Touch axe to go pick up entire ore blocks of diamonds, coal, iron, and gold. Bring the ore blocks home to harvest them in total safety with your Fortune pickaxe.

1/5

Mending

Mending is easily the best of all the pickaxe enchantments in Minecraft. It earns top spot on our list because it allows you to repair your tool while you’re using it. When you collect experience orbs while holding an item enchanted with Mending, they will automatically repair your pickaxe so long as it’s in your main or off-hand slots. Once it’s fully repaired, XP will continue to be absorbed as normal. This enchantment is particularly useful for long mining trips, since you will literally never need to come back up to repair or replace your pickaxe. The XP you get from harvesting ores with it will keep your pickaxe in tip-top shape.

Mending is the hardest enchantment to acquire in the entire game. It can be applied to almost every item you’d want to repair, so you have to be cautious about which items you apply it to. It’s one of the best enchantments for Netherite armor, and the best enchantment for weapons. You can only acquire it by fishing up books with the enchantment on them. There is also a 1% chance that Mending will be applied alongside other top-level enchantments as long as your enchanting table has been properly outfitted with bookshelves.

Join the High Ground!

That’s it for our list of the best pickaxe enchantments in Minecraft — thanks for reading! The pickaxe is one of the most important tools in the game, and the right enchantments can make it even more valuable. Want more tips for harvesting blocks and fighting monsters? Subscribe to our newsletter and make sure to follow us on all social media.

Happy gaming!

5 Best Pickaxe Enchantments in Minecraft, Ranked