Minecraft- Advanced Crafting Two: Enchanting (Part Five: Gathering Tools)

These enchantments are used to improve the effectiveness of your shovel, axe, and pick.  While these are all very convenient enchantments, it is important to remember that combining used tools will generate an enchantment-free tool, regardless of whether or not the enchantments on the two component tools matched.  This means that usually you will only want to have one enchanted tool with you at a time, and use it as completely as possible before combining it, just so that you can get maximum effect out of the enchantment.

As an additional note, the Efficiency enchantment is kind of iffy- while it does save you time, you’ll wear your tool out -very- fast, especially if you don’t have Unbreakable on the same tool.  Also, an Efficiency pick will work faster on dirt, coal, sand, and wood, where an Efficiency shovel or axe will not work on any sort of rock or gems.  In a similar vein, Silk Touch is kind of cool for some things, but you will need another tool that -doesn’t- have Silk Touch to gather ore, coal, gems, seeds, et cetera.

Efficiency (Max level V): Increases the speed with which this tool breaks blocks by 50% of its base speed.  This effect only applies to blocks that can be mined by hand, or that this tool is the best type of tool for mining.

Silk Touch (Only one level): When this tool is used to break a block that it would generate any resource from, it will instead drop an item that is that block (e.g. diamond ore block instead of diamonds, melon block instead of melon slices, plantable grass instead of seeds, etc.).  This does not change tool material requirements.

Unbreaking (Max level III): This tool has a level-based chance to not lose any durability each time it is used to break a block it is intended for.  This is a ½ chance at level I, 2/3 chance at level II, and 3/4 chance at level IV.  On average, this should allow a tool to last two, three, or four times as long, depending on the level of Unbreaking.

Fortune (Max level III): This tool has a chance to create extra copies of resources dropped by blocks it breaks (when that resource is coal, diamonds, emeralds, lapis, seeds, carrots, melon slices, netherwort, redstone powder, or wheat seeds) up to a number equal to its enchantment level (averaging 33%, 75%, or 120% more resources than would usually be dropped).  If used to dig gravel, this also increases the chance of getting flint instead of gravel.