Minecraft- Advanced Crafting One: Enchanting (Part Two The Enchantment Table)

The Enchantment Table is a new form of crafting table used exclusively for enchantments- it actually doesn’t have any other purpose besides looking slightly eerie.  Crafting an enchantment table is an advanced skill though- you need two diamonds, four blocks of obsidian, and a book.  While books are pretty easy to manage, pulling together the spare diamond and obsidian can be a little more difficult and considerably more time-consuming.

Once you have your Enchantment Table, though, you’re not ready to use it- at least, not to its full capacity.  This is where a lot of long, hard work comes in to enchanting (as if gathering all that experience wasn’t enough).  Enchanting Tables benefit from nearby bookshelves- specifically, bookshelves within two blocks of them, counting face or corner contact.  In order to have the most powerful enchantment table and enchantments possible, you need to have fifteen bookshelves within that distance of your Enchanting Table.  This doesn’t sound like a lot, but each bookshelf requires three books.  Considering that each book needs both multiple sheets of paper -and- leather, this can be very hard on your resources if you haven’t been taking the time to farm in between trips underground to mine.

On the upside, it’s very aesthetically pleasing.  Fifteen is a nice number of bookshelves, letting you form a neat ring around your Enchanting Table with space for a doorway- or an L-shaped bookshelf two blocks tall just off to two sides of the table.  As an added bonus, when an Enchanting Table is being affected by bookshelves, little glowy floating glyphs will fly towards the table from the bookshelves.  This serves both as a decoration and as a way to make sure your Enchantment Table is actually being enhanced by the presence of the bookshelves.

Once you have your bookshelves set up, you’re ready.  The Enchanting Table has a single slot on the left of its window- this is where you place the tool or piece of armor you want to enchant.  On the right, you will see three items in a list.  Each item has some text (in an imaginary language that doesn’t actually say anything relevant to the enchantments even when translated) and a green number.  The green number is the significant part- that is how many bars of experience you are spending to enchant the item.

Now, while it is true that a higher number of bars spent will give an increased chance of both high-level enchantments and multiple enchantments, it’s not an actual guarantee- enchanting, remember, is randomized.  So if your options are 7,8, and 9, be aware that the 9 is only -likely- to be better than the other two, and only by a small percentage overall.

Boots stand (heh) as an exception here- at high levels of experience spent, boots actually become less likely to get multiple enchantments, so you may wish to have a separate Enchanting Table with fewer bookshelves for enchanting your footwear (and your armor, I will mention this in the next article).