Minecraft Guide - All the Best Weapon Enchantments

In Minecraft, if you plan on spending time outside at night or, more likely, plan to be in caves, you need a good weapon or two at your disposal. A sword and a bow are virtually required, and you can do some pretty cool stuff with a trident, too. But the weapons themselves aren't the only things that matter--you'll also want to enhance their power and utility with enchantments.

Below, we've compiled all the information you need to make the most of your gear and the magic you can apply to it to help you stay alive while adventuring through the wilds of Minecraft. Make sure to check out our list of Minecraft enchantment definitions as you read through this list!

Note: This guide focuses on the Bedrock version of Minecraft, available on Windows 10, Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, and mobile.

We've got even more Minecraft enchanting guides to help you get the most out of all your gear:

• How Enchanting Works In Minecraft
• Best Tool Enchantments
• Best Armor Enchantments
• Enchantment Definitions

Enchantments To Apply To Any Weapon

As with armor and tools, you can pretty much apply Mending and Unbreaking III to any weapon and see a benefit, with swords benefiting the most. Apart from those, each type of weapon pairs particularly well with specific enchantments, so here's what you should focus on.

Sword

• Sharpness V - Each level of Sharpness adds additional damage to your sword (or axe). An iron sword, for example, does 6 points of damage base, but with Sharpness V that number climbs to 9, while critical hits with that same weapon climb from 9 base to 12 damage.
• Looting III - This increases the number of drops when killing enemy mobs. This applies even if you aren't actually swinging the sword--just holding it--and are nearby when an enemy dies. This is especially helpful if you've built a mob farm to collect a particular resource, such as a Skeleton farm to gather bones or a Spider farm to gather silk.
• Fire Aspect II or Knockback II - Finally, you can choose from either Fire Aspect or Knockback--you can't have both, however. Fire Aspect will start any entity you hit with the sword on fire. If you kill a farm animal, it cooks the meat right there on the spot. It's like dinner delivers itself. Knockback, meanwhile, will push any entity that you hit back 3 squares for each level, for a total of 6 squares. This can be a great way to give yourself some breathing room when getting swarmed by zombies.

Bow

The sword is the classic Minecraft weapon, but bows are an underrated way to do a lot of damage without having to get close. No more running up to Creepers and wildly swinging your sword.

• Infinity or Mending - You'll have to make a choice here. Either a bow that fires unlimited (normal) arrows, or a bow that self-repairs. Both have their merits, but it's nice to not have to worry about keeping more than one arrow around when you're trying to defend yourself during a night build.
• Power V - This is essentially Sharpness, but for bows, with each level increasing the damage the bow does, with Power V more than doubling the bow's damage at each stage of pull.
• Flame - Functions similarly to Fire Aspect on swords.
• Punch II - Functions identically to Knockback--unlike with swords, you can apply both Flame and Punch to a bow.

Trident

Tridents are somewhat rare--you might have to go drowner hunting to reliably stock some up. If you do, though, they're some of the most fun items in the game, and there are two paths you can take in enchanting them.

• Riptide III - Riptide allows you to "throw" yourself along with the trident, taking you for a ride in the water. If it's raining outside, your trident can even pull you off the ground, akin to Thor's hammer Mjolnir.
• Loyalty III and Channelling - Loyalty, which is incompatible with Riptide, is the other side of Mjolnir. Instead of taking you with it when you throw it, the trident comes back to you. Channeling, meanwhile, will call down lightning if you throw the trident during a storm. It's not super useful, but it's one of the coolest things you can do in the game.

Weapon Enchantments To Skip

These weapon enchantments are either not useful, are incompatible with much more useful enchantments, or are specific to items that aren't very useful themselves.

• Bane of Arthropods - Increases damage and applies Slowness status effect to spiders, cave spiders, silverfish, endermites, and bees (do not attack bees, you monster).
• Impaling - Deals additional damage to ocean mobs when applied to a trident. Also works in the rain.
• Multishot - Shoot 3 bolts at once from a crossbow for the price of one.
• Piercing - Crossbow bolts pass through enemies and shields.
• Quick Charge - Reduces crossbow load time.
• Smite - Increases damage to undead mobs.