Best Enchantments for Armor in Minecraft

Minecraft’s combat outcome has various determining factors. Among many crucial elements, the armor set your character uses will strongly influence the amount of damage you can take from enemies.

Like weapons in Minecraft, armor qualifies itself by its minerals. In this sense, the game classifies that more potent minerals will deliver more robust armor than weaker minerals.

Hence, iron armor provides fewer defensive points than diamond armor.

Minecraft has a complex enchantment mechanism that affects the performance of in-game tools, armors, and weapons. You can have a pretty valuable defensive bonus by selecting between an armor’s mineral source and the enchantments you’ll apply to it.

Understanding all the enchantments available might take some time. Nevertheless, this article will ease things off by discussing the best enchantments for armor in Minecraft.

Armor in Minecraft

Minecraft surprises players with a considerable number of items to assist in combat. You can select between an array of weapons and armors to better fit your style.

Armors follow a similar path to that of weapons, precisely swords. You can use the same minerals to craft most weapons and armors in the game, except for just a few. The resources you can use to craft armors in Minecraft are:

• Turtle Shell

• Leather
• Chainmail
• Iron
• Gold
• Diamond
• Netherite

The order in which the resources are set above concerns their robustness, from the weaker to the most powerful.

Conveniently, the main goal of wearing armor in the game is to enhance your defense points. So, while having a single piece of armor equipment, your character will resist more damage from enemy strikes.

Still, the game adds more armor content by allowing players to enchant them. Moreover, even if they don’t feature any enchantment, some specific armor pieces can provide unique buffs to your character.

Vanilla Buffs

Before discussing the enchantments available for most armor sets in Minecraft, let’s briefly discuss the pieces that already provide benefits standardly.

The turtle shell as a helmet can establish a water-breathing effect on the wearer without enchantment.

The leather boots allow players to walk on powder snow, granting the “Light as a rabbit” effect. Additionally, wearing the complete leather kit will make the player resistant to freezing conditions.

Enchantment Buffs

A complete armor kit in Minecraft consists of four pieces of equipment:

• Helmet
• Chestplate
• Leggings
• Boots

Each has distinct enchantment options. For example, although an armor’s leggings can have many similar enchantments as the boots, they’ll have two or more unique buffs that you can opt for.

In Minecraft, enchantments work by enhancing a weapon, tool, or armor’s standard trait or improving them with new perks.

You can enchant an armor piece with a trait that will improve its resistance and apply an extra defensive bonus to your character, regardless of the piece’s material. Hence, some enchanted kits can be more valuable than regular higher-material ones.

In specific contexts, some unique enchantments that are bound to particular armor pieces can quickly make them overcome top-tier disenchanted alternatives.

Enchantments can also follow specific “combos” to fit a PVE and PVP gameplay better. There are two ways of enchanting a particular piece of armor; the first method is by using an enchantment table and selecting one effect from it.

The second method of enchanting an armor piece is by using an anvil. In Minecraft, you can use anvils to “mesh” two similar items. In this sense, placing a disenchanted helmet with an enchanted one on an anvil will result in a single enchanted item.

The anvil does so to repair items; it also joints their respective durability. Moreover, two enchanted pieces of equipment with different perks will result in a piece of identical equipment with the perks combined.

Let’s discuss the better enchantment combos for each armor piece while considering a PVP and PVE application.

Helmets

This piece of armor protects the character’s head. The helmet will provide the same defensive bonus as the boots for iron, diamond, and leather kits.

The possible enchantments you can add to helmets are:

• Fire Protection – Grants extra defensive bonus against fire damage.
• Projectile Protection – Grant extra defensive bonus against ranged attacks from bows, tridents, and crossbows.
• Blast Protection – Grants extra resistance to explosions.
• Protection – Increases the item’s defensive bonus in general.
• Unbreaking – Increase the item’s durability.
• Respiration – Extends breathing time underwater. (Helmet exclusive)
• Aqua Affinity – Increases underwater mining speed. (Helmet exclusive)
• Thorns – Deal slight damages back to the attacker.
• Mending – Orbs of experience restore the item’s durability.
• Curse of Binding – After equipping the item, you won’t be able to remove it.
• Curse of Vanishing – After dying with an item, it’ll disappear instead of becoming a dropped asset.

You’ll want to improve a helmet’s defensive bonuses by applying “Protection”. It’s essential to be aware that you can only select one protection bonus. So, choosing the general protection won’t allow you to add “Fire Protection” or “Projectile Protection”.

In regular gameplay, the best enchantments for a helmet are:

• Unbreaking
• Mending
• Protection
• Respiration
• Acqua Affinity
• Thorns

You won’t need protection against specific damages during ordinary gameplay. However, in Minecraft PVP, it’ll be crucial to adapt a few enchantments.

For instance, if your opponent uses long-ranged weapons like crossbows, bows, or tridents, and you both engage in ranged combat, you won’t have to worry about melee damage. You’ll be better off with the “Projectile protection” enchantment in this context.

It’s also essential to have the Mending enchantment when using Thorns. A helmet with the Thorns perk loses durability pretty quickly; mending generally prevents it from breaking.

Chest Plates

This armor piece provides the most protection compared to the other armor components. You can enchant chest plates with every enchantment available for other armor pieces, except for the exclusive enchantments.

Chest plates do not have any exclusive enchantment, different from helmets and boots. Therefore, the best combo for chest plates in regular and PVP gameplay is:

• Unbreaking
• Mending
• Protection
• Thorns

Like with helmets, thorns severely impact the durability of a chest plate. So, prevent the item from breaking by counting “mending” to the combo.

However, in PVP servers, it’s interesting to consider exchanging “Protection” for “Blast Protection” since explosive attacks are relatively common on these types of servers.

Leggings

This armor piece is the second most valuable item in the armor set concerning defensive points, standing only behind chest plates.

Leggings contain the same enchantment options as the other armor pieces, except for the exclusive ones. Additionally, leggings have an exclusive enchantment.

• Swift Sneak – Enhances the player’s speed while sneaking. (Leggings exclusive)

In standard gameplay and PVP, the best enchantment combo for leggings is:

• Unbreaking
• Mending
• Protection
• Thorns
• Swift Sneak

As with other armor pieces, “mending” and “thorns” are fruitful together.

The swift sneak perk is handy for its exclusive function. Each upgrade on this enchantment enhances the crouch speed by 15%. At the highest level, a player’s crouching speed can equal their walking speed.

Boots

Boots protect the character’s feet. Apart from the regular armor enchantments, boots feature walk-related enchanting options. In addition, this armor piece has four unique perks that you can add by using an enchanting table; they are:

• Feather Falling – This perk reduces the damage a character receives when falling from high altitudes.
• Depth Strider – Enhances the character’s underwater walking speed.
• Soul Speed – When walking on soul sand or soul soil, the character’s speed increases significantly.
• Frost Walker – While having this perk, the boots will create ice blocks whenever the wearer walks on water; it also immune the wearer to damage from magma blocks and campfires.

You can only select two of the unique enchantments above to apply to the boots. Moreover, as they’re valuable perks, you’ll find different contexts for each, with some proving more effective in specific PVP scenarios.

Still, in standard gameplay, the most helpful enchantment combo for boots is:

• Unbreaking
• Mending
• Protection
• Feather Falling
• Depth Strider
• Thorns

You’ll quickly progress underwater with the perks above, especially if your helmet has the aqua affinity enchantment.

When exploring regions in Minecraft, falling from unexpected heights is a common occurrence. Hence, to avoid death by this type of accident, use the “Feather Falling” enchantment.

Now, for PVP, the best enchantment combo can vary depending on the combat’s context.

The frost walker enchantment is highly helpful if you’re using ranged weapons in a PVP server. By walking over water, you’ll make it harder for melee attackers to reach you. Still, you’ll be able to shoot them.

So, exchanging the depth walker for the frost walker suits PVP gameplay better in most contexts.