Mending is one of Minecraft’s most treasured enchantments. Achieving it can be pretty troublesome, though, often requiring players to donate a reasonable amount of time on the way.
As with many other enchantments in the game, you can find “mending” in an enchanted book.
In Minecraft, there are various ways of acquiring books carrying specific enchantments. In most cases, luck is a dependent factor.
To summarize, there are three primary ways of getting your hands on enchanted books: crafting, buying, or finding them. But, you’ll find that controlling which enchantment the book will feature isn’t simple.
With numerous XP-granting activities in the game, mending becomes a desirable perk for specific in-game tools. The enchantment makes a tool repair itself each time the player gets an experience orb.
So, let’s discuss how to get mending books in Minecraft and how this enchantment can be helpful during the gameplay.
The Mending Enchantment
Firstly, let’s briefly lay out what the mending enchantment is and how it can assist players during the mid and late-game.
The mending enchantment can increase or restore an item’s durability whenever the player acquires XP orbs. So, for instance, if you fish a considerably worn-out iron sword that carries the “mending” trait, you can equip it and completely replenish its health by getting XP.
Although a highly valued enchantment in combat tools such as weapons and armors, it presents some incompatibilities concerning bows.
In this case, bows have a high-tier enchantment known as Infinity, which, unfortunately, doesn’t accept the “mending” perk; they are mutually exclusive, and a bow can’t have both. Let’s see more of this enchantment’s limitations.
Mending’s Limitations
Apart from not working with the Infinity enchantment on the same bow, mending also carries more limitations.
For instance, if you’re using this enchantment in more than one armor piece (leggings and helmet), the mending perk will randomly select one piece, considering both present damages.
If you collect three experience orbs, the enchantment will randomly select the gear to repair three times consecutively. The mending trait works by selecting only one item per XP orb.
Additionally, the experience orb will provide the player with less XP, losing one point for every two durability points it restores. Therefore, a player might deplete the entire experience in the orb just by restoring an item’s durability.
How to Apply Mending
In Minecraft Java Edition, mending is a treasure-centric asset. In this sense, you can only get it by luck, so look out for buried chests, fishing, dungeons, and drops. The enchantment can appear both in an already-enchanted tool or an enchanted book.
For example, you might find a fishing rod carrying the mending trait or an enchanted book containing it in a buried treasure.
In Minecraft Bedrock Edition, achieving the enchantment is considerably more straightforward.
Unlike the Java edition, where you can only get the mending trait in treasures, in Bedrock, you can get it through the enchantment table and raids. Still, you might find it on a book or an item carrying it as an enchantment.
Getting it Exclusively as an Enchanted Book
The most efficient method of acquiring a mending enchanted book in Minecraft Java is trading with librarians.
Fortunately, if you’re struggling to find a librarian in the villages you come across, you can try to create them. Minecraft allows the creation of unemployed villagers that can work in specific professions “set” by the player.
In this case, try forcing unemployed villagers to get in contact with a lectern.
Consequently, they’ll assign themselves to the librarian profession. A suitable method is to enclose baby villagers in a confined space full of lecterns.
A different method of achieving this enchanted book is fishing. However, this approach can take too long since a regular fishing rod only presents a 0.8% chance of pulling an enchanted book of any kind; the chances drop significantly for an exclusively mending book.
The second most reliable way to find the mending enchanted book is by exploring ruins, buried ships, dungeons, and buried treasures. Although you’ll likely spend a fair amount of time exploring such sites, they present a higher chance of providing compared to fishing.
