What Does Mending Do in Minecraft? How Mending Works and How to Get It

Mending is the enchantment that makes tools and armor last forever. Without it, even a diamond pickaxe eventually breaks, and repairing it on an anvil gets more expensive every time until it becomes impossible. With Mending, the experience you collect while playing quietly repairs your gear. This guide explains what Mending does in Minecraft, how it works in detail, which items can have it, and the best ways to get a Mending book.

Quick answer: what does Mending do?

Mending repairs an item with experience. When you pick up experience orbs while holding or wearing a damaged item enchanted with Mending, the experience is used to repair the item instead of adding to your level. Each point of experience repairs 2 points of durability. Any experience left over after the item is fully repaired goes to your XP bar as normal.

How does Mending work?

Where the item must be: in your main hand, your offhand or an armor slot. Items in your inventory or hotbar that you are not holding are not repaired.
Which item is repaired: if several equipped items have Mending and are damaged, the game picks one at random for each orb, so all of them get repaired over time.
Repair rate: 1 XP point repairs 2 durability. A diamond pickaxe with 1,561 durability needs about 781 XP points to fully repair from almost broken.
What counts: any experience orb, from mobs, mining ores, smelting, breeding, trading, fishing or bottles o’ enchanting.
Level: Mending has only one level, Mending I.

Because Mending takes experience before your level bar does, you level up more slowly while your gear is damaged. That is the only real cost of the enchantment.

Which items can have Mending?

Any item with durability can have Mending, including:

pickaxes, axes, shovels and hoes;
swords, maces, spears and tridents;
helmets, chestplates, leggings, boots and turtle shells;
bows, crossbows and fishing rods;
elytra, shields, shears, brushes, flint and steel, and carrots or warped fungus on a stick.

Mending cannot be combined with Infinity on a bow. You have to choose: Infinity saves arrows, Mending saves the bow. Most players pick Mending.

How to get Mending in Minecraft

Mending is a treasure enchantment. That means it never appears on the enchanting table. You have to find it as a book and add it to your item on an anvil.

1. Trade with a librarian villager (best method)

Find an unemployed villager, or breed one. See how to breed villagers.
Place a lectern next to it. It becomes a librarian. See how to make a lectern.
Open its trades. If the enchanted book trade is not Mending, break the lectern and place it again. The villager loses the job and takes it again with new trades.
Repeat until it offers a Mending book. Trade once to lock the offer in.

Rerolling only works until you trade with the villager for the first time, so check carefully before trading. A Mending book costs between 10 and 38 emeralds plus a book, and the price drops if you cure the villager from a zombie villager or earn the Hero of the Village effect. If your world uses the Villager Trade Rebalance experiment, librarians from different village biomes sell different enchantments, so you may need a librarian from a specific biome to get Mending.

2. Fish for it

Fishing has a small chance to pull up treasure, which includes enchanted books, and Mending is one of the possible enchantments. A fishing rod with Luck of the Sea increases the treasure chance. This method is slow but works anywhere with water. See how to fish in Minecraft.

3. Loot it from chests

Enchanted books with Mending can appear in many structure chests, including dungeons, mineshafts, desert and jungle temples, stronghold libraries, woodland mansions, ancient cities and end cities. You cannot count on finding it, but always check enchanted books in loot.

How to put Mending on your item

Place an anvil. See how to make an anvil.
Put your item in the first slot and the Mending book in the second.
Pay the XP cost and take the enchanted item.

Anvil costs rise each time an item is worked on. Add Mending early, ideally as the first or second enchantment, so you do not hit the Too Expensive limit later. Once an item has Mending, you never need to repair it on an anvil again.

Best ways to collect XP for Mending

Mob farms: a spawner or dark-room mob farm gives a steady stream of orbs.
Enderman farm in the End: one of the fastest XP sources in the game.
Mining: coal, diamond, emerald, lapis, redstone and nether quartz ores all drop XP.
Smelting: take items out of a furnace to collect stored XP.
Trading: every villager trade gives XP.

To repair a specific item quickly, hold only that item while you collect XP, and take off other damaged Mending armor. To check how much XP you need, try the XP level calculator.

Mending vs Unbreaking

Unbreaking makes an item lose durability more slowly. Mending repairs it. They work together and stack on the same item, and the best tools have both. If you can only add one, choose Mending for items you use every day and Unbreaking for items you use rarely, such as an elytra you fly only on long trips.

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