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what does mending do in minecraft

Mending is an enchantment that uses your XP orbs to repair the durability of the item it’s on, instead of sending that XP to your experience bar.

Quick Scoop: What Does Mending Do?

  • When you pick up experience orbs (from mining, killing mobs, breeding animals, etc.), the game checks your equipped items for any that have Mending and are damaged.
  • Each XP point repairs 2 durability on that item, and the XP is consumed for repairs instead of increasing your XP level.
  • If all Mending items on you are fully repaired, XP starts going to your level bar again like normal.

So in practice, a good Mending tool, weapon, or armor piece can last almost forever as long as you keep generating XP while using it.

How Mending Actually Works

What it repairs

Mending can be applied to:

  • Tools (pickaxes, axes, shovels, hoes, etc.).
  • Weapons (swords, bows, crossbows, tridents).
  • Armor pieces (helmet, chestplate, leggings, boots).
  • Some other items like Elytra and enchanted books (to later combine on an anvil).

Where the item has to be

Mending only works on items that are:

  • In your main hand.
  • In your off-hand.
  • In your armor slots (helmet, chestplate, leggings, boots).

Items just sitting in your hotbar or inventory don’t get repaired unless you are actively holding or wearing them when you pick up XP.

Multiple Mending items

If you have several damaged Mending items equipped:

  • Every XP orb chooses one of those damaged items at random to repair.
  • There is no fixed priority like “sword first, then armor” – it’s random among all damaged Mending items you are wearing/holding.

This is why players often unequip other Mending gear if they want to fix one specific tool faster.

Is Mending Good? (And Infinity Conflict)

Mending is considered one of the most valuable enchantments in Minecraft because:

  • It dramatically reduces or removes the need to repair items at an anvil.
  • It lets high‑level enchanted gear (like maxed-out pickaxes or armor) last essentially indefinitely with regular XP income.

Important detail:

  • On bows, Mending and Infinity are mutually exclusive in normal survival – you can’t have both on the same bow without commands.

Players often choose:

  • Mending bow: Best if you have plenty of arrows and good XP sources, for long‑term durability.
  • Infinity bow: Best early game or when you don’t want to carry many arrows.

How to Get Mending

You can’t get Mending from a normal enchanting table roll; it’s a “treasure” enchantment. Common methods include:

  1. Trading with a librarian villager
    • Convert a villager to a librarian (using a lectern) and reroll trades until you see a Mending book offer.
  1. Loot chests
    • Generated structures (like some dungeons, temples, etc.) can contain Mending books as loot.
  1. Fishing and other treasure sources
    • Rarely, Mending books can come from fishing “treasure” and certain other loot sources.

Once you have the book, you apply it in an anvil with the item you want to enchant.

Mini Story Example

Imagine you’ve got a maxed‑out diamond pickaxe with Efficiency, Unbreaking, and Mending.
You head into a long mining session: every time you mine coal, redstone, or kill a cave mob, the XP orbs you pick up silently patch up your pickaxe, keeping it from breaking while you keep digging deeper.

By the time you return to the surface, your XP level might not have gone up much, but your favorite pickaxe is back to full durability without you ever opening an anvil. TL;DR: Mending in Minecraft redirects XP orbs to repair the durability of equipped items with the enchantment, letting you keep powerful gear alive almost forever instead of spending that XP on levels.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.