In Minecraft, “Too Expensive!” is an anvil warning that means the game will no longer let you do that repair or enchant because the XP cost has passed the built‑in limit (40 levels in survival).

What “Too Expensive!” Actually Means

  • When you combine or repair items on an anvil, each operation costs experience levels.
  • Every time you use an item on an anvil, it gains an internal “anvil use” count that makes future combinations more expensive.
  • After enough uses (typically around six full anvil operations on the same item), the cost can go above 40 levels in survival mode, and the anvil shows red text: Too Expensive! and blocks the action completely.
  • In creative mode, the cap is effectively much higher (you can go up to 31 uses before hitting engine limits), so you’re far less likely to see it.

In short: it’s not about emeralds or money, it’s about an XP cost that has grown too high for the game’s limit.

Why This Happens To Your Gear

Each time you repair or add an enchantment via anvil, the next cost increases, so if you keep “topping up” the same tool or armor over and over, eventually:

  1. The internal anvil‑use value becomes high.
  1. The XP required for the next combination goes over 40 levels.
  1. The anvil blocks it and shows “Too Expensive!”.

Players often notice this with:

  • Maxed‑out swords, pickaxes, or armor they’ve repaired many times.
  • Items that were built by combining lots of low‑level enchantment books step by step.

This has become a frequent topic in community discussions and complaints about enchanting being “capped” by design.

How Players Try To Avoid It

While the mechanic itself is hard‑coded in vanilla, players use a few strategies to delay hitting “Too Expensive!”:

  • Combine smarter: Merge books together first, then apply them in a few big steps instead of many tiny ones, so you reduce total anvil uses.
  • Wait for stronger enchantments: Use an enchantment table (or villagers) to get high‑level enchants directly, instead of constantly upgrading weak ones on the anvil.
  • Use Mending : With Mending, you repair tools and armor using XP orbs, so you need the anvil far less often, which keeps the anvil‑use counter low.
  • Reset items: Some guides suggest stripping enchantments (for example by crafting or using a grindstone in some workflows) to “start over” with fewer costly combinations, though this often means rebuilding your enchants carefully.

On forums and feedback sites, many players argue the mechanic should be removed or turned into a configurable rule so they can keep upgrading their favorite gear indefinitely, even for a very high XP price.

Mini Story: The Over‑Repaired Pickaxe

Imagine you’ve had one diamond pickaxe since early game. You:

  1. Add Efficiency II.
  2. Add Efficiency III.
  3. Add Unbreaking.
  4. Add Fortune.
  5. Repair it again and again on the anvil.

Each of those steps raises the anvil‑use count. After a while, when you try to repair or add one more enchant, the anvil suddenly flashes Too Expensive! in red. The game is basically saying: “This pickaxe’s history is too long; the next repair is beyond the allowed XP cap,” so you must either live with it as‑is or start a fresh tool. Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.