While weapons are immensely important for survival in Minecraft, tools might be the most important type of equipment of all. Tools allow players access to resources that they might not be able to obtain otherwise and makes the process of obtaining them much more efficient.
One of the most useful and often overlooked tools in Minecraft is the shovel. Compared to the other tools that are available to players, this one is generally considered to be the least important but can be immensely helpful when equipped with the right enchantments.
There are a few unique and useful enchantments for players to choose from for their trusty shovel. But because there are so many options present, it can also be quite difficult to figure out which ones are the best enchantments available and which ones should be avoided.
Related: Minecraft’s upcoming armor trim update in 1.20 has players divided
Enchanting is one of the most vital gameplay aspects that players can perform in Minecraft because it will make general gameplay more efficient. All players looking to outfit themselves with the very best gear will want to ensure that they have every piece of equipment fitted with the very best enchantments which include the often-overlooked shovel.
All shovel enchantments in Minecraft
As far as enchantments go for tools in Minecraft, the shovel has a moderate number of helpful ones that players can apply. In total, there are six different enchantments available.
- Unbreaking (I-III)
- Mending (I)
- Efficiency (I-V)
- Fortune (I-III)
- Silk Touch (I)
- Curse of Vanishing (I)
Best shovel enchantments in Minecraft 1.19
Minecraft is an ever-evolving game that continuously sees the arrival of new content. This could mean that more enchantments are added to the sandbox game in the future, but for now, there are five powerful enchantments available for the shovel.
1) Unbreaking
Of the five powerful enchantments that are available for shovels in Minecraft, the Unbreaking enchantment is the most important one to apply. Unbreaking makes the item that is enchanted with it generally tougher so that it is less likely to consume a durability point and grow closer to breaking.
There are three levels of the Unbreaking enchantment and its effectiveness grows stronger with each increased level. Each time that players utilize a shovel that is equipped with Unbreaking it will then have a chance of not consuming a durability point.
While other enchantments might seem more exciting or obviously useful right from the moment that they are applied, players who utilize Unbreaking will instead only be able to see the benefits over a long-term period. Because of this, many Minecraft players overlook it but it is an important way to help ensure that the levels you invest into enchanting an item are worth it since Unbreaking helps to protect it from breaking and becoming lost forever.
2) Mending
The Mending enchantment is immensely versatile and can be applied to just about every piece of gear or equipment in Minecraft. If you are going to be spending your experience levels on enchanting anything then you’ll want to apply Mending fairly early on to ensure that the asset you are enchanting will last forever.
Mending has just one enchantment level and replenishes the durability of an asset anytime that players perform experience-granting activities with the asset equipped. This means that as long as players pull out their shovels occasionally during or just after activities that grant experience then their shovels will never break.
The shovel is a bit tougher to replenish than other tools like the pickaxe which can easily be sustained by just mining consistently. For the shovel, nothing that players are meant to dig with it grants experience itself. Instead, players will need to find another means of ensuring that their shovel is replenished like equipping it before picking up experience dropped from vanquishing a mob from afar, trading with villagers, bringing it to an experience farm, breeding animals with the shovel equipped in your offhand, or other such methods to ensure that the durability is restored.
Usually, Mending is the most important enchantment that players can utilize on any asset that can be equipped with. But in the case of the shovel, Unbreaking takes priority since performing experience-granting actions with the shovel is a bit trickier than with most other assets.
3) Efficiency
Outside of the two protective enchantments, the next most important one that players should apply is Efficiency. As the name of the enchantment hints, Efficiency will make your shovel much more efficient.
The Efficiency enchantment comes in five levels and each level up will further increase your mining speed. With the highest level applied, players will barely have to make any effort at all to collect massive amounts of sand, dirt, or other such resources that the shovel is designed for.
4) Fortune
The Fortune enchantment can increase the yield from mining certain items on a specific basis. This enchantment only applied to certain assets and may either simply increase the amount of loot that an item drops or instead increase the chance of special items dropping.
While Fortune does not do much for the materials that players will generally be digging up with the shovel, there are some instances where it will be particularly useful. The most useful feature that the Fortune enchantment will grant on the shovel is an increased chance of gravel dropping flint.
This can be immensely beneficial to players that need to frequently craft arrows for their bow or crossbow. Outside of this, the shovel can also be utilized to mine any of the other regular assets that drop increased loot.
Assets that players can mine and gain extra loot with the Fortune enchantment equipped are:
- Coal from coal ore
- Gold from gold ore or Nether gold ore
- Iron from iron ore
- Diamond from diamond ore
- Lapis lazuli from lapis lazuli ore
- Emerald from emerald ore
- Redstone from redstone ore
- Nether quartz from Nether quartz ore
- Copper from copper ore ore
- Amethyst shards from amethyst clusters
There are also a few other assets that have a slightly different system with the Fortune enchantment and come with a percentage chance of dropping extra of the loot that they usually grant. These assets are:
- Glowstone dust from glowstone
- Flint from ravel
- Prismarine crystals from sea lanterns
- Melon slices from melons
- Wheat seeds from grass and wheat crops
- Beetroot seeds from beetroot crops
- Carrots from carrot crops
- Potatoes from potato crops
- Nether wart from Nether wart crops
- Sweet berries from sweet berry bushes
- Gold nuggets from gilded blackstone
- Apples from dark oak and oak leaves
- Saplings from leaves
- Sticks from leaves
- Twisting vines
- Weeping vines
While most of the items that grant extra rewards with the Fortune enchantment are not ones that players usually mine with a shovel, the tool that is utilized does not affect how much loot is received. This means that players can freely utilize their Fortune shovel on any of these items to gain more rewards even if it is not the usual tool that they would utilize to mine said item.
The one major drawback of the Fortune enchantment is that it conflicts with Silk Touch. For most players, the Fortune enchantment is a much more useful and important one.
5) Silk Touch
The Silk Touch enchantment is a very specific type of enchantment that is not beneficial at every moment like most other enchantments are. Instead, players will likely only find that they desire this enchantment in very specific situations but that it is quite useful when they do want it.
Silk Touch causes blocks to drop as themselves rather than dropping the loot within them or dropping nothing at all. Examples of this include glass dropping as itself instead of breaking, a bookshelf dropping as itself rather than as three books, and mushroom blocks dropping instead of mushrooms.
As helpful as the Silk Touch enchantment can be, it does conflict with Fortune which means that all players will have to choose which of the two they wish to apply to their shovels.
Because both Fortune and Silk Touch can be applied to any tool, it is generally the best idea to have one of your tools equipped with Fortune and another one equipped with Silk Touch. Because players might want Fortune to obtain flint from gravel and because applying Silk Touch will drop the gravel block rather than the flint within it, players will generally want to choose Fortune over Silk Touch for their shovels.
The only other enchantment that can be equipped on a shovel in Minecraft is the Curse of Vanishing. While most enchantments are beneficial in one way or another, Curse of Vanishing is instead an immense drawback and should thus be avoided.
When Curse of Vanishing is applied and players perish, the item that it was equipped on will not drop like all the rest of their loot and instead will vanish from existence. The average Minecraft player will generally try to return to where they died to collect all of their loot which makes this quite a hefty drawback.
Any player that is taking on Minecraft in hardcore mode doesn’t need to worry about Curse of Vanishing since they only have one life anyway. Additionally, some players that enjoy the game with friends like to have it applied so that others cannot try to steal their loot if they kill them but this does still mean that they will lose the item forever upon dying.
