After spending hours working on enchanting your armor, weapons, and tools in Minecraft, you’ll want to protect your hard work as best you can. Only the Mending enchantment is capable of ensuring your armor lasts forever, so you’ll want to learn the best ways to get Mending books in Minecraft to guarantee you can keep using your gear.
How to get Mending books in Minecraft
Mending is a treasure enchantment that can’t be obtained from an enchantment table as the other enchantments can. Instead, you can only get this item through one of four different methods for obtaining a Mending book.
1) Trade with a Librarian villager
Finding or creating a Librarian villager to trade with is the most efficient way to obtain Mending books because it allows you to get an unlimited number of books from the same villager as long as you keep gathering the resources necessary for trading with them.
To obtain a Mending book from a Librarian, you will need to give them Emeralds and books. Each Librarian will choose a random enchanted book to trade, so you may need to break and replace the Librarian’s lectern until they choose a Mending book. Once you trade with them, this will lock in the Mending book so they have it available forever.
Generally, you can expect you’ll need one book and between 15 to 20 Emeralds to purchase a Mending book from a Librarian. This price can vary quite a bit though and can be anywhere from 10 to 30 Emeralds.
If you can’t find a Librarian, you can also trap any single villager and place a lectern down by them to then turn them into a Librarian. It’s easiest to use this process on a villager who doesn’t already have a profession, but if you break the block associated with their profession before attempting this then you can convert them into a Librarian.
2) Loot chests
Mending books are a treasure-only enchantment which is why one of the key ways to find it is to open treasure chests all around your Minecraft world. Exploration is rewarding and chests scattered around structures may reward you with Mending books.
Structures that can have Mending books hidden away in chests include:
- Jungle temples
- Strongholds
- Ancient cities
Other enchantment books can be found in just about any structure, but Mending books are extremely rare. Because of this, exploring isn’t the easiest way to find them as it is based on luck.
3) Go fishing
Fishing is a slow process but an extremely easy one and a great way to reel in some Mending books. All you need to go fishing is any fishing rod and a body of water and you’re set to try and get your hands on this powerful book.
This method can be improved by enchanting your fishing rod with Luck of the Sea, which will increase the likelihood of catching treasure, and enchanting it with the Lure enchantment, which will decrease the wait time between each catch. Fishing is a great method is great for gathering Mending books but does require patience.
4) Complete a raid
If you are playing the Bedrock version of Minecraft, then completing a village raid may reward you with a Mending book. This is just one of several possible bonus items they may drop, so you’ll just have to hope you’re lucky which makes this not one of the best ways to obtain Mending books overall.
How Mending works in Minecraft
You can think of Mending as an enchantment that continuously works to repair your items as you progress through playing Minecraft normally. As you complete experience-granting tasks, Mending uses experience to restore the durability of any items enchanted with Mending in your main hand, in your offhand, or being worn by your character.
If you are wearing or holding multiple items that are enchanted with Mending and need to have their durability replenished, then one item will be randomly selected as with each individual experience point you earn. because of this, it’s best to only have one item in hand or equipped if you are specifically trying to restore its durability.
I generally don’t have a preference for what gets its durability restored first, so I usually continue with experience-granting activities until all my armor, weapons, and tools are full once more. Durability will only ever be restored for items that need it so you can easily just continue with experience-granting activities until all of your assets are fully mended as long as they all have the Mending enchantment applied.
Two points of durability are restored for each orb you collect. Every two points of durability consumed to replenish an item subtracts one point of experience from an orb, so if you only restore one point of durability then you’ll still obtain the full experience from the orb you collected.
You will earn orbs from activities that grant experience like vanquishing mobs, mining ores, fishing, smelting, cooking, and trading.
Generally, just going about your Minecraft game as you usually would will result in your earning experience that can then be used to restore durability with Mending.
