Minecraft has tons of useful enchantments for weapons, tools, and armor that make exploring, gathering resources, fighting mobs, and just staying alive a lot easier. With so many options, it’s easy to get overwhelmed about what to chase first when you’re just starting out.
Here are five enchantments that are especially helpful to pick up early on.
1) Infinity
Once you craft your first bow, arrows become a problem fast. Arrows that hit mobs usually disappear, and making more means hunting chickens for feathers and digging tons of gravel for flint.
Since shooting from a distance is way safer than swinging a sword up close, most players end up relying on the bow a lot. Infinity fixes the arrow shortage completely: put one arrow in your inventory and you can fire forever without it ever running out.
2) Sharpness
Sharpness is the straightforward damage-boost enchantment for swords and axes. The higher the level, the more extra damage your melee weapon deals.
Early-game swords are your main weapon anyway, so slapping Sharpness on one makes everything from zombies to creepers drop much faster.
3) Unbreaking
Every time you swing a tool, hit a mob, mine a block, or take damage in armor, that item loses a bit of durability. Run out and the item breaks for good.
Early on, resources are tight and replacing gear constantly hurts. Unbreaking makes durability drop less often, so the same pickaxe, sword, or chestplate lasts way longer before it breaks.
4) Protection
Armor already reduces incoming damage, but Protection pushes that reduction even further. You can put it on any armor piece (helmet, chestplate, leggings, boots).
It works against nearly every type of damage in the game—falls, explosions, fire, arrows, melee hits—except hunger, the Warden’s sonic boom, the void, or the /kill command.
5) Fortune
Mining regular iron, gold, diamond, or ancient debris with a normal pickaxe only ever drops one item per ore block. Considering how rare diamonds and ancient debris are, that feels stingy.
Fortune changes the drop rates so ores can give multiple items. For example, Fortune III on a diamond pickaxe gives you an average of over two diamonds per ore and a decent shot at three or even four from a single block. Same boost applies to coal, redstone, lapis, and other fortune-affected ores.