The Mending Enchantment in 'Minecraft' Is Useful, but Hard to Find

Longtime players of the popular sandbox game Minecraft know that there's really no shortage of items or resources in the game — and if you know what you're doing, you can combine a wide variety of resources to create some powerful and robust tools and architecture.

Enchantments are one way many players enhance their items, but not all of them are straightforward. What does the mending enchantment do, and what is it good for?

Mending is an enchantment in Minecraft, and if you haven't messed around with the enchanting table in the game, you may want to after this.

Any Minecraft player knows that your tools deteriorate as you use them, and eventually almost every version of a tool will break. This is why players grind to get more advanced and durable materials for their tools, like diamonds, so they will last longer and work more efficiently.

But instead of continuously running through your resources crafting and recrafting these items, you can instead enchant your tools with mending, which will slowly regenerate your tools' lifespan as they're being used.

As you mine items, the XP that is dropped from the blocks will first go to your tools, mending it so it will last longer. Any leftover XP will then go to your level. This, of course, means that you will level up much slower than you may typically, but it can also save time and resources.

Just about any tool or piece of armor can be enchanted with mending, regardless of how advanced it is. This means that, yes, while it may seem a little senseless, you can enchant your wooden tools with mending so they last longer.

The way it works is that any tool or piece of armor on your character or in your immediate inventory has a random chance of being replenished as you pick up experience orbs. One experience orb restores two durability points per item.

Unfortunately, there is no way to prioritize which item is mended first. Every item on your person with the mending enchantment has an equal chance of being reinforced.

If you want to add the mending enchantment to one of your tools, you'll first have to find it. While many enchantments can be created using the enchantment table, mending is one that is not able to be crafted in the game. Instead, you can find it in various chests located around the map, from fishing, or by trading with a librarian.

Once you've done this, though, you should easily be able to add it to the tools of your choosing. If you want to enchant all of your items with mending, you'll likely have to grind for a bit to obtain enough mending enchantments.

The only enchantment that cannot be used alongside mending is the infinity enchantment, which is used to give a player an infinite amount of arrows. A bow that has been given the infinity enchantment cannot also be given mending.