What are the best enchantments for Minecraft swords?
Playing Minecraft without an enchanted sword is like playing Team Fortress 2 without killbinds. Sure, it’s technically possible, but are you even playing the game at that point?
Regardless of whether you are a battle-hardened warrior looking to perfect the damage output of your netherite sword or if you’re a simple farmer looking to make your way in this world, you’re going to want to know these enchantments. Learning what the best sword enchantments in Minecraft are isn’t just fun, it could literally save your life one day. Luckily for you, your old pal here has your back. Here are the top 10 best enchantments for your sword in Minecraft.
10. Curse of Vanishing
Here you see the fate of all who are stupid enough to use Curse of Vanishing
This enchantment is useful for trolling your friends, and really nothing else. Curse of Vanishing doesn’t actually make your sword any better or worse, but what it does do is just plain stupid. As soon as you die with the item in your inventory, it’s gone faster than your dad gone to get the milk. Curse of Vanishing is a pain for normal survival players and absolutely useless for hardcore players, since they can’t die anyways.
What makes Curse of Vanishing great for swords:
- Maybe trolling your friends
- Literally nothing else
9. Bane of Arthropods
The only one who thinks Bane of Arthropods is effective
Bane of Arthropods is the first enchantment on this list with an actual practical purpose. Unfortunately, that purpose is severely limited in range. What Bane of Arthropods does, as you’d expect, is make your sword deal more damage to any mob classified as an arthropod. The main problem with this enchantment is that the only mobs the game considers to be arthropods are spiders, cave spiders, silverfish, endermites and bees. So in the end, you’re giving up valuable enchantment slots for mobs you really won’t be fighting very often.
What makes Bane of Arthropods great for swords:
- Deals extra damage and applies Slowness IV to arthropods
- Great for players who die to cave spiders often
8. Sweeping Edge
Heard of shooting fish in a barrel? How about killing cows in a hole.
Sweeping Edge is a difficult enchantment to rank. One one hand, it increases the damage your sweeping edge does, but on the other hand it only works in Java Edition and doesn’t help all that much in real combat situations. It is very helpful in mob farms, but other than that it’s not a must-have sword enchantment.
What makes Sweeping Edge great for swords:
- Increases damage of your sweeping edge in Java Edition
- Really helps with active mob farms
- Useful if you find yourself fighting a large number of mobs or players at the same time
7. Knockback
Trust me, you don't want an angry iron golem anywhere near you
One of the most situational sword enchantments in Minecraft is Knockback. What Knockback does is send whatever you hit flying away from you. It’s fantastic when you’re trying not to get blown up by a creeper, but absolutely terrible when a skeleton is loading you full of arrows. In the end, it’s entirely up to player preference. My personal recommendation is to pair Knockback with Fire Aspect on a secondary loadout, but it’s up to you if Knockback is worthy of your blade.
What makes Knockback great for swords:
- Smacks away anything it touches
- Great for making space between you and your enemy
- Helps stop flaming zombies from setting you on fire
- No more annoying creeper explosions
6. Fire Aspect
No, I'm not complimenting you, you're literally on fire
Wouldn’t it be awesome if everything you hit with your sword spontaneously combusted into flames? Well that’s exactly what Fire Aspect does for you. Every time you hit a player or a mob, they catch fire. As you can imagine, this results in a lot of free damage for you. One viable strategy against any non-ranged mob is to use Fire Aspect and Knockback to keep them far from you and slowly burn them to death.
What makes Fire Aspect great:
- Makes anything you touch burst into flames
- Really does rack up a lot of damage
- Automatically cooks the meat of any animals you kill
- Makes you feel like Captain Falcon
5. Looting
Making bank off of the ashes of my enemies
At least half of the time, when you’re killing something in Minecraft, it’s because you want it to drop something. Whether you’re killing a creeper for its gunpowder or a chicken for its meat, you want to get as much as you can from the mob. That’s exactly where Looting steps in to help. Every level of Looting you add to your sword increases the number of items a mob drops when you kill it. As you can imagine, this makes hunting for food, ender pearls, and wither skeleton skulls infinitely easier.
What makes Looting great:
- Increases the number of items dropped by mobs
- Basically just free money
- Perfect for maximizing mob farm output
4. Smite
Curse you and all you stand for, wither
If you’re anything like me, then the undead in Minecraft are your mortal enemy. Call it a grudge, but when I see the cold, dead eyes of a zombie I go full-on Doom Slayer mode. This is why I consider Smite to be the absolute best specialized damage enchantment in Minecraft. Smite increases the damage output to any mobs classified as undead, which includes zombies, skeletons, drowned, wither skeletons, withers, and zombified piglins.
What makes Smite great:
- Increased damage to undead mobs
- No more of those accursed zombies and skeletons
- Makes the wither fight much easier
3. Unbreaking
Not even the fourth wall can break this sword
You can have the most godlike sword in existence, but it won’t matter if the thing breaks on you. Unbreaking is here to fix all that. When you add Unbreaking to your sword, you are slowing down the rate at which it runs out of durability. In short, the higher the Unbreaking level, the longer your sword’s lifespan. It’s like adding a coat of Flex Seal to your sword. And yes, it even works underwater.
What makes Unbreaking great:
- Extends the lifespan of a weapon
- Repairs have to happen less often
- More time for killing stupid zombies
2. Mending
And just like that, Steve has repaired his sword
As great as Unbreaking is, at one point your sword is going to break no matter how hard you enchant it. That is unless you slap Mending on that bad boy! Mending automatically uses any experience points you collect to repair your sword. That means so long as you are regularly collecting XP orbs, (which you should be if you’re using your sword right), your sword will never run out of durability.
What makes Mending great:
- Automatically uses XP to repair your sword
- Fewer resources wasted on repairs
- More time for killing stupid zombies
1. Sharpness
Crit + Sharpness = dead sheep
At the end of the day, you have a sword for one reason and one reason alone: to kill things. That is why Sharpness is the absolute best enchantment you can put on your sword in Minecraft. Sharpness increases the amount of damage you deal to each and every last mob you hit. Regardless of type or classification, Sharpness is an equal opportunity killer. Just as no CoD game would be complete without a twelve-year-old yelling racial slurs, no Minecraft sword would be complete without Sharpness added to it.
What makes Sharpness great:
- Increases damage output to all mobs
- More efficiently kill enemies
- Keeps you alive longer
- Saitama would be proud
And that is everything you need to know about the absolute best sword enchantments in Minecraft. If you’re looking to enchant any of your other gear, you might want to check out these articles:
