Enchantment order calculator: the cheapest way to combine books on an anvil
Pick an item and its enchantments, and get the anvil order with the fewest experience levels and no Too Expensive step, for Java Edition.
Putting five or six enchanted books on one item can cost twice as many levels in a bad order as in a good one, and a bad order can end with an anvil that says Too Expensive before you are done. This calculator tries every possible order for the books you have and shows the cheapest one, step by step: what goes in the left slot, what goes in the right slot, and what each step costs.
How to use it
- Choose the item you want to enchant. Only the enchantments that item can take are listed.
- Tick each enchanted book you have and set its level. Enchantments that cannot go with one you ticked turn gray, for example Smite once you pick Sharpness, or Infinity once you pick Mending on a bow.
- If the item has been on an anvil before, enter how many times. A fresh item from a crafting table or a chest is 0.
- Follow the steps from the top. When a step uses the result of an earlier step, it says which one.
- Collect the levels shown before you start. The total is the sum of every step; no step reaches 40 levels.
Why the order matters
Every time something goes through an anvil, it gets a prior work penalty: 1 level after the first use, then 3, 7, 15 and 31. The penalty of both things you put in is added to the cost of the next step. On top of that, every enchantment on the right-hand side costs its level times a multiplier: Sharpness costs 1 per level from a book, Looting 2, Mending 2, Silk Touch and Thorns 4. So two things make an order cheap: few rounds of work on any single piece, and expensive enchantments moved as few times as possible.
Adding books one at a time to the item is the worst habit, because the item's penalty doubles with every book. Combining books in pairs first keeps the penalties low, but it moves some enchantments twice. The best order balances the two, and with more than four books it is hard to find by hand: that is what the calculator does. For seven books on boots (Soul Speed, Thorns, Feather Falling, Depth Strider, Protection, Unbreaking and Mending) the cheapest order is 66 levels, while adding them to the boots one at a time cannot work at all: by the seventh book the penalty alone is 63 levels.
Tips that save levels
- Put the item in the left slot and the book in the right slot. You pay for the enchantments on the right-hand side, and a book costs less there than an item would.
- Do the cheap steps first, while your level is low: a level costs fewer experience points at level 5 than at level 30.
- Rename the item in the same step as the last book if you want a name; renaming on its own is another anvil use with its own penalty.
- Enchant the item at an enchanting table before using books, if it does not get in the way of what you want: a table enchantment adds no prior work penalty.
- Repairing with a second damaged item or with materials also counts as an anvil use. Finish the enchantments first, then let Mending do the repairs.
Questions
How is the cost of a step worked out?
The prior work penalty of the left item, plus that of the right one, plus, for every enchantment on the right one, its level on the result times its multiplier. Books have lower multipliers than items, which is why books go on the right. The result's penalty is the larger of the two penalties, one step up the ladder 0, 1, 3, 7, 15, 31.
What does Too Expensive mean?
In survival and adventure, an anvil refuses any step that costs 40 levels or more, whatever your level is. The calculator never uses such a step. If every order has one, it tells you so: use fewer books, or start from an item with less prior work.
How many experience points do I need?
The points shown are what each step's levels cost if you are at exactly that level when you do it, added up. Levels above 30 take many more points each, so being at level 50 and spending 30 costs far more points than being at level 30 and spending 30. The total levels are what the anvil asks for either way.
Does this work for Bedrock Edition?
Mostly, but the costs differ. Bedrock Edition charges for the levels an enchantment gains rather than its final level, Impaling has lower multipliers there, there is no Sweeping Edge, and a few items take different enchantments (shears can take Silk Touch, for example). The order this calculator finds is usually still a good one on Bedrock, but the level totals are for Java Edition.
Can I combine two books of the same level to get a higher one?
Yes: two Sharpness IV books make Sharpness V. Do that first, as its own step, then enter the result here as one book of the higher level.
The data comes from the game files of Java Edition 26.3, including the mace's Density, Breach and Wind Burst and the spear's Lunge. Everything runs in this page and your picks are remembered in this browser. For more tools, see the stack calculator, the Nether portal calculator and all tools.