Minecraft anvil calculator

Building

Cheaper book combinations without Too Expensive!Learn more

Choose an item and its enchantments to find an efficient order for combining books and see the level cost. The wrong order can greatly increase costs or hit the Too Expensive! limit.

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Item

The item was already in the anvil

0 1 2 3 4 5

Each operation adds a prior-work penalty of 0 for this item.

Books by item

Choose the enchantments in step 3 — we'll show how to combine them into books.

What can be placed

Each row shows the enchantment level and the cost in book levels.

Build order

Sword

Select enchantments to calculate the cost.

How to use the result

First combine books together
Take steps exactly in the order planned: each subsequent step costs more than the previous.
Fill levels in advance
They are consumed during the process, so the full amount is needed for the first use. Where to get them — in experience calculator.
Last one — on an item
The ready book goes into the right slot, the item into the left. Conversely, an anvil will not combine them.

How does the anvil count?

The cost per step is enchantment levels plus penalties for prior work. The penalty equals 2 raised to the power of 'how many times the item has been in the anvil' minus one, and it applies to both items simultaneously.
The penalty doubles. After four prior operations, the penalty reaches 15 levels; after six, it reaches 63, already above the Survival cap. Repeated repairs can therefore make further enchantments too expensive.
Book is cheaper than an item. Book enchantment multipliers are lower: Silk Touch costs 4 levels per enchantment level when transferred from a book, compared with 8 from a tool. Planning book combinations before applying them to the item can reduce the total cost.
Cap — 39 levels per use. Above this limit, the anvil displays Too Expensive! and refuses the operation in Survival mode. Creative mode has no such cap.
Order is more important than the set. The same set of enchantments can be crafted in twenty or forty levels — the difference is entirely in what was combined previously.
Rename costs one level and is added to every operation. Renaming an item first is cheapest, while its prior-work penalty is still zero.
Anvils can apply enchantments unavailable from an enchanting table. An enchanting table cannot give an axe Sharpness, but an enchanted book can. The list on the right shows enchantments accepted by the anvil.

Multipliers, level caps, and incompatibilities are taken from client-side game files (data/minecraft/enchantment), not from tables on the internet. How much experience is required for these levels is calculated by experience calculator, and where books come from — enchanting table.

Frequently asked questions

Why does the anvil say 'Too expensive'?

The operation costs more than 39 levels. The total includes enchantment costs and the prior-work penalty, which grows with repeated anvil use. The combination order can therefore make a large difference.

In what order should books be combined on the anvil?

Combine books in the recommended order, then apply the combined book to the item. Lower book multipliers can make this cheaper than transferring enchantments from equipment.

Why is a book cheaper than an item?

The anvil's book multiplier is half the item multiplier, with a minimum of one. For Silk Touch, the multipliers are 4 for a book and 8 for an item.