What is the Swift Sneak enchantment in Minecraft 1.19 update?

The Minecraft 1.19 update added several new features to an already massive game. These include two biomes, three mobs, trees, items and a few crafting recipes.

The last few updates of Minecraft barely touched enchantments. The 1.16 update added Soul Speed to the game, and the 1.19 update introduced Swift Sneak. These are the only new enchantments to be added recently.

Since it's so new and is exclusive to one item, Swift Sneak is a relative unknown. The enchantment has only been available for a little over a month.

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How to get and use Swift Sneak in Minecraft 1.19

Swift Sneak is an enchantment designed to increase movement speed while crouching. The enchantment is exclusive to leggings and is not applicable to any other item.

It was initially applied to boots. However, since there were already so many exclusive enchantments for boots (Frost Walker, Depth Strider and Soul Speed), it was reapplied to leggings instead.

Swift Sneak goes up to three levels, which is the maximum for a lot of enchantments. Each level increases the movement speed.

Ordinarily, when crouched, players move at 30% of their normal speed. This is also the walking speed, so players move incredibly slow when they are crouched.

This speed is dramatically increased with Swift Sneak. Level one sees players move at 45% of their normal walking speed. Level two increases it to 60%. Meanwhile, level three sees a movement speed of 75%.

Through commands and cheats, the Swift Sneak enchantment can also be increased to levels four and five. At level four, players can walk at 90% speed. Level five sees them crouch and move at no slower than normal Minecraft walking speed.

Swift Sneak cannot be acquired in the same manner as other enchantments in Minecraft. It is loot-exclusive, so it will never show up on an enchantment table nor will it be fished up.

In fact, it can't even be found in most loot chests. There are quite a few chests throughout the game that have enchanted book spawns, but there's only one that has Swift Sneak.

Ancient Cities, which are found in Deep Dark biomes, have incredible loot chests. An enchanted book with any level of Swift Sneak can be found in these chests.

Swift Sneak comes in chests (Image via Mojang)

Every Minecraft chest found in Ancient Cities has a 23.2% chance of having a Swift Sneak book.

This is separate from the 35.9% spawn rate for random enchanted books. A Swift Sneak enchanted book found here is randomly given one of the three levels available.

Once it has been obtained, the enchantment is ironically most useful in the Deep Dark biome, where it was found. To prevent Sculk Sensors from triggering and spawning a Warden, players must crouch.

This is the safest way to travel here, but it makes Minecraft players move so slowly. With the Swift Sneak enchantment, this will no longer be much of an issue.