5 best Minecraft enchantments for chestplates

There are a few different enchantments for armor in Minecraft, most of which are mutually exclusive. To get the most out of their armor, it is vital you know the best enchantments for their armor.

For chestplates, most enchantments are very similar, but some are inarguably better than others.

Five beneficial enchantments for Minecraft chestplates

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5) Blast protection

A field of creepers as night approaches (Image via Minecraft)

Blast protection is hyper-specialized protection, only affecting things like creepers and TNT explosions. While this is useful for exploring desert temples and surviving creepers dropping on top of you in ravines, there are better enchantments for your hard-earned diamond chestplate.

The protection formula is as follows:

• Level * 8%

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4) Fire protection

A player using full fire protection to minimize damage (Image via Minecraft)

Unfortunately, fire protection suffers the same downfall as blast protection. However, it is slightly more powerful, especially on Minecraft Bedrock Edition.

In this version of the game, if you have seven levels of fire protection in your armor, like a fire protection IV chestplate and fire protection III pants, you cannot catch fire through normal means. In this case, the only way to take fire damage is by standing on fire.

In the Java Edition of Minecraft, fire protection only decreases burn time by (15 * level)%. This means that with a fire protection IV chestplate, burn time would be reduced by 60%. Only the highest level of fire protection is taken into account in this way.

The formula for damage reduction is the same as for blast protection.

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3) Projectile Protection

Skeletons at night (Image via Minecraft)

Projectile protection is by far the most useful of the specialized protection enchantments. The enchantment applies to the following:

• Arrows
• Thrown tridents
• Shulker bullets
• Llama spit
• Blaze fireballs
• Direct impact ghast fireballs
• Direct impact wither skulls

This is general enough to be valid a lot of the time but still uses the better protection formula mentioned in the blast protection section.

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2) Mending

If it is assumed that mending is used in addition to other enchantments, then it easily takes the number two spot on the list. This means that you do not need to continually recraft and then reenchant your armor, as it will repair fully enchanted armor while you mine or fight enemies.

This is significantly time-saving, as reenchanting can be frustrating and RNG dependent.

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1) Protection

Unlike swords, which see their general use sharpness enchantment that only adds a slight damage increase, armor has quite a good general protection enchantment.

It decreases all damage dealt by an amount equal to (4 * level)% in Java Edition, stacking for each armor piece. In Bedrock Edition, the formula is even better, being (4 * (level + 1))%. This means that each of the two versions reduces damage by the following amounts at protection IV:

• Java Edition: 16%
• Bedrock Edition: 20%

Extra pieces of armor with protection also stack, meaning that in Bedrock Edition, having protection IV on each armor piece is enough to reach the damage reduction cap of 80%. In Java Edition, this damage reduction totals out to 64%, meaning Java Edition has a slightly worse version of the enchantment, though it is still quite powerful.

Note: This article reflects the author's views.