5 most underwhelming enchantments in Minecraft (2021)

Enchanting items is a beloved practice within the Minecraft community. However players are always so focused on which enchantment is best that sometimes, they forget about the lesser quality enchantments.

New players will often mistakenly put these enchantments on their items, oblivious to their futility. Here's a quick recap on the worst enchantments to use in Minecraft.

Minecraft's 5 worst enchantments

#1 Curse of Vanishing

Curse of Vanishing book (Image via YouTube)

The Curse of Vanishing enchantment is a curse that causes the enchanted item to disappear if the player dies with it in their inventory. This is a terrible enchantment to put on armor and weapons, as it forces the player to create a new set of armor or weapons after each death.

#2 Curse of Binding

Image Via Sportskeeda

On the contrary to the curse of vanishing, the Curse of Binding is an enchantment only available for armor. This enchantment binds armor to a player permanently, until the armor breaks or the player dies that it. This means removal in hardcore mode is impossible until the armor breaks. Players are unable to remove the curse through any means, including grindstones or crafting tables.

#3 Channeling

Channeling lighting (Image via Reddit)

Channeling is an extremely niche trident enchantment. When a channeling enchanted trident is thrown at a mob standing in a thunderstorm, a lightning bolt will strike the mob. This enchantment only works on tridents, and only works in the rain. There are some scenarios where this enchantment doesn't work, such as if the mob is standing in water, lava, cobwebs, soul sand, or a honey block.

Channeling is also incompatible with the riptide trident enchantment.

#4 Impaling

Image Via Reddit

Impaling is another trident enchantment that increases damage inflicted by the trident. There's a catch though: the enchantment only works on water-related mobs. In the Minecraft Java Edition, impaling only works on aquatic mobs such as guardians, dolphins, squids, etc.

In the Minecraft Bedrock Edition, the impaling enchantment is narrowly expanded, affecting all mobs in contact with water. This means impaling works if the mob is in the rain, underwater, or standing in water.

#5 Bane of Arthropods

Bane of Arthropods enchantment (Image via minecraft-guides.com)

The Bane of Arthropods is another niche enchantment that inflicts extra damage to arthropods such as spiders, bees, and silverfish. This enchantment may not seem that bad, but its major downside is its incompatibility with sharpness.