How to remove curse enchantments in Minecraft

Curses can be the bane of a Minecraft Survival/Hardcore Mode player's existence, as they can cause horribly inconvenient side effects.

For example, the Curse of Binding enchantment prevents a player from removing a piece of gear equipped with the curse. Some players use this to annoying effect, by enchanting carved pumpkins.

Players equipped with a cursed carved pumpkin have their vision heavily obscured, making gameplay difficult. The Curse of Vanishing can also be agitating for Survival Mode players, as the curse removes an item completely upon death instead of dropping it where it can be recollected.

Unfortunately for Minecraft players, the game's vanilla release only allows for a few ways to remove these enchantments, and they involve what some may consider cheating.

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Minecraft: Removing cursed items

Curses were created with the intent of being difficult to remove, but there are still a few methods available (Image via Mojang)

Mojang knew what they were doing when they created curses in Minecraft, and the cursed enchantments are basically impossible to remove in Survival or Hardcore Mode Minecraft.

Put plainly, without the use of console commands or Creative Mode, a curse can only be removed when the cursed item is broken or when a player dies.

For items with no actual durability such as carved pumpkins, this means that players have to die in order to remove the item, that is if they don't want to use cheats or Creative Mode. Sadly, this is by design, as Mojang wanted the curses to feel incredibly inconvenient to players.

There is one particular method that can break most standard cursed gear, but it can take a lot of time and requires players to take a sizable amount of damage.

For Minecraft players with cursed armor, touching a cactus block will slowly but surely damage the armor to its breaking point. Unfortunately this means the player has to take damage while touching the cactus, and depending on the armor's durability this can take a while.

If players choose to follow this route, be sure to pack plenty of food and maybe even some Potions of Healing. This can also allegedly be done with magma blocks, though they are somewhat more difficult to find compared to cacti.

Otherwise, the only real way to remove cursed items without dying is to switch the game to Creative Mode via the "/gamemode Creative" command, which may or may not be available depending on if the player is playing on single player or a multiplayer server.

If the player is playing on a single player with cheats enabled or on a multiplayer server where they can access commands, placing the game into creative mode for the player will allow them to safely remove the cursed item.

For Minecraft players who don't mind using other console commands without engaging Creative Mode, they can try the replacement command to swap out their cursed item with a new one.

The syntax for the command in Minecraft: Java Edition is "/replaceitem entity <target> <slot> <itemname> [amount] [data] [dataTag]" so for example, a player wanting to replace their cursed diamond helmet could type "/replaceitem entity MinecraftPlayer armor.head diamond_helmet" in their chat console, and their cursed helmet would be replaced with a standard one.

Sadly for those who don't want to resort to console commands or Creative Mode, there just aren't a lot of options for removing curses without dying or at the very least losing an item.

Because of this, it's always wise to keep an eye on any items obtained from loot chests. Equipping a cursed item by mistake can result in a pretty annoying experience.

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Note: The article reflects the views and opinions of the writer.