What is the best underwater gear in Minecraft?

The various biomes of Minecraft have plenty of water to go around, be it in lakes or oceans, and these areas are worth dropping into and exploring.

However, exploring something as massive as an ocean requires a significant amount of help. Minecraft players in Survival Mode can only survive underwater until their breath meter is depleted. They'll then begin suffocating and take damage over time until they return to the surface or die.

Nevertheless, certain gears and enchantments will allow players to survive significantly longer in underwater locations than they would normally be capable of. This gear is worth every amount of investment in order to plumb the depths of massive bodies of water.

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Minecraft: The best enchanted gear to bring for underwater exploring

Depth Strider boots

Depth Strider improves underwater movement (Image via Mojang)

With a pair of boots enchanted with Depth Strider, getting around underwater should be significantly easier for players. At its maximum rank, players can move about underwater exactly like they do on the surface.

Considering how much the pull of water slows players down, Depth Strider-enchanted boots can be vital when moving through submerged ruins or ocean monuments. Without it, players aren't even likely to get to the surface or to bubble columns where they can replenish air, and that spells trouble.

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Aqua Affinity helmet

Aqua Affinity helmets aren't vital, but they're extraordinarily helpful (Image via Mojang)

A helmet-exclusive Minecraft enchantment, Aqua Affinity, increases the speed at which players can mine while underwater. Much like movement, mining and block-breaking speed are substantially hindered while submerged, making removing obstructions or mining precious materials like prismarine a problematic task.

With Aqua Affinity, the 5x mining speed penalty is ignored, and players can break blocks just as quickly as they would on land.

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Respiration helmet

Respiration is crucial for staying underwater (Image via Mojang)

Another helmet-exclusive enchantment and one that is vital in most circumstances for underwater exploration, Respiration increases the time that players can spend underwater before running out of breath in Minecraft.

Each rank increases a player's breathing time by 15 seconds, with the maximum rank allowing an entire extra minute of underwater breathing before the normal amount begins to tick down.

When heading into deep ocean biomes, Respiration is a near necessity unless players want to daisy-chain bubble columns on the seafloor or utilize potions of water breathing. Paired with Depth Strider boots, a helmet enchanted with Respiration should give players plenty of time to move and breathe before seeking out a source of air.