Why players should use the Mending enchantment in Minecraft

One of many Minecraft enchantments, Mending is a great way for players to keep their gear in a state of good repair.

By using a Minecraft player's experience points and levels, Mending restores the durability of any items it can be enchanted with. This is very helpful for players with precious armor, weapons, or tools that they want to keep in good condition and avoid reaching their breaking point.

For gear made by precious materials like diamonds or netherite, this enchantment can be invaluable, as repairing these items requires more of these resources or duplicates of the gear in question. As long as players have earnable XP available, Mending is a great aid.

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Minecraft: What can Mending be applied to?

Mending can be found in enchanting book form in addition to the enchanting table (Image via Mojang)

Found via the enchanting table function, while also being available as an enchanted book, Mending can be applied to a wide swath of items.

First and foremost, Mending can be applied to weapons and armor, which tend to get damaged quite often in Minecraft. This includes all equippable armor pieces (including turtle shell helmets), as well as all vanilla weapons including swords, axes, tridents, crossbows and bows. Mending can be applied to these pieces of gear regardless of their quality, though applying the enchantment to stone or wooden weapons/armor is likely wasted.

Mending can also be applied to Minecraft's various tools, including all of the basic choices such as pickaxes, axes, shovels, and farming hoes. It can be enchanted with shears, flint & steel, and carrots/warped fungi on a stick. When using a particular (especially enchanted) tool, Mending can be a huge help to avoid breaking it.

Few things in Minecraft sting worse than having an enchanted netherite pickaxe that breaks before it can be repaired with an additional netherite scrap. Pair Mending with an enchantment like Unbreaking, and players can expect their Minecraft tools to stick around for quite a while.

When it comes to miscellaneous items, Mending can also be used on shields and Elytra, and it may be one of the best enchantments for Elytra specifically. Killing phantoms and swiping their membranes for repairs can be tedious and annoying, so it may be more prudent to use Mending to repair one's Elytra as they gather XP. Elytra are a precious commodity in Minecraft's Survival Mode, so it's best to use Mending to keep them in one piece as much as possible.