How To Combine Enchantments On An Anvil In Minecraft

You can combine enchantments on an anvil in Minecraft by placing your gear in the left slot and an enchanted book or matching item in the right slot. This stacks both sets of enchantments onto one item. It sounds simple, but the anvil has hidden costs that can quickly make this too expensive if you don’t combine things in the right order. This guide covers every step, plus how to avoid wasting experience levels.

TL;DR

• Place your gear in the left slot and an enchanted book or matching item in the right slot.
• Same-type items merge enchantments and durability together.
• Combining the same enchantment at the same level creates the next level up.
• Each anvil use raises the item’s “prior work penalty,” making future combines cost more.
• Combine books together first before applying them to your main item to save experience.
• Operations costing 40 levels or more are blocked with a “Too Expensive!” message.

What You Need To Combine Enchantments

To combine enchantments on an anvil, you need three things:

• An anvil, crafted from 3 blocks of iron and 4 iron ingots, which equals 31 iron ingots total
• Two compatible items, either two of the same gear type or one item plus an enchanted book
• Enough experience levels to pay the combining cost

You cannot combine enchantments using an enchanting table. That block only works on unenchanted items, so the anvil is the only way to merge or upgrade existing enchantments.

How To Combine Enchantments On An Anvil Step By Step

Follow these steps to combine enchantments on an anvil:

• Place and open your anvil to bring up its interface.
• Put your main gear, the item you want to keep, in the first (left) slot.
• Put the enchanted book or matching second item in the second (middle) slot.
• Check the output slot on the right. It shows the combined item and the experience level cost below it.
• If the cost shows in green, you have enough levels. Take the item from the output slot to complete the process.

Combining Two Items Of The Same Type

When you combine two items of the same kind and material, such as two iron pickaxes, the anvil merges their durability and combines their enchantments. Any matching enchantments at the same level go up by one tier, up to that enchantment’s maximum level. Different enchantments simply get added together onto the final item, as long as they are compatible with each other.

Combining An Item With An Enchanted Book

This is the cheaper and more common method. Place your gear in the left slot and the enchanted book in the right slot. Only enchantments that fit the item type will transfer over, so a book with sword enchantments won’t add anything useful to a pickaxe. Applying a book is generally less expensive than combining two full items, which is why most players collect enchanted books through trading and apply them one at a time.

Combining Two Enchanted Books

You can also combine two enchanted books together on an anvil before applying either one to your gear. Two books with the same enchantment at the same level merge into a single book at the next level. This step is one of the best ways to save experience overall, since it keeps your main item’s penalty low while you build up a fully stacked book.

Understanding The Prior Work Penalty

Every item and book carries a hidden counter that starts at zero. Each time that item is used in the anvil’s left slot, whether for repairing, renaming, or enchanting, the counter goes up by one. This counter does not cost anything by itself, but it raises the experience cost of every future anvil operation on that item.

In survival mode, any single operation costing 40 levels or more is rejected with a “Too Expensive!” message, even if you have plenty of experience banked. The only way around this is to plan your combining order carefully from the start, since there is no way to reset the penalty without also losing the item’s enchantments.

Best Order To Combine Enchantments

To avoid hitting the “Too Expensive!” wall, follow this order:

• Combine enchanted books together first, merging duplicate enchantments into higher levels before they touch your main gear.
• Apply the finished book to your main item last, so your gear only takes one or two anvil uses instead of many.
• Add cheaper enchantments before expensive ones like mending or silk touch, since costly enchantments raise the price faster the more uses an item already has.
• Avoid combining two heavily used items together when possible. The anvil takes the higher prior work penalty between the two, plus one, for the final result.

Why Your Anvil Says “Too Expensive!”

This message appears when the listed cost reaches 40 levels or more in survival or adventure mode. It usually happens because one or both items have a high prior work penalty from repeated anvil uses. The only fix in vanilla Minecraft is to start over with a fresh item or book and rebuild your enchantments using a smarter combining order.

Repairing Gear On An Anvil

Besides combining enchantments, anvils also repair gear in two ways:

• Material repair: place the damaged item in the left slot and its crafting material, like iron ingots, in the right slot. Each material restores 25% of max durability.
• Combining repair: place two of the same item together. The result keeps both items’ combined durability plus a small bonus, and merges their enchantments at the same time.

Anvil Durability

Anvils are not permanent. Every time you repair, enchant, or rename an item, there is a chance the anvil takes damage and moves to a more damaged state. After enough uses, it breaks completely and you need to craft a new one, so it is worth planning your enchanting sessions to avoid wasting anvil uses on items you are not finishing.

Frequently Asked Questions