Enchanting is an important part of the Minecraft experience to learn when you want to maximize your potential in-game. That's especially true for combat, where you have multiple enchantments at your disposal and one advantage can prevent you from dying, whether it's against mobs in a survival game or another player in PvP.
The game's de jure combat weapon, the sword, has the most possible enchantments out of any tool. With the ten available for your choosing, some are bound to be more useful than others, depending on what they offer and in what situations they turn out to be useful.
Updated September 29, 2022 by Jacqueline Zalace: We've updated and refreshed the order of enchantments on this list to help you pick the best ones to put on your sword. Additionally, you can now find some additional information about each enchantment.
10 Curse of Vanishing
|
Tiers |
Effects |
|---|---|
|
1 |
Item disappears upon death. |
There's not much to say here; Curse of Vanishing is literally a negative enchantment. While it's not as bad as, say, the Curse of Binding enchantment you could find on a piece of armor, it's still not great to have.
The Curse of Vanishing causes a sword to disappear upon its user's death. While this means nothing in a hardcore world, it would be quite a bad break to die with a Curse of Vanishing sword on hand, especially if it's made of valuable material like diamond or netherite.
9 Bane of Arthropods
|
Tiers |
Damage (based on a Netherite Sword with a base damage of 8) |
|---|---|
|
1 |
10.5 |
|
2 |
13 |
|
3 |
15.5 |
|
4 |
18 |
|
5 |
20.5 |
The Bane of Arthropods enchantment is the worst among the non-detrimental ones (i.e. Curse of Vanishing), simply because its benefit is felt the least, generally speaking.
The enchantment deals more damage to arthropod mobs, namely spiders, cave spiders, bees, silverfish, and endermites. While it would be great to enchant a specialized sword meant to kill those specific mobs, none of those mobs are particularly dangerous, aside from maybe cave spiders and silverfish. Plus, with Bane of Arthropods, you prevent yourself from enchanting a sword with other, arguably better damage-related enchantments like Smite or Sharpness.
Overall, the damage done to spiders is still a lot compared to other enchantments, so this is a great enchantment to have on a sword used at a Spider Spawner farm.
8 Smite
|
Tiers |
Damage (based on a Netherite Sword with a base damage of 8) |
|---|---|
|
1 |
10.5 |
|
2 |
13 |
|
3 |
15.5 |
|
4 |
18 |
|
5 |
20.5 |
Like Bane of Arthropods, Smite deals significantly more damage to specific mobs when applied to a sword. It ranks higher than Bane of Arthropods because while Smite doesn't necessarily work on every mob, it does work on a significant number of them.
Smite specifically deals damage to undead mobs, which includes zombies, skeletons, and any similar creatures. Additionally, it works on the Wither, so if you're ever faced with the daunting task of fighting one, a Smite sword will do you dandy.
7 Knockback
|
Tiers |
Effects |
|---|---|
|
1 |
105% Knockback |
|
2 |
190% Knockback |
Being in close quarters with a hostile mob can be very dangerous, so having them get back is extremely helpful. That's what the Knockback enchantment provides, knocking regular mobs back an impressive distance at its maximum enchantment of two levels, even without sprinting.
It's a great anti-creeper measure since it can push away creepers enough to get you away from its blast radius or even reset its explosion. Combine this with Sweeping Edge and you have a sword that can instantly get several surrounding mobs back. Knockback still has a relatively low place on our list because in most cases, it can be quite a nuisance; sometimes, you just want to quickly slash through a mob without having them fly back out our your swords' reach.
6 Sweeping Edge
|
Tiers |
Effects |
|---|---|
|
1 |
50% Additional Damage |
|
2 |
67% Additional Damage |
|
3 |
75% Additional Damage |
While most have opted to use axes for combat, especially in the PvP space, the sword offers one advantage the axe doesn't; the ability to hit multiple opponents at once with a sweep attack. This works especially well when surrounded by multiple mobs, probably making the sword more ideal in survival-focused gameplay.
The Sweeping Edge enchantment deals more damage through sweeping attacks, meaning you can deal even more damage to multiple entities at once. It's not incompatible with any other enchantment, either, so you can combine it with another damage-dealing enchantment to pack on the power even further.
5 Fire Aspect
|
Tiers |
Effects (based on a Netherite Sword) |
|---|---|
|
1 |
Burn for 3 Damage |
|
2 |
Burn for 7 Damage |
Fire damage is a great asset in combat, so being able to deal with it while wielding more than a solitary flint and steel can be great to have. The Fire Aspect enchantment provides just that, at two levels of maximum enchantment.
While its best purpose is for generally dealing more damage, it's also great for slaughtering most farm animals as it instantly cooks raw pork, since it kills pigs and other animals by fire. Unfortunately, the enchantment is essentially useless in the Nether, not working on any of the mobs there except piglins, hoglins, regular skeletons, and endermen.
4 Unbreaking
|
Tiers |
Durability (based on a Netherite Sword with base durability of 2032) |
|---|---|
|
1 |
4062 |
|
2 |
6069 |
|
3 |
8128 |
Anything that delays the supposedly inevitable fate of your sword breaking would be nice to have, and Unbreaking provides that. The enchantment reduces your sword's (and any other tools') durability reduction, effectively prolonging your sword's lifespan.
While this is nice, it's certainly not better than Mending, another one-size-fits-all enchantment that deals with durability. Tools with Unbreaking are still bound to break eventually, while tools with Mending can effectively last forever. It takes experience points for that to happen, but mobs are an infinite entity that can always be relied upon to drop experience points.
When Mending and Unbreaking are combined, you can spend less experience to repair your sturdy sword.
3 Looting
|
Tiers |
Effects (based on a Netherite Sword) |
|---|---|
|
1 |
|
|
2 |
|
|
3 |
|
There's nothing wrong with getting more valuable, valuable loot. While a Fortune pickaxe probably has more to offer in that camp when used on diamond ore and the like, it's great for, say, doubling up your food when slaughtering your farm animals.
Looting swords are helpful for getting ender pearls and blaze rods, as well as the prized Wither Skeleton head. If you've ever wanted to fight the Wither, you know that the summoning process is quite expensive. With a Looting III sword, you can quickly gather three Wither Skeleton heads and summon the Wither in no time.
2 Mending
|
Tiers |
Effects |
|---|---|
|
1 |
Two durability restored from one experience point |
This is one of the most sought-after enchantments ever, because the value it brings is unparalleled, especially on diamond and netherite tools. The Mending enchantment restores durability with experience, meaning a tool could never break if you're getting experience often.
Unless you're farming experience, having Mending on any tool never hurts. It's especially true for swords, since they're used for killing mobs, which is the game's main source of experience.
Mending is a 'treasure' enchantment, meaning that you can't get it from an enchanting table. The best place to find this enchantment book is through villager trading.
1 Sharpness
|
Tiers |
Damage (based on a Netherite Sword with a base damage of 8) |
|---|---|
|
1 |
9 |
|
2 |
9.5 |
|
3 |
10 |
|
4 |
10.5 |
|
5 |
11 |
The all-around damage-dealing enchantment, Sharpness, adds a few points of melee damage to your sword. Like Bane of Arthropods, it comes with five levels of enchantment.
Sharpness ranks higher than Smite and Bane of Arthropods because although it does less overall damage, it applies to more mobs. With a Smite sword, you will only do extra damage to the undead, but with Sharpness, you will do extra damage to everything, including other players. Interestingly, it's also the only sword enchantment that works on the Ender Dragon.