Enchantment Calculator - Optimal Anvil OrderPick an item, choose your enchantments, and watch the cheapest combine tree assemble itself: exact level costs with prior work penalties, the 39-level cap and conflict checks. Java Edition 26.2.
The gear (or book) the enchantments end up on.
Each pick is one enchanted book. Crossed-out chips conflict with your selection.
The enchanting table offers three random enchantments at a time, costing 1, 2 and 3 lapis lazuli plus 1, 2 and 3 levels. The displayed number is a requirement, not the price: a level-30 slot needs you to be level 30 but only takes 3 levels when you use it.
Bookshelves placed one block away (with air in between) raise the table's power. 15 bookshelves unlock the maximum: a guaranteed level-30 bottom slot with the best odds of high-level enchantments. Drag the slider to see the offer ranges change.
Treasure enchantments (Mending, Frost Walker, Soul Speed, Swift Sneak, Wind Burst and the curses) never appear on the table. They come from loot, trading or fishing as enchanted books, which is exactly what the anvil planner above is for.
The three offers only reroll when you spend a level on one of them or enchant a different item type. Enchanting a cheap book in the 1-lapis slot is the classic way to reroll bad offers.
Top slot (1 lapis)lvl 2-10Middle slot (2 lapis)lvl 6-21Bottom slot (3 lapis)lvl 30Possible required levels per slot at this shelf count, using the vanilla Java formula.
Max level, anvil cost multiplier, conflicts, and what each one actually does. Filter by the item you are enchanting.
Anvil cost = prior work penalty of both items + (final level × multiplier) for every enchantment on the sacrifice. Books use half the multiplier. Any job costing 40 or more levels shows "Too Expensive" in Survival.
Every item remembers how many times it has been worked on an anvil. That counter sets the prior work penalty, which doubles each time: an item used once adds 1 level to the next job, then 3, 7, 15, 31 and 63. Both the target and the sacrifice add their penalty to the bill, and the result inherits the larger counter plus one. This is why the same five books can cost 25 levels in one order and blow past the cap in another.
On top of the penalty, each enchantment transferred from the sacrifice costs its final level multiplied by its anvil multiplier. Cheap enchantments like Protection and Sharpness have a multiplier of 1, while Silk Touch, Thorns and Infinity sit at 8. When the sacrifice is an enchanted book the multiplier is halved (rounded down, minimum 1), which is why books are almost always the cheaper way to enchant.
1. Plan the whole combine before touching the anvil. Once an item has been worked 6 times its penalty alone is 63 levels and nothing more can be added in Survival.
2. Keep the combine tree balanced. Merging books into pairs, then pairs into fours, keeps every penalty small. Stacking everything onto one item doubles its penalty at every step.
3. When merging two books, put the expensive one on the left. The anvil only charges for the enchantments on the right-hand item.
4. Apply high-multiplier books (Silk Touch, Thorns, Infinity) while penalties are still low, and never repair an item you plan to enchant further; repairs raise the same counter.
5. If a step would hit 40, split it: the calculator above searches every ordering and warns you when a build cannot fit under the cap at all.
Combine books with books first, then apply the result to your gear, keeping the tree balanced so no single item racks up a big prior work penalty. When merging two books, put the more expensive one on the left, since the anvil only charges for the right-hand item's enchantments. The exact cheapest order depends on each enchantment's multiplier, which is what the calculator at the top of this page solves for you.
Survival anvils refuse any job of 40 or more levels. Each anvil operation doubles an item's prior work penalty (1, 3, 7, 15, 31, 63), so an item that has been worked five or six times becomes unmodifiable. Renaming and repairing raise the same counter. The fix is prevention: combine in a balanced order so the penalty never snowballs.
Seven practical ones: a damage enchantment (Sharpness, Smite or Bane of Arthropods, pick one), Fire Aspect, Knockback, Looting, Sweeping Edge, Unbreaking and Mending. Curse of Vanishing can technically join them for a total of eight. The calculator enforces these conflicts automatically.
Only on bows. Infinity's exclusive set contains Mending, so a bow takes one or the other. On every other item, including crossbows and tridents, Mending combines freely.
15 bookshelves, placed one block from the table with air in the gap. At 15 shelves the bottom slot is always level 30. More shelves do nothing; the table caps at 15.
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