Best Shield Enchantments

The Shield is the one piece of gear in Minecraft that the Enchanting Table won’t touch at all. Put a Shield in the table and nothing happens, and that catches a lot of players out, as it looks like the Shield can’t be enchanted.

It can, but only through an Anvil and only with 3 enchantments, and 1 of those is a curse. The other 2 are still worth having, as a Shield that blocks a Creeper blast or an Arrow takes real durability damage doing it.

Below, all 3 are covered, with what each one actually does for you, and then how to get them onto a Shield when the table refuses. There’s also a section on what a Shield blocks and what it doesn’t, as the enchantments only matter if the Shield survives long enough to use them, and a calculator that works out the cheapest way to combine the books.

All 3 Shield Enchantments, Ranked

Every enchantment the Shield can take is listed here, and the ranking is short. Mending sits at the top, as a Shield that repairs itself is a Shield you never think about again, and Unbreaking comes after it. The Curse of Vanishing is the third, and that’s one you’d only ever find on a Shield rather than add to it.

None of these come from the Enchanting Table on a Shield, as the game gives the Shield no enchantability at all, which is the number that decides whether the table will offer anything. All 3 go on through an Anvil as Enchanted Books, and Unbreaking is the only one of them the table can even make as a book, as Mending and the Curse of Vanishing are treasure enchantments that only come from Librarians and loot.

Enchantments Explained

Mending (I)

Mending repairs the Shield with the experience orbs you pick up, at 2 durability for every point, and it shares the orbs with whatever else you’re holding or wearing that has Mending and needs repair.

A Shield has 336 durability, which is less than an Iron Chestplate, and blocking anything that would have done 3 damage or more costs it durability roughly equal to what it stopped, so a single Creeper blast can take a big bite out of it. With Mending on, a Shield used at a mob farm or on a normal evening of caving stays close to full on its own.

Mending never appears on the Enchanting Table, so it’s a book from a Librarian, a loot chest or a fishing line, and Librarians sell it at double the price of any other book. A Shield can also be repaired with Planks on an Anvil, or by combining 2 Shields on a Crafting Table, but the Crafting Table strips the enchantments, so once Mending is on, the Anvil or the orbs are the only ways to keep it.

Unbreaking (I to III)

Unbreaking gives each hit the Shield takes a chance to cost no durability at all. On a Shield it works the way it does on a tool, so at Unbreaking III each hit costs about a quarter of the durability it would have, and the Shield lasts roughly 4 times as long. That’s the difference between a Shield that breaks halfway through a Raid and one that sees the Raid out.

Curse of Vanishing

With the Curse of Vanishing, the Shield is destroyed when you die, rather than dropped where you fell. There’s no reason to put it on your own. Shields found in loot chests and the ones some Pillagers and Vindicators carry can already have it though, so a found Shield is worth reading the tooltip on before it goes in the off hand. A Grindstone can’t remove a curse either.

How to Enchant a Shield

It all happens at an Anvil, with an Enchanted Book in the right-hand slot. Enchant Books at the table until one comes up with Unbreaking III, get a Mending book from a Librarian or loot, and put them on one at a time, or combine the 2 books first so the Shield only goes on the Anvil once.

The Shield keeps any Banner pattern it has through all of this, so a decorated Shield can be enchanted without losing the design. The order matters a little because of the prior work penalty, though with only 2 books it’s hard to get wrong.

The calculator below has both loaded and shows the cheapest way round, and it’s the same calculator that lives on the Enchanting hub for any other item.

Give command

On a world with cheats on, or a server where you’re an operator, this hands you a Shield with both enchantments already on. The way enchantments are written into a command changed in 1.21.5, so pick the one that matches your version. The first is for 1.21.5 and everything after it, including the current release.

Before the Anvil work, here’s where every enchantment on this list actually comes from. The table column is what the level 30 slot can reach with 15 Bookshelves, and a book that says Anvil only never rolls on the Shield itself, only on a Book or a different item.

What a Shield Blocks

A raised Shield stops melee hits, Arrows, Tridents, Ghast and Blaze fireballs, and it takes most of a Creeper or TNT blast as long as the explosion is in front of you. It doesn’t stop damage from behind or from above, it doesn’t stop fire, lava, drowning or falling, and it doesn’t stop a Warden‘s Sonic Boom or the magic damage from a Guardian‘s beam, only the hit that lands with it. It also can’t be raised while you’re sprinting, so blocking means standing still or walking.

The thing to know is that an Axe knocks a raised Shield out of use for 5 seconds, and a Vindicator or another player with an Axe will do exactly that, as does a hit from a Warden. Piercing arrows from a Crossbow go straight through a Shield as well. So the Shield is for Skeletons, Zombies, Creepers and Pillagers, and it’s the wrong answer to a Vindicator, which is worth remembering during a Raid.

Frequently Asked Questions