Enchanting your swords is the best way to increase your combat abilities in Minecraft. Unfortunately, enchanting is an expensive task, taking a ton of experience points and lapis lazuli to carry out. It’s for this reason that you need to make sure that you only use the very best sword enchantments in Minecraft.
There are a total of ten available sword enchantments in Minecraft 1.19. Since a sword can only take seven enchantments at once, you’ll have to pick carefully to ensure you get the best sword possible.
To help you create the best sword possible, we’ve put together a list of the seven best sword enchantments currently available in Minecraft. So enjoy! Whether you're playing with Minecraft mods or sitting in King's Landing, you'll need the best weaponry you can get your hands on.
Looting III
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+ 7Any mob killed with a Looting-enchanted sword has a higher chance of dropping rare items when it dies. These items include gunpowder (dropped by Creepers), ender pearls (dropped by Enderman), and blaze rods (dropped by Blazes).
Some of the items dropped from mobs are essential to beating the game. Looting III makes farming for these items much less tedious. Consider enchanting a sword with it to quickly gather these items without building a complicated redstone farm.
Knockback II
click to enlarge + 7The Knockback enchantment does exactly what you’d expect. Each tier that you apply to a sword will push enemies further away when hit. When Knockback is at its maximum tier of II, enemies will fly 90% further back than normal when hit.
This effect makes Knockback a great way to deal with Creepers safely, as you can more easily keep out of their blast radius. Unfortunately, Knockback does make Skeletons much more annoying to deal with, as you'll keep hitting them back into arrow shooting range. Knockback also doesn’t trigger against all enemies: Iron Golems, Wardens, and the Ender Dragon are immune.
Unbreaking III
click to enlarge + 7Unbreaking is an excellent enchantment to have on any sword. When you’re using high-end weapons like diamond and netherite swords, it becomes vital. Unbreaking increases the lifespan of your weapons by increasing their durability. The highest tier, Unbreaking III, allows your sword to last four times as long before breaking.
When you’re using highly valuable materials like diamond and netherite, this increase in lifespan will save you a massive amount of time. Since less swords will be breaking, you can spend your time playing the game, rather than gathering more rare minerals to replace your old swords.
Sharpness V
click to enlarge + 7Sharpness V is the best all-round damage increase for a sword, raising a diamond sword’s damage by 90%. This is an enormous increase which will allow you to one-shot many basic mobs. It’ll also greatly speed up fights against dangerous foes like Wardens and the Wither.
Sharpness will affect your sword’s damage against all types of mobs. Despite its power, Sharpness isn’t the greatest damage increase you can give a sword. That honour goes to the next entry on our list.
Smite V
click to enlarge + 7Smite V is the best damage increase you can give a sword, raising a diamond sword’s damage by 180%. This is an astounding damage increase, and makes Smite V a priority when enchanting a sword.
Unfortunately, Smite has a downside: the damage increase only affects undead mobs. Thankfully, many mobs fall into the undead category, including Zombies, Wither Skeletons, and the Wither. You can find a full list of undead mobs here.
Fire Aspect II
click to enlarge + 7Fire Aspect is the flashiest sword enchantment in the game, setting any enemy you strike on fire for four seconds. As well as being visually awesome, this effect also deals constant burning damage to the enemy for as long as they’re on fire.
Fire Aspect doesn’t just deal damage to hostile mobs - it also affects the meat that passive and neutral mobs drop. Any mob that can drop raw meat when killed will instead drop cooked meat if it was on fire when it died. This makes Fire Aspect a great way to quickly get some more food while away from your base.
While Fire Aspect may only have two tiers, don’t settle for tier one. Fire Aspect II does double the damage of Fire Aspect I, making the first tier feel pretty pointless in comparison.
Mending
click to enlarge + 7Mending is the best sword enchantment in Minecraft, thanks to its effect on weapon durability. Any weapon enchanted with mending will restore its durability with every experience orb collected. Since you’ll be using your sword to take out mobs, this is going to be all the time.
Unfortunately, Mending cannot be applied to an item through normal means. Rather than obtaining it through an enchantment table, you’ll instead be forced to find a Mending-enchanted book if you want to apply mending. You can find these books in chests in jungle temples and strongholds, by defeating Pillager raids, and by trading with village Librarians.
That's all for our rundown of the best sword enchantments in Minecraft. For more Minecraft content, check out our guide on the best armor enchantments, or take a look at the best Minecraft 1.19 seeds.