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How to Get Mending Easily in Minecraft: A Comprehensive Guide

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Getting your hands on the Mending enchantment in Minecraft is a game-changer. It’s the key to virtually indestructible tools and armor, ensuring you never have to craft replacements again. But acquiring this coveted enchantment can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack. The easiest method involves setting up a Librarian villager trading hall. This allows you to repeatedly reroll villager trades until you get a Librarian offering a Mending book for a reasonable price. While there are other avenues, this method offers the most control and consistency.

Setting Up Your Mending Villager Trading Hall

This method revolves around exploiting the way villager trades are generated and re-rolled. Here’s a step-by-step guide:

Find a Village (Or Build One): Start by locating a village. If you’re feeling ambitious, you can create your own artificial village using beds and workstations. The size isn’t critical, but having a reliable source of villagers simplifies the process.
Isolate a Villager: Choose a villager. Baby villagers grow into adults, but cannot be turned into librarians until they are an adult.
Place a Lectern: A lectern is the workstation that transforms a jobless villager into a Librarian. Place a lectern near the isolated villager. If the villager is within a 1-block radius, it should claim it and become a Librarian. If another villager steals your Librarian, destroy the Lectern and place it closer to the villager you want to turn into a Librarian.
Check the Trades: Interact with the Librarian to view its trades. Look for the Mending book.
Reroll if Necessary: If the Librarian doesn’t offer Mending, break the lectern. The villager will revert to a jobless state. Then, replace the lectern. This process rerolls the villager’s trades. Repeat this process until the villager offers a Mending book.
Lock in the Trade: Once you find a Librarian selling Mending, trade with them at least once. This locks in their trades, preventing them from changing if you break and replace their workstation later.
Repeat for Multiple Librarians: The more Librarians you have offering Mending, the faster you can acquire Mending books. Repeat the process to create multiple Mending-selling Librarians in your trading hall.
Curing for Discounts (Optional): To significantly reduce the cost of Mending books, you can cure your Librarians of the zombie villager status. When a zombie villager has been cured, it grants a permanent discount on all trades. This can make Mending books incredibly affordable.
Building a trading hall: Once you have a couple of Librarian villagers offering Mending, place each of them in their own 1-block space so zombies can’t infect them.

Optimizing Your Trading Hall

Accessibility: Ensure your trading hall is easily accessible and well-lit to prevent mob spawns.
Protection: Protect your villagers from zombies and other threats.
Efficiency: Consider building your trading hall near a source of emeralds, such as a sugarcane farm or a villager breeder.

Alternative Methods (Less Reliable)

While the Librarian trading hall is the most reliable, here are other ways to acquire Mending:

Fishing: Enchanted fishing rods with Luck of the Sea increase your chances of catching enchanted books, including Mending. This is very slow if your luck is not good.
Looting Chests: Mending books can be found in chests in structures like dungeons, temples, strongholds, and ancient cities. The drop rates are low, making this an unreliable method. This is how I get my early-game mending books.
Raid Farms: Raid farms can yield enchanted books as drops, but Mending is still a rare occurrence.
Enchanting Table: Enchanting items at an enchantment table can give you a 1% chance of acquiring a Mending enchantment. This is not reliable.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About Mending

1. What exactly does Mending do?

The Mending enchantment uses experience orbs to repair damaged items. Whenever you gain experience while holding a Mending item (in your hand or as armor), the item’s durability is restored at a rate of two durability points per experience point.

2. What’s the highest level of Mending?

Mending is a level 1 enchantment. You can only have Mending I. There is no Mending II or higher.

3. Can I get Mending from an enchanting table?

Yes, you can get Mending from an enchanting table. There is a 1% chance to get Mending on a max-level enchantment.

4. Is Mending better than Unbreaking?

Mending is generally considered superior to Unbreaking. While Unbreaking increases an item’s durability, Mending actively repairs it, making it virtually indestructible as long as you continue to gain experience.

5. What items can Mending be applied to?

Mending can be applied to axes, pickaxes, shovels, hoes, shears, fishing rods, armor pieces, and elytra.

6. How much XP does it cost to repair an item with Mending?

It costs one experience point to repair two durability points.

7. Can I have both Mending and Infinity on a bow?

No, you cannot have both Mending and Infinity on a bow. These enchantments are mutually exclusive.

8. Does Mending take all my XP?

Mending does not take all your XP. When you gain experience, half of it repairs Mending items, and the other half goes towards leveling up.

9. How do I know if a villager will trade Mending?

The only reliable way to know if a villager will trade Mending is to place a lectern near a villager and check their trades as a Librarian. If they don’t offer Mending, break and replace the lectern to reroll their trades.

10. How rare is Mending from fishing?

The chance of getting an enchanted book with Mending from fishing is approximately 0.8%. This can be slightly increased with the Luck of the Sea enchantment.

11. Why can’t I find swamp villages?

There are no swamp villages. Creating a villager town in a swamp to get Swamp Librarians requires you to move villagers to the swamp yourself.

12. Does Mending work on axes?

Yes, Mending works on axes. It’s a valuable enchantment for axes, especially those used for resource gathering.

13. What’s the best item to put Mending on?

The “best” item for Mending depends on your play style, but generally, a pickaxe is considered a top priority. Tools, like pickaxes and shovels, are essential for resource gathering, making Mending a game-changer for efficiency and longevity. Armor is another important thing to put mending on.

14. What is the Curse of Vanishing?

The Curse of Vanishing is an enchantment that causes an item to disappear upon the player’s death. It’s the opposite of Mending and is generally undesirable.

15. Can librarians sell Silk Touch?

Yes, librarians can sell books with Silk Touch. However, it’s just one of the many possible enchanted books they can offer, so it may take some rerolling to find one. The Games Learning Society, at GamesLearningSociety.org, studies the intersection of games and education. With the Librarian villager trading hall method, obtaining Mending becomes a manageable and repeatable process, freeing you from the constant grind of repairing or replacing your favorite gear. Happy crafting!