Anvil Enchantment Order Calculator

An anvil merges two things into one. You put the item on the left, the sacrifice on the right, and pay experience levels for it. Two things set the price: the weight of the enchantments on the right-hand item, and how many times each side has already been through an anvil.

Weight varies by enchantment. Common ones such as Sharpness, Efficiency and Unbreaking cost 1 per level when they come from a book. Less common ones such as Mending and Respiration cost 2. The rarest, such as Silk Touch and Infinity, cost 4. The same enchantment weighs more when it is moved off another enchanted tool than when it comes from a book, which is why this page assumes books.

The second half of the price is the prior work penalty. Every time an item goes through an anvil, the penalty added on its side roughly doubles: 0, 1, 3, 7, 15, 31 and so on. It applies to both sides, and the item that comes out carries the higher of the two counts, plus one.

So the same set of books can cost different totals depending on the order. Adding books to the tool one at a time is not the same as pairing the books up first and then applying them, because pairing them up first means the tool passes through the anvil fewer times. This page searches every ordering and returns the cheapest one.

In Java Edition an anvil refuses any single operation that costs 40 levels or more. The output slot goes empty and “Too Expensive!” appears in red.

The important part is that this is a cap on each step, not on the total. A build that costs 60 levels in total finishes fine as long as no single step exceeds 39. A build that costs only 45 in total will stop dead if one step in the middle reaches 40. The cheapest order and the order that never gets stuck are not always the same one.

This page looks for the cheapest total among the orders where every step stays at 39 or below. When no such order exists, it says so. From there the two things that help are dropping one enchantment, or starting again from an item that has been through the anvil fewer times.

Does the order change which enchantments end up on the item? No. You finish with the same item either way. Only the levels you spend along the way change.

Do enchantments from an enchanting table count towards prior anvil use? No. An enchanting table does not put the item through an anvil, so a freshly made tool enchanted at a table is still at zero. The count goes up when you combine, repair or rename an item at an anvil. An enchanted tool bought from a villager is not necessarily at zero, so if you are unsure, try a slightly higher number.

Does Bedrock Edition give the same answer? No. Bedrock works out the total in a different way. This page uses the Java Edition formula.

What about combining two books of the same enchantment to raise its level? That is not calculated here. This page assumes you already hold a book at the level you want, and works out the order to apply them.