With tools like axes, bows, and fishing rods present, shovels are often overlooked. However, they are one of the most underrated tools present in Minecraft 1.21. With the right enchantments, you can turn them into something really handy. This blog post will tell you about the best shovel enchantments in Minecraft 1.21
Here is a run down of all the enchantments for a shovel in Minecraft 1.21.
Unbreaking Enchantment (Level I-III) + Mending (Level I)
Since shovels do a lot of dirty work, their durability should be stronger. Unbreaking enchantment increases their base durability, so you can use your shovel for a longer period of time. To have an idea, your shovel durability will increase to double once you enchant it with unbreaking III. It works by reducing the chance of the shovel to receive durability damage when it is used.
On the other hand, mending enchantment regenerates the lost durability of your shovel when you collect XP orbs. As the name suggests, it helps to mend the shovel using XP. So as long as you are getting XP by fighting mobs or mining, mending will make sure your shovel durability is intact.
Now imagine the power your shovel would get if you combine these two enchantments. You will get the ultimate unbreakable shovel.
Efficiency (Level V)
You will mostly use shovels for mining blocks. The efficiency enchantment makes this process faster for blocks like dirt, sand, gravel, and more. This gives the shovel a magic touch and makes it super quick.
In the case of sand blocks, sand farming is not possible. So, if you wish to collect lots of sand blocks, a shovel with Efficiency V will make the process eaiser and faster.
Fortune (III) vs Silk Touch (I)
These two enchantments for shovel are incompatible with each other. This means you can only have either of the two on one shovel. So which one is better? Fortune or Silk Touch?
First, let us discuss what these enchantments do. Fortune enchantment increases the number of drops that you get from mining blocks. If an unenchanted shovel drops one dirt block when you mine a grass block, the fortune enchanted shovel will drop 2 or more blocks. Similarly, fortune will help you collects lots of flint. This helps to increase your resources without much extra efforts.
On the other hand, with a silk touch shovel, any block you mine will be collected in ts original form. So instead of yielding dirt blocks when you mine grass blocks, you will get the actual grass blocks.
So which one do you use? If you combine fortune with efficiency, you are going to be very rich in terms of resources. You can have insta-mining with Efficiency enchantment as well. For silk touch enchantment, a pick axe is a better tool as it can mine ores and stones as well. A silk touch shovel is only useful for blocks like grass, mycelium, gravel and podzol, but not for stones and ores.
So, Fortune III is a better choice hands down when compared with Silk Touch for a shovel in Minecraft 1.21.
Final Thoughts
To conclude, the best enchantments for a shovel in Minecraft are Unbreaking III, Mending, Efficiency V, and Fortune III. Although you won’t need Fortune III all the time, but its nice if you have it especially for villager trading.
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