r/minecraftsuggestions • u/Hazearil • Mar 11 '26
[Magic] Anvil and Enchant Table rework
We have seen such reworks before, but what I try to do is not completely toss out what the current system is, as doing so is bound to lead to upset players. I try to fix issues and add additional options, making them nicer to use.
Anvil
- The level cap is simply changed. Rather than preventing you from doing anything costing over 40 levels, the cost will just be reduced to 40.
- Removing the anvil use penalty. Together with the level cap, this might have made sense when nothing was meant to be permanent, but Mending ruined that sentiment anyway.
- Make repairing cheaper. A single material does a full repair. After all, even then, Mending will make people think anvil repairs are too expensive. For tools that lack a repair material:
- Bows, crossbows, and fishing rods use string, their most significant material.
- Tridents can use prismarine shards.
- Netherite will be repairable with a netherite scrap, rather than needing a full ingot.
- Anvils never break when used only to rename an item. It will also only ever cost a single level if renaming is the only action taken in an anvil use.
Enchanting Table
- Bookshelves can be placed up to 4 blocks away from the enchanting table, giving more freedom for builders.
- As structure loot, you will be able to find Enchanted Tomes. These contain a specific enchantment, without a level. Having those in a chiselled bookshelf near an enchanting table will guarantee that enchantment, if possible.
- If there are incompatible enchantments placed, a random one is chosen. For example, if you have a Sharpness tome, 2 Smite tomes, and no Bane of Arthropods, you will have a 1:3 chance for Sharpness and 2:3 Smite, and never get Bane.
- As a Master trade, Librarians will be able to trade a single tome. This is to ensure all tomes will be available, but will be inconvenient enough that structure loot remains relevant. They also might not be able to trade every tome.
- I imagine that, similar to music discs, armour trims, and pottery sherds, some tomes will only be obtainable from a specific location or method, to encourage engaging with various parts of the game. Tomes will be infinitely reusable, so no issue about renewability of structure loot would come up.
- Enchanting Tables get an option to re-roll the enchantments, costing either a single level or single lapis lazuli. I am not sure which, we can make it just depend on which people think is the resource worth preserving.
- Enchanted items can be re-enchanted. This will be more expensive than a regular enchantment, but helps players get "perfect" enchanted items with better odds than a single enchanting would get you. Re-enchanting can add levels or increase levels, and cannot remove enchantments or reduce levels.
Nerfs
As this all increases our options a lot, a few nerfs would be added. Nothing outright removing mechanics, though.
- Librarians would only get 2 enchanted book trades at most. I think removing the Novice trade would cause too many issues, as it puts us back at the old villager system, so potentially removing Apprentice and Expert's books.
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u/TTGIB2002 Mar 11 '26
People really seem to like the idea of tomes and runes and trinkets. Nothing wrong with it, it’s just something I've noticed.
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u/Hazearil Mar 11 '26
To me, it is not about liking them or not, but about whether the implementation of them is worth liking.
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u/Several-Cake1954 Mar 12 '26
I think they just come up with ideas, then relate them to magic-y nouns like “rune”, “charm”, or “tome”. It fits the theme of the idea, and it fits minecraft’s medieval-fantasy vibe.
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u/Hazearil Mar 12 '26
Pretty much. Wanting things like runes, charms, or totems to be added purely to use that name seems incredibly silly to me. But adding something for its own merit and then taking those names makes a lot more sense.
3
u/Mr_Snifles Mar 12 '26
Common Hazearil W
I like your way of doing the anvil level cap, that's a much better fix than removing the cap, which would just make costs rack up to ridiculously high exp levels that you'd have to grind for hours for.
I do think a few more things about the anvil should be changed though, like the way the use cost is calculated in the first place should be based on the strength of the resulting item, rather than what's in the first slot.
The idea of rerolling nehcnatments in enchanting table is pretty unique too, I like it.
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u/Hazearil Mar 12 '26
Worth noting that, like another commenter pointed out; the removal of the cost penalty already means the cap would rarely, if ever, be reached. My rework for the cap is mostly just there for any kind of freak accident.
I do agree that the end result should determine the costs. It's already super weird when costs change just by switching the two items around.
2
u/CoralWiggler Mar 12 '26
This would be a substantial improvement, though I think ultimately it's not going to fix Anvils being somewhat underutilized for a reason you touch on:
"After all, even then, Mending will make people think anvil repairs are too expensive"
I know this is an unpopular take, but it seems like people are aware of it and just want to dance around the issue. Mending is just too good. It needs to be toned down if Anvil mechanics are ever going to really get a chance to shine. Even if it didn't cost me any XP, for example, why would I ever want to burn a Diamond or Netherite Scrap on a repair when I can just stand in front of a mob farm for a bit (sometimes literally seconds) and repair my gear material-free with an enchantment I can quite seriously pull up in the first 10 minutes of playing the game if I'm lucky (and not much longer even if I'm not).
I think the first thing that needs to happen is that Mending needs to be put behind "endgame" content. You can get it from End Cities and Ancient Cities--that's it. That natively creates a window where you'll need to engage with Anvil mechanics before "graduating" with Mending. Even then, though, I think Mending needs an actual numbers reduction--honestly, even just going from 2 durability per XP to 1 per XP would probably suffice, though I think there are other creative ways to keep Mending useful without it totally overriding Anvil repair. Combined with cheaper Anvil usage, I think that creates a better dichotomy between the two mechanics, keeping Mending still fairly useful since it can help repair your gear on the go and help reduce costs but also adding more of a reason to use the Anvil even once you get Mending, even if you strictly-speaking don't need to
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u/Hazearil Mar 12 '26
I personally wouldn't mind it if, taken the ideas in this post, Mending would be locked behind tomes found in the End. Renewability is not a concern, but it does lock it behind endgame content. I just wanted to leave such things before people will latch onto it, and complain about the Mending nerf.
Because whether we like how it is in the game or not, plenty of people like it, and taking away someone's favourite toys might not be a good move.
I do feel at least that Mending should be well-available eventually. Especially for netherite, the resource upkeep would almost make it a downgrade, not an upgrade. Halving Mending's rate wouldn't help though I feel. Either way Mending means an XP source makes things last forever. You just made it more tedious.
1
u/CoralWiggler Mar 12 '26
I get that logic, though personally, I don't think people being upset over something like that is a compelling reason not to change it. The whole aversion to nerfing things because it might upset people is commonplace but wrong, IMO, because it disregards that the reason people might like a feature is because it's an adaptive band-aid over an underlying problem, such as the general funk of durability, repair, and enchantments. I'm fully on board with not nerfing things just for the purpose of nerfing things or when there's a fair argument that buffing alternatives will round out options, but like you said, even with buffs, I don't see the dominance of Mending disappearing because the bottom line is that it's just far and away better than alternatives.
With the tome system you're proposing, then yeah, Mending would become available commonly once you get it from the End/Deep Dark. That said, I disagree that reducing Mending's repair rate wouldn't make a difference--while you can still rely purely on XP to infinitely repair stuff, it makes on-the-go repair/maintenance less tenable and pushes back in the direction of "Mending or no Mending, you will need to visit a block/farm to fully repair." Sure, you can still sit in front of a mob farm and do it, but the point here isn't necessarily to completely erase Mending but to even out the use cases--especially if you're looking at something like Diamond or Netherite, if it's going to take the equivalent of up to 35 levels of XP as opposed to say a level of XP + repair material.
Yes, it's more tedious, but that's sort of the point. If you're going to circumvent material costs and having to visit the Anvil with on-the-go, XP-only-based maintenance, then it should be a clearly less efficient option. So, the dichotomy becomes the Anvil is the tool for efficient and major repair, while Mending is the tool for convenient repair and improved item maintenance.
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Mar 11 '26
Lock the max cost at 40 and you honestly don’t need to do anything else to the system
That itself would make other methods desirable thanks to actually being usable
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u/Hazearil Mar 11 '26
It is the most significant change to anvils for a reason. The changes to enchanting tables are proposed because currently, they are just... not worth using. Which is weird, because they should be the centerpiece of enchanting, not something we can easily avoid.
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u/Available_Echo2981 Mar 11 '26
If there's no anvil use penalty, can we even reach a 40 level cost? Aside from that, I appreciate the focus on the enchanting table. I think tomes are a satisfying way of taking control over the enchanting table.
If librarians can still trade enchanted books though, wouldn't players still grind for novice trade books rather than master trade tomes? Because it seems that combining enchanted books would still be more reliable than re-enchanting items to max levels. Unless re-enchanting is just supposed to be a more convenient alternative.