#hopefully I'll be able to fix it faster this time XP

[puddlesl1me]

The Mending Enchantment in Minecraft

I've had this thought for a while now, and I figured it'd be good to share it with the endless void to see if it gets picked up anywhere. Here are my thoughts on how to fix mending in Minecraft. Be warned, this post is VERY long.

TL;DR: Add mending to the enchanting table, add an option to refresh the enchantments in the enchanting table without having to use the grindstone, and potentially add a way to increase odds of getting a specific enchantment.

Imagine this scenario: you've just gotten diamond tools, you're super excited to use them, and you do. It's great. They're faster than iron, and don't break as quickly. But, they do eventually break. They're now on their last legs, only 13 durability on the pickaxe and 22 on the axe. You've switched back to iron for the time being, but want to use diamond tools again. How do you fix this situation?

There are 4 main options:

- Repair them in an anvil with diamonds

- Just make more tools

- Buy new tools from toolsmith villagers

- Get mending books to repair them

Repairing them is fine, especially if you don't anticipate playing for much longer (eg. you're about to beat the Ender Dragon), but otherwise is a bit wasteful. It also gets more and more expensive in terms of xp as you repair more. And good luck repairing netherite tools like this.

Making more tools can be even more wasteful, especially if your old tools are enchanted. You have to go through the process of getting the tools all over again.

Buying them from toolsmith villagers means having access to villagers, and being able to level up at least one toolsmith villager to the required level. That's a pain.

Mending is the most enticing. Keep your current tools, and have a infinitely renewable way to repair them. It's the best solution. However, mending is also awful to get.

It's a treasure enchantment, which means you can't get it with an enchanting table. Loot tables such as structure chests and fishing can be good, but are incredibly unreliable. They contain every other enchanted book as well, so you'd have to get lucky to get a mending book specifically. Villagers are a renewable way to get the books, and are usually the least painful.

Despite being the least painful, however, they still manage to make the experience incredibly dull. Assuming you have villagers, you sit there with one nearby, destroying and replacing a lectern to hopefully find a mending book in their trades. This can take 10 minutes, or 2 hours. That's not even taking into account getting the emeralds to buy the books, which also takes a long time and usually involves a second villager at the very least. Past this, if you want to get different enchantments guaranteed, or other things, a villager trading hall is a necessity. You're now spending many hours on this project, that most likely will be repeated in every world that you get to this point.

Suffice to say, villagers are in no way the ideal method to get mending books. But because villagers are so useful, and mending books so necessary for long playthroughs, this process is the most common way, by far, to get mending books.

This is all because mending books are a treasure enchantment.

If mending books were available via the enchanting table, this wouldn't be nearly as much of a problem. It's still RNG-based (which I'll get to later), but provides an alternative viable method to get mending books. In particular, it allows casual players to get mending without needing to go through the villager process. There's still the problem of needing to make an xp farm, but most players need to do this anyways to get enchantments onto equipment (also it takes less time).

Like I mentioned, the RNG of the enchantment table is still a problem. If mending was moved to the enchanting table, this would still be a major improvement. But I'd also like to suggest some improvements to enchanting while I'm here.

First, for a small change, add an option to refresh the enchantments without enchanting an item. One of the bigger issues with enchanting is that there's a lot of time waste from having to refresh the enchantments over and over, then exiting the menu to use a grindstone on all the enchanted items so you can do it all over again. It's a large waste of time, and is one of the worst parts of enchanting. Adding an option to refresh the enchantments that's built into the table would be very beneficial. 1 xp level and 1 lapis, to match the first enchanting level requirements, and it completely refreshes the enchantments. More resource conservative players can still use the old way to save some xp by using the grindstone, but it provides an easier option for more casual players.

For a much bigger, and more complex change, I suggest allowing modification for the probabilities of certain enchantments through what I'm calling catalysts.

These would be items that, when placed in a certain slot in the enchanting menu, increase (or potentially decrease) the odds of getting certain enchantments. As an example, ice would increase the odds of fire protection and frost walker (assuming that's also removed from the treasure pool), but decrease the chance of fire aspect. Gold increases the chance for efficiency, but decreases the chance for unbreaking. Obsidian increases blast protection and protection, cactus increases thorns, etc. There could be many items to increase or decrease many different enchantments, but the point is that there's a way to alter the probabilities for enchantments.

This is important because, as enchanting table use grows, players will continue to complain about spending hours at their mob farm, trying to get all the enchantments they need for their gear. Giving a method for adjusting the probabilities would appease the players, at least a little.

An additional change for this, although not nearly as necessary, would be to allow for bookshelves to be imbued with these catalysts. It would give the nearby enchanting table the corresponding permanent bonus, albeit at a reduced effect. Or better yet, make a new endgame item that does this, but only one of this item can affect an enchanting table (I'm thinking something above the enchanting table, using a spore blossom and other items that make it endgame. The catalyst would be in the crafting recipe, so you have to make more if you want to have access to different bonuses). This single endgame item would provide the full bonus, since it's an endgame item and there can only be one affecting the probabilities.

Now, how does this work with mending? Surely with a powerful enchantment, it would make sense to either not improve the enchantment odds at all, or have a very endgame item increase the odds. And I would agree, to a point. Mending is very useful in the beginning of the game, and getting it before beating the ender dragon is common. Having it be locked in the end dimension wouldn't be very useful, and wouldn't solve the issue. Rather, I believe the solution is to give it a normal enchantment probability, but when an enchanted item gets more than one enchantment.

To be a little bit more clear, let's say you enchant a sword with a level 30 enchantment. It says sharpness 4, cool, that's what you want. You enchant it, and you get the added bonus of knockback 2, or unbreaking, or something else. Mending would be in this pool of enchantments, but not in the regular pool. This would mean that it isn't visible when looking at the available enchantments for the item you're enchanting, but is available as a potential additional enchantment.

This guarantees that all players are able to get the enchantment, but it's still difficult. Still based on RNG, but a little RNG is fine. A potential option to allow it to appear as it's own enchantment would be to use dragon's breath as the catalyst. Why? Because dragon's breath is kinda useless honestly, and I think it should get more use. Xp bottles may be more appropriate, but they're difficult to get without villagers (which we're trying to avoid).

I realize this isn't without problems, but, in my opinion, this would be a better alternative to using villagers. People who like villagers can still use them, and they're still better for getting what you want. But those who dislike villagers, or are tired of repeating the same task every playthrough, are given a different method to obtain a near-necessary item.

Thanks for reading, and I'm sorry this was so long. Please let me know any ideas you have regarding this, and/or how I could have improved this post (i have no idea what im doing on tumblr)

[tmae3114]

Me: *promises myself I'll go to be before 3am today*

Me, crawling into be at 02:56: THIS COUNTS