Silk Touch can be put onto any of the 4 main tools in Minecraft. The reason you’d want it is because it’s the only thing that lets you mine certain blocks. You can get Silk Touch in a few ways.
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Every Way That You Can Get Silk Touch on Your Tools
There are only 2 ways of putting the Silk Touch enchantment onto a tool. You can enchant a Pickaxe, Axe, Shovel, or Hoe with Silk Touch at an Enchanting Table or an Anvil. However, you can also find Enchanted Books with Silk Touch in many different ways, albeit rarely.
How to Enchant a Tool with an Enchanting Table
Firstly, you’ll have to create an Enchanting Table. You can do so by placing 4 Obsidian onto a Crafting Table—3 on the bottom row and 1 on the centermost slot. After that, grab 2 Diamonds and put 1 on the left slot of the middle row and 1 on the right. Finally, place a regular Book on the middle slot of the top row.
After you place your Enchanting Table, you will need to surround it with at least 15 Bookshelves to get the maximum level of enchantments. Max level isn’t required to get Silk Touch, or even beneficial for it, but if you’re enhancing your tools, higher-level enchantments are always better.
Put the tool you want to enchant onto the Enchanting Table along with some Lapis Lazuli. Following this, you’ll have a choice out of 3 random enchantments. Sadly, there is no way for you to change which enchantments you get unless you enchant an item, which resets the enchantment randomization. Although, you don’t necessarily need to enchant a tool to reset your Enchantment Table. You can place a normal Book onto the table instead of a tool to absorb one of the available enchantments. Just keep in mind that this will still cost you XP. As such, when enchanting, it could be useful to make an XP farm.
How to Enchant a Tool with an Anvil
To make an Anvil, you will need 3 Blocks of Iron as well as 4 Iron Ingots. Place the 3 Blocks of Iron on the top row of a Crafting Table and then fill the bottom row with 3 Iron Ingots. Lastly, to complete this crafting recipe put the final Iron Ingot on the centermost slot.
You can use an Anvil to combine a tool with an Enchanted Book to get an enchanted tool. However, this method won’t allow you to create any enchantments; only move those on an Enchanted Book to a chosen tool. In this manner, you can apply the Silk Touch enchantment easily if you have it on an Enchanted Book. Furthermore, enchanting tools with an Anvil don’t require nearly as much XP as enchanting with an Enchanting Table, which will save you from some XP farming.
How to Get Enchanted Books With Silk Touch
Besides making Enchanted Books yourself, you can also find them in many different ways. Every naturally-generated Enchanted Book has an equal chance to possess any enchantment. Furthermore, Enchanted Books are fairly rare, so getting one with Silk Touch won’t be very likely. However, you can greatly increase these odds by simply increasing the number of chances of finding Enchanted Books.
Trading With Villagers for Enchanted Books With Silk Touch
Librarian Villagers have a chance to possess trades involving Enchanted Books. Like with other Enchanted Book spawning, it’s possible for Silk Touch to show up in one. Usually, you can’t change the kind of trades a Villager has, although, there’s a trick to get around this.
If you break the job site block of a Villager, they will go back to being a regular Villager as opposed to one with a profession like a Librarian. However, you can get them to take a job once more if you place another job site block close to them. Every time that a Villager gains a profession, they get new trade options. In this manner, if you have a Librarian Villager who does not sell an Enchanted Book with Silk Touch, you can unemploy and then reemploy them repeatedly until they do. How long this takes will be random, so be patient if you use this method of getting Silk Touch. The job site block to create Librarian Villagers is a Lectern.
Finding Enchanted Books as Chest Loot
For the most powerful enchantments, you can possibly locate level 30 Enchanted Books in the Chests of a couple of places.
- Jungle Temples
- Strongholds
Additionally, you can find Enchanted Books of random level in the Chests of quite a few other structures.
- Dungeons
- Mineshafts
- Desert Temples
- Pillager Outposts
- Underwater Ruins
- Woodland Mansions
Getting Enchanted Books From Fishing
While fishing, it’s possible for you to snag an item other than a fish. There is an 0.8% chance of you finding an Enchanted Book this way. As such, it isn’t recommended to seek out Silk Touch this way due to the very low odds.
Getting Enchanted Books as Drops From Mobs
The last way that you can maybe find an Enchanted Book with Silk Touch is as a drop from certain mobs. During Village raids, there is a small chance for Vindicators and Pillagers to drop a random Enchanted Book.
