Ven – Mending Isn’t the Best Minecraft Enchant. Here’s Why.

Let’s set the scene. You’re introducing Minecraft  to your closest friend who recently bought the   game and wants to know some of the basics. You  take him through the best tips and tricks you know   and sooner or later you reach the enchantments.  He asks you what the best enchant in the game is.  

What do you say? Now I’m not a betting man  but I can guarantee a majority of you will,   without hesitation, say mending. I mean why  wouldn’t you? No enchantment comes close,   with the benefits of Mending outweighing nearly  all the others. For those who aren’t familiar,  

The purpose of the mending enchant is in its  name: it mends your gear. In order to fix your   gear with the mending enchantment you need  to gain experience points, or XP for short.   Gaining XP is as simple as it sounds: you can  kill mobs, collect smelted items from a furnace,  

Trade with villagers, go fishing, mine ores,  visit the Ancient City and break some skulk.   Essentially, if you have mending on any pieces  of your gear, even after extreme lengths of   exploring or mining, by the time you come back  to your base your armour should have little to,  

If not a ny, durability lost to it. This  makes it extremely coveted as it means   you practically need one set of tools or  armour for life, unless you die of course.   It removes the need to grind for more materials  needed to repair your existing sets or even craft  

New ones. You can see how useful this could be  in, say, a Hardcore world, where even walking at   night could very well be your last. but Ven wait  a minute isn’t the title of the video why mending  

Isn’t the best enchant in the game why are you  saying that it is did you clickbait me I’m going   to comments at how stupid you are and I will never  watch till the end of the video…. Oh my gosh guys  

RELAX I was just introducing the video… you don’t  care do you, you just want what you came for. Ok fine. While the importance of Mending cannot  be understated it’s worth noting that there’s a   reason other enchants exist and, whether you admit  it or not, you still use. Mending works well when  

Combined with other enchants because alone it’s  kinda pointless. Let’s set the scene, again. Your   friend has come back asking for advice but has a  particular problem. He’s crafted his first set of   diamond armour and is super excited to use it  in battle against a zombie that just can’t let  

Him sleep at night. He asks you what enchant he  should use on his gear. What’s your answer? We can   consider 3 possibilities. More exist but let’s  keep stick to 3. Option one is, surprise,   surprise, mending! You can tell him he’ll never  need another set of armour cuz with Mending it’ll  

Never even come close to breaking. Sure, for a new  player this sounds like a bargain. But what about   option 2? Let’s say you think about the question,  like, really think about it. After careful   consideration you say “Thorns”. Now you might be  asking yourself “Ven you idiot why in the holy  

Moly would anyone suggest Thorns to a newbie???”  B-b-b-b-but let’s consider the circumstances:   One zombie, new player… he probably doesn’t even  know how to fight. A refresher on what the thorns   enchantment does: if a mob attacks you when  you have thorns armour, the mob takes damage.  

This goes for players too but we’re sticking with  the zombie problem here. So, you tell your friend   that with Thorns III diamond armour, not only  will he take less damage anyways because it’s   diamond armour, but the zombie will die trying  to kill him when he’s doing nothing. Eh, ok, but  

Ven what’s option 3? You’ve thought even harder  this time and thought long term. Killing mobs   is part of the Minecraft experience, plus what  if one day he goes mining and gets swarmed by   endless monsters? A creeper??? Eventually, after  even more consideration, you say Protection. At  

That point your friend is practically unkillable  – unless you decide to crystal him to death but-   You explain to him that he could fight several  armies all alone and still come out on top. He   could be the Technoblade of his story, except he’s  not taking down governments but just some random  

Zombies interrupting his sleep schedule.  I mean, that sounds cool if you ask me.   Of course, at this point you can make  a reasonable argument stating that of   course mending isn’t useful as an exclusive  enchant on your gear, but rather it’s the best  

Because of how versatile it is and because  you spend less time to replace said gear,   and, well, more time playing the game! Alright  then, why don’t we put this claim to the test.   For starters, diamonds themselves have lost  their rarity. The 1.18 Caves and Cliffs Update  

Added incredibly massive caves that make finding  exposed diamond ores easier than ever before,   and with the recent 1.20.2 snapshot also  increasing the spawning of diamond ores,   diamonds have never been easier to get. AND THEN  if you mine with a Fortune III pickaxe you could,  

On average, nearly double the amount of diamonds  you get per ore. Modern day Minecraft is a haven   for anyone remotely interested in what used  to be the most coveted resource in the game.   With the abundance of diamonds in the  Overworld, repairing your diamond gear  

Using an anvil shouldn’t take too away much of  your hard earned wealth. You can make a fair   argument here that after 2-3 times it becomes  unreasonable to repair your gear as the anvil   costs become pricey, and that after 5-6 times  the anvil doesn’t even allow you to repair them,  

As anvils are capped to a maximum of 40 levels  per repair. But here I propose a solution:   Make a new set! I will admit that, yes, at  this point perhaps mending as an enchant is,   is a little bit more useful when we go this far,  especially if we’re dealing with, say, netherite,  

Which is much, much rarer than diamonds. But! For  diamond gear, I don’t think such a solution is out   of the question. I mean cmon, as a player playing  the modern versions of the game, you know how easy  

Mining diamonds have become as of late, and at  some point you may have even had more diamonds   than emeralds in your Ender Chests. Am I making  some sense now? No? Well then, what if I say I can  

Disregard everything I’ve just said. No, really,  I can. An SMP, or even a survival hardcore world,   utilises the use of Villagers. Did you know  that you can trade with Villagers to get diamond   gear??? At that point you don’t even need to grind  for diamonds, or even spend time mining to repair,  

Cuz once your set breaks you can trade for a new  one! And with Villager discounts even getting the   emeralds for the trade isn’t a challenge. Here you  can make an argument that for maxed out gear you’d  

Still have to put some work into it, but I ask  you how much? You could get a Villager that trades   every possible enchanted book you’ll need and cure  them to purchase at concerningly low prices. Yeah,  

At that point, you’d still need to make an XP  farm to add all the enchants on them, but, wait,   didn’t you already make one to “mend” your  gear with the mending enchantment? Oh, Ven,   but it’s still convenient cuz you have to  spend all that time making new sets, but,  

Can’t you just stock on them beforehand? Heck,  it would look extremely cool on display too? And   inconvenient? Wh-what do you mean, inconvenient?  Is it not inconvenient to stop your mining   exhibition just before you realise your pickaxe is  at low durability, to then mine up to the surface,  

Then fly back to base, then travel to the nether  portal to go to yet another nether portal that   takes you to the stronghold, then to the End, then  repair your gear, then go back to the overworld,   fly back to the mine you just left,  drop down, and start mining again?

Oh, but Venessey, couldn’t you just  carry some experience bottles with you,   wouldn’t that be more convenient? Well guess  what else you could do? Carry another pickaxe!   Oh, but Venessey you could still- sigh. See, we  could go on for hours trying to debate this topic,  

And at this point I hope you’ve made a realisation  that, indeed, nothing I will say will change your   mind. You’re biased! And I don’t mean this in a  negative sense guys, don’t take this the wrong  

Way. Mending is so useful to you and so, so many  other players that you don’t see the need for any   of what I’m saying to be said in the first place!  And you’d be right to call me a hypocrite because  

After this video goes live, I will head off to  my SMP, hang out with my friends and perhaps mine   some diamonds with my mending pickaxe! I haven’t  even touched upon how useful Unbreaking is,   which makes your gear last way, way longer with  and without Mending. But again I wouldn’t be  

Able to persuade you on at its advantages over  the mending enchant. Mending has been a point   of debate for years now, and let’s be honest, if  Mojang one day decided to remove Mending entirely,   the community would not be in a great state. But  perhaps this video would become more relevant,  

Giving players a new perspective. I actually tried  a similar experiment myself with an SMP me and my   friends play on, where, as server owner, I  banned the use of Villagers to persuade us   to use our items till their last block. How did  it end, you may ask? Well, let’s just say losing  

Mending led to them using their valuables only  when required, which wasn’t really fun at all,   and I had to introduce “challenges” which  rewarded them a Mending book on completion.   If you take away mending, you take away the  player’s motivation to use their gear in the  

Fear of breaking it. If you give them Mending,  then mining for resources becomes… unnecessary.   The point here is that you can’t change the  modern day player, I mean, nothing I’ve said   will change your mind. But I am curious, how far  has Mending impacted your survival experience?  

Could you see yourself in a world where mending  doesn’t exist? What would you do if it got   removed in a future Minecraft update? What I’m  basically trying to say is: what do you think?