Shears Enchant Order

The order in words

Get all 4 books ready before you start, and keep at least 7 levels on hand. Then follow these steps on an anvil:

• Step 1: Put the shears in the left slot and the Efficiency V book in the right. Neither side has been on an anvil yet, so you only pay for the enchantments: 5 levels.
• Step 2: Merge the Unbreaking III book with the Mending book, the first one on the left. Neither side has been on an anvil yet, so you only pay for the enchantments: 2 levels.
• Step 3: Put the shears (now with Efficiency V) in the left slot and the Unbreaking III + Mending book in the right. You pay 5 levels for the enchantments plus 2 for prior work, so 7 in total.
• Step 4: Put the shears (now with Efficiency V + Unbreaking III + Mending) in the left slot and the Silk Touch book in the right. You pay 4 levels for the enchantments plus 3 for prior work, so 7 in total. That finishes the shears.

Why this order is the cheapest

Each repair or enchantment combination increases prior work. Rename-only operations do not. So the order keeps the penalties low by merging books with each other in pairs. With 4 books, the shears need at least 3 rounds on the anvil, and this order uses exactly that many.

The first step puts Efficiency V straight on the shears for 5 levels. It is the dearest book in the build, so it goes on while the item has no penalty at all. The expensive books, Efficiency V and Silk Touch, cost 5 and 4 levels on their own, so the order adds them while their penalty is still low. Cheap books like Mending can ride along later, when the penalty has grown.

Bedrock shears take four books, because Silk Touch joins Efficiency, Unbreaking and Mending. If you skip Silk Touch, the order drops to three books.

With so few books, adding them one by one is as cheap as any other order. So you can enchant the shears book by book as you find them.

Levels and experience

The full order costs 21 levels. If you do each step as soon as you have its levels, you spend about 253 experience points. Saving up to level 21 first would take 612 points, because each level costs more XP the higher you climb. So enchant in small batches and keep your levels low. The XP calculator converts any level into points.

After the last step the shears has been on the anvil 3 times. Its prior work penalty is now 7, so a later repair or rename starts at that cost. Check a single step with the prior work penalty calculator.

If you skip a book

You don't need every book on day one. Leaving out Efficiency V saves the most: the rest costs 13 levels instead of 21.

No Mending yet? Enchant the rest now for 16 levels, then add Mending later for 9 more. That is 25 levels in all, against 21 if you wait and do it in one go. The extra cost is small, so using the item early is usually worth it.

If your shears was on an anvil before

Used shears costs more, because the anvil adds its prior work penalty to every step it is in:

Many players start from shears that already has Unbreaking III from an earlier anvil job. In that case the other 3 books cost 18 levels in 3 steps.

Enter your own item's enchantments and uses in the calculator.

Java and Bedrock costs

Bedrock charges only the levels an enchantment gains. So if your shears already has Efficiency IV, adding an Efficiency V book costs 1 level here. Java charges the full resulting level, so the same step costs 5 there. Merging two Efficiency IV books into one V costs 1 in Bedrock and 5 in Java.

For fresh shears with one book per enchantment, no enchantment gains a level twice, so both rules give the same step costs. Bedrock shears can take Silk Touch, which Java shears cannot, so this order has one more book than the Java one. Bedrock also charges nothing for a clashing enchantment on a book, while Java adds 1 level for each.

The books in this order

Silk Touch, Efficiency V, Unbreaking III, Mending. Not sure which books to get? The best shears enchantments page explains each one and where to find it. If the anvil refuses a step, read Too Expensive! for the fixes. The anvil guide covers repairs and renaming.