Silk Touch

What Silk Touch does

Book cost is the anvil cost of putting that book on a fresh item. However, already-used items add their prior work penalty: work it out in the calculator.

What Silk Touch changes

Silk Touch makes a block drop itself instead of its usual drop. That matters for three kinds of blocks:

• Blocks that drop something else. Ores drop the ore block, stone drops stone instead of cobblestone, grass blocks stay grass, and bookshelves drop themselves instead of three books.
• Blocks that drop nothing without it. Glass, glass panes, ice, packed ice, blue ice and turtle eggs only come with Silk Touch.
• Blocks with special contents. A bee nest keeps its bees, and an ender chest drops itself instead of eight obsidian.

Blocks mined with Silk Touch never give experience. So mining ores with it means no XP from them.

Blocks only Silk Touch can collect

• Glass and glass panes, including stained glass.
• Ice, packed ice and blue ice.
• Grass blocks, mycelium and podzol, which drop dirt otherwise.
• Ender chests, which drop obsidian otherwise.
• Bee nests with bees inside.
• Sculk, sculk catalysts and sculk shriekers.
• Coral blocks and coral fans that are still alive.
• Campfires, which drop charcoal otherwise.
• Mushroom blocks, melons and glowstone as whole blocks.

What Silk Touch can't collect

Some blocks can't be picked up in survival, even with Silk Touch. That includes spawners, budding amethyst, reinforced deepslate and frosted ice. Don't waste a trip on them.

Which tool should carry it?

Silk Touch goes on pickaxes, axes, shovels and hoes. Each one suits different blocks:

• Pickaxe: ores, stone, glass, ice, ender chests and amethyst buds.
• Axe: bookshelves, campfires, melons and mushroom blocks.
• Shovel: grass blocks, mycelium, podzol, snow and clay.
• Hoe: sculk blocks and leaves.

Silk Touch or Fortune?

They exclude each other, so keep one tool of each. Fortune gives more resources, and Silk Touch gives the block itself. The trick is to use both: collect ores with Silk Touch, then break them with Fortune later. See Fortune vs Silk Touch.

The Silk Touch pickaxe

The usual build is Efficiency V, Silk Touch, Unbreaking III and Mending. Silk Touch is a ×4 book, so it costs 4 levels on a fresh pickaxe. The best pickaxe enchantments page shows it as the Silk Touch variant.

Silk Touch tricks

• Move your enchanting setup. Bookshelves drop themselves with Silk Touch, so you can carry a whole bookshelf ring to a new enchanting table.
• Carry ice. Packed ice and blue ice make fast ice roads and boat highways, and only Silk Touch collects them.
• Keep grass and mycelium. Grass blocks spread onto nearby dirt, so a few Silk Touch grass blocks can green a whole build.
• Store ores. Ore blocks stack to 64, and you can break them with Fortune later or keep them as decoration.
• Move an ender chest. Your ender chest contents stay with you, so picking up the chest is safe.

Silk Touch on the anvil

Silk Touch has a ×8 multiplier from an item and ×4 from a book, so it is one of the pricier tool books. Put it on early, before Efficiency and Unbreaking. Those are cheap ×1 books and fit easily into the last step.

Silk Touch and glass

Glass breaks into nothing without Silk Touch. So when you rebuild a window or move a greenhouse, a Silk Touch tool saves you from smelting the sand again. That alone makes a Silk Touch pickaxe worth keeping in your storage.

Silk Touch and ice farms

Ice farms let water freeze in a cold biome, and Silk Touch collects the ice. Then you can craft packed ice and blue ice for boat roads.

Common mistakes

• Mining ores with Silk Touch for XP. You get none until you break the ore again without it.
• Mining glass, ice or bookshelves with a normal pickaxe or axe. Glass and ice break into nothing, and bookshelves fall apart into books.
• Breaking a bee nest without Silk Touch. The bees fly out angry and the nest is lost.

Which items take Silk Touch

Silk Touch goes on 4 kinds of gear in the calculator: axe, pickaxe, shovel, hoe. An enchanting table can roll it on the axe, pickaxe, shovel, hoe.

It can't share an item with Fortune. If an item already has one of those, the anvil skips the Silk Touch book. Java still charges 1 level for it.

Silk Touch from the enchanting table

The level you can roll depends on the item's enchantability. A material with a higher value reaches higher levels from the same level 30 enchant. This table shows the best Silk Touch each axe can get from a level 30 enchant with 15 bookshelves.

Anything higher has to come from a book instead. Then the enchanting table calculator shows the exact chance for every level.

Anvil cost of Silk Touch

Silk Touch has an anvil multiplier of 8 from another item and 4 from a book. So the book costs 4 levels on a fresh item. That is one of the most expensive books. So put it on early, while the prior work penalty is still low.

Java charges the full resulting level every time, even when the item already has a lower level of it. Every step also adds the prior work penalty of both items. The enchantment calculator finds the cheapest order for your whole set of books.

Builds, questions and guides

Silk Touch can go on 4 items: best axe enchantments, best pickaxe enchantments, best shovel enchantments, best hoe enchantments. To put it on in the cheapest order, see the axe enchant order, pickaxe enchant order, shovel enchant order, hoe enchant order.

Common questions: can you put Silk Touch on shears?, can you put Fortune and Silk Touch on a pickaxe?

More reading: Getting books from librarians, How to enchant in Minecraft, Every max enchantment level. You can make a Silk Touch book with the command generator. The librarian price list shows what villagers charge for it.

How to get Silk Touch

• Enchanting table It can appear when you enchant a supported item at an enchanting table. However, higher levels need more bookshelves and a level 30 enchant.
• Librarian villagers Librarians can sell it as an enchanted book. Level I costs 5–19 emeralds plus a book.
• Trial chamber vaults This loot table names it directly, so it is one of the most reliable places to look.
• Random enchanted books It is also in the pool for the random enchanted books and gear in many chests and in fishing loot.

Silk Touch is a very rare roll at the enchanting table, but it can appear from a fairly low enchant level. Librarians sell it, and trial chamber vaults can give it. Since it has one level, there is nothing to merge.

Tips

• Needed for moving bee nests with bees, collecting ender chests and blue ice.
• It conflicts with Fortune.

Commands

Give yourself a Silk Touch book or enchant the item in your hand. These work in Java 26.3 once cheats are on.

Versions

Silk Touch is in every Java version from 1.21 (when enchantments became data files) up to 26.3.

• 1.21.9: now goes on copper axe, copper pickaxe, copper shovel, copper hoe.

Also see the update log for every change, and how this data is checked. Bedrock player? See Silk Touch on Bedrock.

Goes well with

• Bane of Arthropods
• Curse of Vanishing
• Efficiency
• Mending
• Sharpness
• Smite
• Unbreaking