Maybe one of the most iconic Minecraft tools, the pickaxe is the tool that most players will often use the most throughout their adventures. There are also a plethora of enchantments to makes this tool all the more useful, and this articles will take you through the five best pickaxe enchantments for your mining pleasure

5. Unbreaking

Unbreaking is a great enchantment on pretty much any tool but shines the most when put on a pickaxe. Out of all the tools, the pickaxe is the one you’ll be using the most because of mining so you’ll start to see just how much durability this enchantment can give

What Makes Unbreaking Great:

• Unbreaking on a pickaxe is great because these are usually the tools that break the fastest because of how much mining is done in the game
• If stacked high enough then a pickaxe with unbreaking almost loses no durability at all, which is great for preserving something rare like a diamond pickaxe

Unbreaking Details:

• Unbreaking increases the durability of the pickaxe its placed on, allowing you to mine a lot more blocks before it breaks
• Unbreaking enchantment levels go from 1-4, with four being the highest and allowing you to mine with essentially no concern of your pickaxe breaking

4. Efficiency:

Efficiency is an enchantment that works best on pickaxes, and it’s really useful especially for players who love to go on cave excavations. Being able to speed up the entire mining process is great in a game that's all about mining

What Makes Efficiency Great:

• Efficiency is really helpful when mining for resources because it allows you to collect these resources and explore caves much faster than you normally could
• For the builders of Minecraft, this is a fantastic enchantment for terraforming and quickly clearing out large amounts of blocks to make room for building

Efficiency Details: 

• Efficiency increases the speed at which a tool breaks a block
• Efficiency enchantment levels go from 1-5, with five being the highest and allowing you to blow through any block in an instant

3. Mending:

Mending is one of the best enchantments in the game because of how it can keep a tool from never breaking, and the only reason it’s not higher on this list is that there are a couple of enchantments that work even better when it comes to pickaxes

What Makes Mending Great:

• Mending will automatically restore the durability of tools it’s attached to by consuming exp, making it extremely difficult for a tool to break
• This is a great enchantment to ensure that the super buffed up diamond pickaxe with a bunch of other enchantments on it will never break

Mending Details:

• When the enchanted tool is used, the enchantment will passively consume experience to restore the durability of the tool
• Mending only has one enchantment level, but that’s all that’s necessary with such a strong effect

2. Silk Touch

Silk Touch is a great utility enchantment and is great for players who are all about building and using cool and rare blocks to accent their builds

What Makes Silk Touch Great:

• Silk touch allows you to pick up blocks as they appear, meaning that you can pick up things like an actual grass block instead of a dirt block. This also means you immediately pick up smooth stone and skip having to smelt cobblestone
• Silk touch is a really good quality of life enchantment because if you misclick and put down a block that would usually be destroyed when mined like glass, you can just pick it up and put it down properly 

Silk Touch Details:

• Silk touch allows the player to pick up any block without destroying it or turning it into a different version of itself
• Silk touch only has one enchantment level, but that’s all that's necessary for this kind of effect

1. Fortune

Fortune is undoubtedly the coolest and best enchantment to have on a pickaxe, being able to multiply the number of resources you get from ores is an absurdly strong effect in a resource-based game like Minecraft

What Makes Fortune Great:

• Fortune increases the number of resources collected from ores that don’t need to be smelted, so every ore except for iron and gold. This included diamonds, the best crafting material. Being able to greatly increase the number of diamonds you collect per ore block is fantastic
• This is also great for collecting resources like lapis and coal, which are necessities in any Minecraft playthrough

Fortune Details:

• The fortune enchantment increases the drop-rate of ores broken with the enchanted tool
• Fortune enchantment levels go from 1-3, with 3 being the highest and allowing you to double and potentially even triple the number of ores collected from a single block

The humble pickaxe is one of the most useful tools in the game, and thanks to enchantments can be made even more useful. I hope this article helped you figure out the best enchantments to put on your trusty mining tool