What is an Anvil and What Does it Do?
An anvil is a black block that has a square hole on the top. Similar to real life, an anvil is used to repair your tools/weapons, add enchantments to them, combine enchantments, renaming our tools/weapons or any mobs you’ve tamed, and repair tools/weapons with enchantments, without sacrificing those enchantments. It is a very beneficial tool and highly recommended for both beginners and veterans. Read More: How to Make A Shield in Minecraft
How to Obtain an Anvil
There are 3 ways through which you can get an anvil: Of these 3 methods, we’ll only be discussing the 2nd one.
Requirements for Crafting an Anvil
To craft an anvil, first you’ll need to fulfill these requirements: Alternatively, you need to have a total of 31 iron ingots.
Obtaining the Components
While obtaining the iron ingots isn’t that difficult, the quantity required makes this whole process a bit time-consuming. At any rate, here’s how to get iron ingots easily:
Crafting iron ingots
Crafting iron blocks
Now, to craft iron blocks:
How to Craft an Anvil
Using an Anvil
As we’ve mentioned previously, an anvil has a variety of uses. Here’s how you can make use of the anvil: Now that we’re procured the ingredients, its finally time to craft an anvil.
1. Repairing your tools/weapons
Repairing your tools/weapons is pretty easy with an anvil. All you need is the material your tool/weapon is crafted from. However, this only restores 25% of the durability e.g., using iron to repair an iron pickaxe. To completely restore it, you’ll need a duplicate of the tool/weapon you’re trying to restore. In the steps outlined below, a diamond pickaxe is repaired with another diamond pickaxe.
2. Enchanting a tool/weapon
Placing an enchantment on a tool/weapon is similar to repairing your tool/weapon. In the anvil interface, place the tool/weapon to be enchanted and the enchantment in the right. Preview the output and place it in your inventory.
3. Combining enchantments
In the anvil interface, place both the enchantments in the slots and store the output in your inventory.
4. Renaming tools/weapons
To rename a tool/weapon, you just need to type in the new name in the text box of the anvil interface, as shown below.
How Do I Repair an Anvil?
An anvil, like most things in Minecraft, has durability. The average anvil is observed to survive for 25 uses. An anvil’s condition is shown through the name that appears on it. There are 3 states of durability for an anvil. These states do not affect the capabilities of the anvil: If the anvil is used in its “Damaged” state, it may break and drop nothing. Unfortunately, there’s no way to repair your anvil, so if your one is starting to wear down, its time to get back to mining.
Tips for Anvils
Make sure that the anvil always has a support block under it. When an anvil falls, its durability decreases greatly.Use anvils only to repair your best tools/weapons, preferably those with enchantments. While the repair cost may sometimes be more than what you’d expect, if your tool/weapon has a rare enchantment, it might be worth the cost.Always have excess iron ingots ready. Convert them into iron block so they don’t occupy much of your inventory.Always have a backup anvil ready.Try not to use the anvil on the same tool/weapon/enchantment to strengthen it too many times. This will cause the enchantment/repair costs to become very high.
Conclusion
Anvils are an essential part of your Minecraft world. They allow you to repair your weapons while keeping your enchantments intact; a feature that sets it apart from the grindstone which has a similar function. While they’re easy enough to craft, the time it takes to gather the components can be very off-putting, therefore, its best to use it wisely, like how we’ve advised above.
