How to Make an Anvil in Minecraft: 31 Iron Ingots

An anvil takes 3 blocks of iron and 4 iron ingots, which is 31 iron ingots in all. On a crafting table, put the 3 blocks of iron across the top row, 1 iron ingot in the center slot, and 3 iron ingots across the bottom row. You get one anvil.

Getting 31 iron

Each block of iron is 9 ingots in a 3x3 grid. Thirty-one ingots is a lot early on, but a single big cave or a mineshaft can cover it. Iron generates most heavily around Y 16 and also in huge veins high in mountains. If you’re going to use anvils regularly, an iron farm makes the cost irrelevant.

What an anvil does

Open the anvil and you’ll see two input slots and an output slot. It does three jobs, each costing experience levels:

• Repair: put a damaged item in the first slot and its material (diamonds for diamond tools, iron ingots for iron, etc.) in the second. Each unit restores 25% durability. Or combine two of the same item, which adds their durability together and merges their enchantments.
• Combine enchantments: put a tool and an enchanted book together to add the book’s enchantments. This is how you get Mending, which the enchanting table never offers. See how to use enchanted books.
• Rename: type a new name. Renaming a name tag here is the only way to use one on a mob.

Too Expensive

Every time an item goes through the anvil, its prior work penalty rises, and later jobs on that item cost more. In Java Edition, any job costing 40 levels or more shows “Too Expensive!” and is refused. A tool that’s been repaired and re-enchanted five or six times usually hits that wall.

Ways to stay under it:

• Put the most important enchantments on first, combining books with each other before adding them to the tool, so the tool sees fewer anvil trips.
• Get Mending early. A Mending tool never needs anvil repairs again, so its penalty stops growing.
• Reset with a grindstone. A grindstone removes enchantments and the repair penalty, but you lose the enchantments; see removing enchantments.

The anvil wears out

Each use has a 12% chance to damage the anvil: it goes from anvil to chipped to damaged and then breaks. Average life is about 25 uses. Breaking it with a pickaxe keeps its current damage, so you can’t reset it that way.

Anvils are also gravity blocks. One dropped from above falls and hurts anything it lands on, and it takes damage itself from the fall. Place it on solid ground in your enchanting room and leave it there.