Why Your Anvil Says Too Expensive

Quick answer

• In Survival, the anvil blocks any job that costs 40 levels or more.
• Every time an item goes through the anvil, its next job gets roughly twice as expensive.
• Fix: combine your books in pairs first, then put them on your gear.

You collected every book for the perfect pickaxe, and on the last one the anvil says Too Expensive! More XP won't fix it. The good news: you can almost always avoid it.

Enchant Order CalculatorFind the cheapest order to combine enchanted books in an anvil and avoid Too Expensive→

What you're paying for

Every anvil job costs:

• the prior work penalty of both items,
• + the cost of the enchantments you're adding,
• + 1 if you rename, + 2 if you're repairing a damaged item.

The enchantment cost is fixed. The prior work penalty is the bit that gets out of hand.

The penalty doubles every time

When you combine two things, the result keeps the higher penalty and goes up a step. Books have their own penalty too: two books merged together count as one anvil job.

What the enchantments cost

On Java, each enchantment costs its level × a multiplier. Books are always cheaper than enchanted items.

So Efficiency V = 5 levels, Fortune III = 6, Mending = 2.

Worked example: a god pickaxe

Efficiency V, Unbreaking III, Fortune III and Mending, all from books, on Java.

One book at a time

Pairing things up

Same pickaxe, cheaper, and much easier to add to later. Armour and swords with six or seven enchantments make the gap way bigger.

5 rules to remember

1. Pair up equal penalties, like a knockout bracket, not a queue.
2. The item on the right is what you pay for. Put the cheaper book there when merging two books.
3. Don't put an expensive enchantment on the right more than once.
4. Rename on the last step, so it doesn't cost you an extra anvil job.
5. Repair with Mending, not the anvil. Anvil repairs add to the penalty every time.

Already Too Expensive?

Put it in a grindstone. It wipes the penalty and the enchantments (curses stay) and gives you some XP back. Then plan the order before you start again.

Doing this by hand with 5+ books gets messy. Let the calculator do it, and use the predictor to find the books you're missing.

Enchant Order CalculatorFind the cheapest order to combine enchanted books in an anvil and avoid Too Expensive→

Villager Trade PredictorEstimate upcoming librarian enchanted-book trades from your world seed, or plan a whole book hall with rerolls, villagers and emeralds→