Almost all enchantments in Minecraft, with the exception of curse enchantments, are there to make your experience easier while you try to accomplish your in-game goals.
Looting is an enchantment like that. Keep reading to learn more about how to obtain it, what it does and what you can use it for.
How to obtain the Looting enchantment
Looting is an enchantment that can only be applied to swords. Like all other Minecraft enchantments, you can get it by placing your item, in this case a sword, onto an enchantment table and randomly getting Looting from the possible enchantments. Another way to get it is to combine an enchanted book you found in a chest with a sword by using an anvil.
It is compatible with all other enchantments in the game, so you can freely combine it with whatever you want.
What does the Looting enchantment do?
Although the math behind it is a bit more complicated, the basic way to explain Looting is to say that it increases the amount of items dropped by killing something and it increases drop chances. For common drops, it increases the amount of items dropped by 1 + the level of the enchantment. For rare drops, you get an additional chance for something to drop every time it doesn’t drop.
The interesting thing about this effect is that you don’t need to kill the mob with the item itself, because it only needs to be in your main hand. According to this, you can put a bow in your off hand and shoot a mob with it, but as long as you hold the item with Looting in your main hand, you’ll still get the benefits.
Looting has 3 levels, with the effects increasing with every level.
In some cases, looting has no effects. For example, mobs that have no drops are not affected by this, like bats, bees or endermites. Other examples include the Wither, iron golems, snow golems and other mobs with rare drops.
Where can you use the Looting enchantment?
This enchantment is useful when you want to farm a certain mob’s drops. For example, if you want to collect lots of gold nuggets from Nether mobs such as Piglins.
Key Takeaways
When talking about Looting, you should remember the following things:
- It is an enchantment that works only on swords.
- You can get it by enchanting a sword on an enchantment table or using an anvil to combine an enchanted book with the sword.
- It increases drop chances from mobs and also increases the amount of items dropped by that same mob.
- There are 3 levels of this enchantment, with each higher level increasing the stats.
- You can kill a mob with something else aside from the sword and still get the effects of Looting, as long as you keep the sword in your main hand.
- There are some exceptions to the effects of this enchantment, usually mobs with rarer drops such as the Wither.
- It is a very useful enchantment if you want to farm resources that are dropped by mobs.
