How to Get Mending in Minecraft Bedrock

Mending is the single most valuable enchantment in Minecraft. It repairs your gear automatically using the XP you collect, which means your favorite netherite pickaxe, your elytra, your fully enchanted armor can last forever. No anvils, no diamond patches, no watching your best tool break at the worst possible moment.

The catch: Mending is a treasure enchantment. You can't get it from an enchanting table, no matter how many bookshelves you stack. It only comes from a handful of specific sources. Here's every way to get it on Bedrock, ranked from most to least reliable.

Method 1: Librarian Villager (Best Method)

Trading with a librarian is by far the fastest and most reliable way to get Mending. Once you set up a librarian that sells it, you have an unlimited supply of Mending books for the rest of your world.

Here's the process:

1. Find an unemployed villager, or make one by placing a lectern near a jobless villager (brown coat, no profession badge)
2. Once they claim the lectern, they become a librarian
3. Open their trades and look for a Mending enchanted book
4. If it's not there, break the lectern and place it again
5. Check the new trades
6. Repeat until Mending appears

The most important rule: do not trade with the librarian until you see Mending. The moment you make any trade, that villager's offers lock permanently. If you accidentally trade before Mending shows up, that librarian will never offer it, and you'll have to start over with a new villager.

Mending has a low chance of appearing on any given reroll, so expect to break and replace the lectern 20 to 40 times on average. On Bedrock, each reroll takes just a second or two, so it's tedious but fast. Put on a podcast and grind it out.

Crafting a Lectern

You need a lectern to turn a villager into a librarian. Craft it with 4 wooden slabs on the top and sides plus 1 bookshelf in the center. Any wood type works for the slabs.

Villager Trade Rebalance (If Enabled)

If your world has the Villager Trade Rebalance experimental toggle turned on, the rules change. Under this system, only swamp librarians can offer Mending, and it's a guaranteed trade at Master level instead of a random reroll.

To use this method:

1. Get a swamp villager. Either breed two villagers inside a swamp biome, or cure a zombie villager found in a swamp.
2. Give them a lectern to make them a librarian
3. Trade with them repeatedly (buy paper, sell books) to level them up
4. At Master level, Mending is guaranteed in their trade pool

This takes longer than rerolling because you have to level the villager all the way to Master. But it's a guaranteed result with no luck involved. Most players leave the trade rebalance off and use the classic reroll method, since it's faster overall.

If you're not sure whether you have the rebalance on: it's a toggle in the Experiments section when creating a world. Standard worlds don't have it enabled by default, so if you never touched it, you're on the classic system and any librarian can offer Mending.

Method 2: Fishing

Mending books can be caught while fishing as a "treasure" item. The base chance is low, around 0.8% per catch, but there are ways to improve it:

• Luck of the Sea enchantment on your fishing rod increases your treasure catch rate
• Fishing in open water (a large body with no blocks overhead within a certain radius) is required for treasure catches at all
• An AFK fishing setup lets you fish continuously without manual input, where allowed

Fishing is slow and random. It's worth doing casually or with an AFK farm running in the background, but it shouldn't be your primary plan if you have villagers available. Treat any Mending book you fish up as a bonus.

Method 3: Loot Chests

Mending enchanted books generate in chests across many structures. On Bedrock, these include:

• Strongholds
• Ancient cities (best odds)
• Trial chambers
• Bastion remnants
• End cities
• Mineshafts
• Desert and jungle temples
• Dungeons

Ancient cities and strongholds have the best chances among these. This method is entirely luck-based, so it works best as a bonus while you're exploring rather than a dedicated strategy. If you're raiding a trial chamber or ancient city anyway, keep an eye out for Mending books in the loot.

Method 4: Raid Drops (Bedrock Exclusive)

This one is unique to Bedrock Edition. Enchanted books, including Mending, can drop from mobs during pillager raids. Win a raid and you have a chance at Mending as loot.

It's inconsistent and you can't rely on it, but if you're defending a village from raids anyway, it's a possible source that Java players don't have.

Making Mending Cheaper: Cure a Zombie Villager

Once you have a librarian selling Mending, the price might be 20+ emeralds per book. You can slash that down to a single emerald.

Turn your librarian into a zombie villager (let a zombie attack it on Hard difficulty for a guaranteed conversion), then cure it with a Splash Potion of Weakness and a Golden Apple. The cured villager gives massive trade discounts, often dropping Mending to 1 emerald.

Do the curing before you lock in a lot of trades, and always protect your Mending librarian afterward. For the full step-by-step, see our guide on curing zombie villagers.

Important: Mending and Infinity Don't Mix

On a bow, Mending and Infinity are incompatible. You can only have one. Most players choose Mending, because a Mending bow with regular arrows lasts forever and you'll usually have plenty of arrows anyway. Infinity saves arrows but the bow itself still degrades.

For every other item, Mending stacks with everything. Put it on your pickaxe, sword, armor, elytra, shield, trident, and fishing rod without worrying about conflicts.

Where to Use Your First Mending Books

Mending books take effort to collect, so prioritize the gear you use constantly:

1. Elytra: no other good way to repair it besides phantom membranes. Mending is the best solution by far.
2. Main pickaxe: you mine constantly, so it wears fast. Mending keeps your netherite pick alive forever.
3. Armor: full set of Mending armor means you never re-craft or re-enchant.
4. Sword or trident: your main weapon should never break mid-fight.

Don't waste Mending on temporary iron gear or tools you plan to replace. Save it for your permanent netherite and diamond setup.

Common Mistakes

Trading before Mending appears. The number one mistake. Any trade locks the librarian's offers forever. Always check all trades before buying anything.

Letting your librarian die. A Mending librarian is one of the most valuable things in your world. Protect it with walls, lighting, and distance from zombies and raids. Losing it means starting the reroll grind over.

Fishing for hours first. Many players grind fishing for Mending before trying villagers. Villager trading is faster and gives unlimited books. Start there.

Putting Mending on a bow with Infinity. They don't stack. Pick one before wasting a book.

Not holding the damaged item. Mending only repairs gear you're actively holding or wearing. If your enchanted item is sitting in your inventory, XP orbs won't touch it.

Wrapping Up

The fastest path to Mending on Bedrock: find a villager, place a lectern, reroll trades until Mending shows up, and buy one book to lock it in. Then cure the villager for cheap prices and protect it like it's made of netherite. Fishing, loot chests, and raid drops are fine as bonuses, but villager trading is the method that gives you unlimited Mending forever. Once your gear is enchanted, you'll never deal with durability again.