Minecraft: How Many Bookshelves for Level 30 Enchanter?

If you’re planning on advancing through Minecraft and eventually reaching the “end-goal” of the game, you will need to get exponentially more powerful with each tier of armor and weapons you unlock. But, you will also be destined to grind and fail many of the times if you don’t utilize enchantments. Enchantments are a way to drastically increase your power and possibilities, and the higher the level of enchantments they are, the more useful they will be. This is why, in today’s guide, we’re going to explain how many bookshelves you need for level 30 enchantments & how to get them most efficiently.

Editor’s Note: This guide was updated in November 2023 and reflects the most up to date mechanics in Minecraft.

Why are bookshelves important for enchanting?

The exact correlation between bookshelves and enchanting tables has never been addressed in a direct way. We don’t know why, but the more bookshelves that your enchanting table has around it, the higher level your enchantments will be. Placing bookshelves around the enchantment table enhances its power. Each bookshelf increases the maximum enchantment level by 1, up to a maximum of 30 bookshelves. The enchantment table needs to have a certain number of bookshelves within a certain range to unlock the highest-level enchantments.

Without any bookshelves around your enchanter, you will be able to generate a maximum level 8 enchantments, so the better, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that you can just crowd your enchanting room with bookshelves and reach infinite levels of enchanting.

Placing 15 bookshelves around your enchanting table will bring enchantment to the maximum level

The maximum level for enchantments in Minecraft is 30, and you can’t go past that without cheating. If you don’t have any bookshelves around the highest, you will be able to go to level 8. However, by placing a total of 15 bookshelves around the enchanting table you will reach that coveted maximum level 30.

To craft 15 bookshelves from scratch, you will need 45 books and 90x wooden planks, and if you’re really dedicated to exploring, this shouldn’t be that much of a problem at all.

The hardest ingredients to get in this case are books, which can be easily crafted with paper and leather, or you can simply loot them from Ancient Cities, Shipwrecks, and Strongholds. Based on my experience, two shipwrecks can, under the best conditions, result in acquiring enough books for two bookshelves. But maybe I’m just lucky.

How to create a level 30 enchanter?

Now, simply having 15 bookshelves is not enough; they need to be correctly placed around the enchanter. Keep in mind that the enchanter needs to be surrounded by Bookshelves with a minimum of 1 empty block between the enchanter and the bookshelves. Even placing a torch in that empty space will cause your enchanter to “disconnect” from the bookshelves, and your yielded levels will be lower.

Alternative ways to get level 30 enchantments

If you, however, for some unknown reason, can’t get your hands on 15 bookshelves, there are plenty of alternative ways to get level 30 enchantments:

Experience grinders

You can always build your own mob farm (or come across a spawner in the wilderness) and harvest experience points in the most efficient way possible. If you can make your farm automated, that’s even better. There are plenty of ways with Redstone to do it.

Automatic fishing farms

Fishing is useful because it provides you with food and other valuable items bot also with valuable experience points. You can set up an automatic fishing farm to harvest experience while you are afk from your computer.

Mining and smelting

This is most likely the grindiest possible approach to experience farming, but over time it adds up. Mining ore and smelting it later not only builds up a massive collection of raw materials it also grants you experience while you’re doing it.

Trading with villagers

Some villagers offer enchanted books as part of their trades. You can obtain these books and use them directly for enchanting. But trading with villagers also grants experience. Besides, some villagers do have killer deals.

Brewing Potions

Brewing potions with a brewing stand provides experience points. While not the most efficient method, it’s an additional source of experience, and even if you don’t necessarily rely on potions, don’t forget that some of them can be utilized in an offensive manner.

Defeating Bosses

The Ender Dragon and the Wither bosses drop a massive amount of experience points when defeated. But, the catch is, more often than not, to get to the Ender Dragon as soon as possible, you will need powerful enchantments.

Crops and Animals

Breeding animals and harvesting crops can provide experience points but also resources. It’s certainly not the fastest way to reach that level cap, but you’re doing it anyway.

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