Guides / Ideal Tools
The Ideal Shovel Enchantments
September 13, 2026
Shovels get overlooked, but they carry the same enchantment categories as a pickaxe — mining and mining loot — plus one genuinely great, specific use case.
Fortune III (yes, really)
Mining a block of gravel has a flat 10% chance to drop flint instead of the block. Fortune changes that chance dramatically: Fortune I brings it to roughly 1-in-7, Fortune II to 1-in-4, and Fortune III makes it 100% — every single gravel block breaks into flint. If you've ever needed flint for arrows without hunting down a river of gravel piece by piece, a Fortune III shovel through a gravel patch (or a gravel duper/generator) is the fastest source in the game.
Efficiency V
Shovels already break gravel, sand, dirt, clay, snow, and soul sand quickly; Efficiency V makes large-scale terraforming or clay farming near-instant.
Silk Touch — situational swap
Swap Fortune for Silk Touch when you specifically want intact grass blocks, mycelium, or podzol rather than their dirt drop — useful for building, less useful for flint farming, and mutually exclusive with Fortune for the same reason as a pickaxe.
Unbreaking III + Mending
Standard durability pairing — reduced damage rate plus XP-funded self-repair.
Efficiency V- Fortune III
- Unbreaking III
- Mending I