Minecraft is a sandbox game revolving around crafting mechanics. It is undoubtedly one of the most useful and important mechanics in the game. After you have progressed through a good amount of the game, you will get access to crafting an anvil.
Basically, what an anvil does in Minecraft is repair or mend all of your weapons. This means once your weapon’s durability runs out and it breaks, you can repair and use them again using the anvil. Apart from that, the anvil is also used for renaming items and combine various enchantments.
Anvil Too Expensive in Minecraft
Unlike many other tools and items in Minecraft, the anvil has a unique mechanic. Whenever you use something on an anvil, it requires EXP levels. Thing is, the EXP levels gradually increase as more work you do on a piece of item using the anvil.
Not only does this increase the resources required, but there is also a cap limit using an anvil. Unfortunately, once an item reaches 40 EXP levels for repair, rename, or enchant, anvil stops working on it and gives the following error “Anvil too expensive”.
This is done to balance and maintain the game’s difficulty. This cap is only applied to Survival mode. In simple words, the more work you do on an item, the more EXP levels it will require the next time you want to use it on an anvil. This means by the time you repair your enchanted weapon the 5th or 6th time, you won’t be able to repair it anymore.
What Can You Do to Avoid This?
Thankfully, there are ways you can avoid this from happening. If you already have top-tier equipment, then we suggest you always go for mending, rather than repairing. This will make your equipment last a lot longer than it should.
Secondly, if you want to repair or combine books, then don’t just put them in the anvil. Combine items with the same anvil uses. Also, try making a tree-path for combining items with similar anvil uses for the repairing/combining.
This will make your progress more efficient and you won’t be hitting the 40 EXP cap anytime soon. Still, always remember to use mending for your top-tier weapons.
But What If I Have Already Reached the Cap Limit?
Surely there are plenty of things you can do to avoid reaching the cap. But is there really nothing you can do once you reach the cap? As a matter of fact, there is. Unfortunately, it comes with a sacrifice. The only thing you can do is to use a grindstone. This will reset all anvil uses, but also reset the state of the weapon.
This means that you will need to apply all the things that you had previously applied to your piece of equipment. On the positive side, you will have emptied all of your anvil uses.
Conclusion
Anvil too expensive is a balancing mechanic in Minecraft that can be avoided by taking some measures. In this article, we have explained how you can do so. We hope that you have now understood how you can avoid this from happening as well.