Aqua Affinity

What Aqua Affinity does

Book cost is the anvil cost of putting that book on a fresh item. However, already-used items add their prior work penalty: work it out in the calculator.

How the underwater mining penalty works

Mining has two separate penalties in water. With your head underwater, blocks break 5 times slower. If your feet are not on the ground, for example while you swim, blocks break another 5 times slower. Together that is 25 times slower, which makes underwater work painful.

Aqua Affinity removes only the first penalty. So the trick is to stand on the sea floor or on a block while you dig. Then you mine at the same speed as on land.

Tricks for underwater building

• Stand on a block or the sea floor while you mine, so the second penalty never applies.
• Wear Depth Strider boots to walk around quickly between jobs.
• Place a conduit nearby: its Conduit Power effect speeds up mining underwater and gives you air.
• Drain areas with sponges or sand walls first if you have a lot to dig.

Where it matters

• Ocean monuments, where you mine prismarine and dig out the gold blocks.
• Underwater bases and tunnels.
• Clearing sand, gravel and clay from riverbeds and ocean floors.

On a land-only helmet it does nothing. Still, it costs only 2 levels as a book, so most players add it to every main helmet anyway.

In a build

Aqua Affinity has one level and no conflicts. It goes next to Protection IV, Respiration III, Unbreaking III and Mending on the best helmet. Turtle shells can take it too.

Is Aqua Affinity worth a book?

For most players, yes. It is a single-level book, so there is nothing to merge, and it fits on every helmet next to the usual enchantments. The only reason to skip it is a helmet you never take underwater, such as a spare Nether set.

Aqua Affinity and Respiration together

The two solve different problems. Respiration gives you time underwater, and Aqua Affinity makes that time useful. With only Respiration you can stay under for a minute, but you dig very little in that minute. With both, a minute is enough to clear a real chunk of an ocean monument wall.

Order on the anvil

Aqua Affinity has a ×4 multiplier from an item and ×2 from a book. It costs only 2 levels as a book, so it rarely decides the order. Add it after Protection and Respiration, when the helmet already carries its bigger books.

Aqua Affinity for ocean monuments

Monuments are where Aqua Affinity earns its place. Once you defeat the elder guardians, their Mining Fatigue wears off, and then you can dig out the walls and the gold blocks. Without Aqua Affinity that job takes several times as long. So bring the helmet, sponges and a conduit, and the monument turns into a building site.

Which items take Aqua Affinity

Aqua Affinity goes on 1 kind of gear in the calculator: helmet. An enchanting table can roll it on the helmet.

Nothing conflicts with Aqua Affinity, so it fits next to every other enchantment its items can take.

Aqua Affinity from the enchanting table

The level you can roll depends on the item's enchantability. A material with a higher value reaches higher levels from the same level 30 enchant. This table shows the best Aqua Affinity each helmet can get from a level 30 enchant with 15 bookshelves.

Anything higher has to come from a book instead. Then the enchanting table calculator shows the exact chance for every level.

Anvil cost of Aqua Affinity

Aqua Affinity has an anvil multiplier of 4 from another item and 2 from a book. So the book costs 2 levels on a fresh item. That is a middling cost, so the order still matters once you combine several books.

Java charges the full resulting level every time, even when the item already has a lower level of it. Every step also adds the prior work penalty of both items. The enchantment calculator finds the cheapest order for your whole set of books.

Builds, questions and guides

Aqua Affinity is part of the max build for 1 item: best helmet enchantments. To put it on in the cheapest order, see the helmet enchant order.

More reading: Getting books from librarians, How to enchant in Minecraft, Every max enchantment level. You can make an Aqua Affinity book with the command generator. The librarian price list shows what villagers charge for it.

How to get Aqua Affinity

• Enchanting table It can appear when you enchant a supported item at an enchanting table. However, higher levels need more bookshelves and a level 30 enchant.
• Librarian villagers Librarians can sell it as an enchanted book. Level I costs 5–19 emeralds plus a book.
• Random enchanted books It is also in the pool for the random enchanted books and gear in many chests and in fishing loot.

Aqua Affinity is rare at the enchanting table, but it can appear at almost any enchant level because its power window is very wide. Librarians sell it, and as a single-level book it never needs merging.

Tips

• Essential for ocean monument raids and underwater bases.
• You still mine 5× slower when not standing on the ground, even with Aqua Affinity.

Commands

Give yourself an Aqua Affinity book or enchant the item in your hand. These work in Java 26.3 once cheats are on.

Versions

Aqua Affinity is in every Java version from 1.21 (when enchantments became data files) up to 26.3.

• 1.21.9: now goes on copper helmet.

Also see the update log for every change, and how this data is checked. Bedrock player? See Aqua Affinity on Bedrock.

Goes well with

• Blast Protection
• Curse of Binding
• Curse of Vanishing
• Fire Protection
• Mending
• Projectile Protection
• Protection
• Respiration
• Thorns
• Unbreaking