How to make an Anvil in Minecraft

Anvils are a fantastic functional block in Minecraft for renaming, repairing, and adding enchantments to your gear. You can even use them as a damage block if you drop them from a high place, making for some surprisingly overpowered situations if a mob or player gets stuck in one spot.

How to craft an Anvil in Minecraft

Crafting an anvil requires obtaining 31 iron ingots, turning 27 into iron blocks, and arranging them in a sideways “H” shape in a crafting table. You’ll need to place three iron blocks in the top three squares of the square, followed by four iron ingots in the bottom three squares, plus one in the center.

The image below shows the exact recipe for an anvil with all three iron blocks and four iron ingots in place.

Iron is a pretty common material compared to gold, lapis, or diamonds, as you can find it using multiple methods. The main ways are by digging underground, looting it in chests, or killing iron golems. The main challenge is obtaining enough over 30, but it shouldn’t take too long, even if you’re just starting out.

If you’re already late into your playthrough and don’t mind some exploring, you can find iron ingots in treasures chests within dungeons, mineshafts, End Cities, and Strongholds, among other structure types. Bastion Remnants in the Nether can even spawn blocks of iron, so it’s worth looking around for those if you want to get away from cave-diving for a while.

How to use an Anvil in Minecraft

Anvils in Minecraft have three main purposes:

• Add and combine enchantments
• Rename an item
• Repair an item

Their first use is combining enchantments between multiple objects. While enchanting tables add an enchant to one item, the anvil lets you combine two to strengthen their effects. For example, you can toss two Sharpness Four swords into an anvil to turn it into a Sharpness Five weapon.

Another use is renaming any item in the game. You can use this on any item in Minecraft, from tools to food or even other blocks. This feature has multiple uses in custom minigames or maps, but I usually use it to give my weapons fun names.

The last feature is repairing your gear. You can do this by either combining two of the same item or a tool plus its main crafting component. In other words, using two diamond shovels with low durability in an anvil combines them and restores some of their durability, with a shovel and one diamond having a similar effect.