Of the four different armor slots in Minecraft, leggings are one of the most important pieces. Leggings protect your legs from damage while exploring the world and engaging in combat. Like the other armor items, they come in six varieties, ranging in quality from Leather to Netherite. Enchantments further improve their effectiveness, but there are so many to choose from. Today, we’re covering the best legging enchantments in Minecraft to help you on your way. Whether you’re a new block layer or a seasoned veteran of the war against the Endermen, you won’t want to miss this guide!

Best Enchantments for Leggings in Minecraft, Ranked

So what are the best enchantments for leggings in Minecraft? Many enchantments are applied semi-randomly at the enchanting table, and some can cost significantly more than others to maintain, so knowing what to prioritize can save you a lot of time and resources. Let’s get right into our ranking!

5/5

Protection-Class Enchantments

Protection enchantments boost the effectiveness of your leggings.
Image: Mojang via HGG / Nathan Hart

Protection-class enchantments can be applied to any kind of armor and are among the most prevalent enchantments in the game. You’ll see them go all the way up to Level 4, and they come in four different categories. You can only apply one kind of Protection enchantment to your leggings at once, so we’ll break down which ones you should prioritize if you have options.

First is Explosive Protection, which does what it says on the tin. You take less damage from the often-deadly Creeper explosions, as well as fireball blasts from the Nether’s Ghasts. Since it has a pretty limited use case, you should avoid picking this version if you can help it.

Fire Protection can help you take less damage from the Blaze fireballs, as well as delaying how long it’ll take for you to die from falling into lava. However, you can easily duplicate this effect with a fire resistance potion, so it’s also best to skip this one.

Projectile Protection lets you take less damage from arrows. This might be the best enchantment for your armor in a PVP fight, since you’ll probably be taking more ranged damage in that situation than in others. However, a shield can deflect all the arrows that hit it in general, so even this enchantment isn’t recommended.

The best protection category enchantment is just called Protection. It provides a flat reduction to all damage that your armor is capable of reducing, improving the quality of your armor by a percentage-based degree. Sometimes you’ll even be lucky enough find armor with Protection already enchanted on it within loot chests.

4/5

Unbreaking

Unbreaking helps your leg armor last longer.
Image: Mojang via HGG / Nathan Hart

You should apply the Unbreaking enchantment to every single tool or piece of armor you plan on using regularly. Every time your armor takes damage, it’ll also take a penalty to its durability corresponding to the strength of the attack. Unbreaking provides a small chance that the armor just ignores the durability damage it was supposed to take.

Unbreaking is very common and comes all the way up to Level 3. Each level roughly doubles the lifespan of your leggings. This can save you a huge amount of resources over time, since you’d otherwise need to spend iron or diamonds to repair or replace your gear.

3/5

Thorns

Thorns does retaliatory damage to any aggressor who attacks you.
Image: Mojang via HGG / Nathan Hart

Thorns provides your armor with a small chance of dealing damage to any aggressor that targets you with an attack. Whenever this armor prevents some damage, it also has a chance of triggering a thorn effect that will hurt whoever just attacked you, with this effect also causing a small degree of knockback if you’re playing the Java edition of the game. This enchantment is especially helpful against huge crowds of weak mobs like slimes or magma cubes. It becomes even more effective the more different pieces of armor that you wear with Thorns applied.

The disadvantage of thorns is that it has a chance of damaging your armor itself whenever it triggers. You can prevent this small amount of durability loss by only ever stacking thorns onto armor that already has the unbreaking enchantment applied to it.

2/5

Mending

Mending is one of the best enchantments in Minecraft for any gear.
Image: Mojang via HGG / Nathan Hart

The Mending enchantment is one of the rarest and most powerful enchantments in the game, and on any other list for any other kind of gear, it would likely be the absolute top of the list. This enchantment can make your pair of diamond or netherite leggings last forever. It does this by applying any XP you earn while holding or wearing the enchanted gear directly into repairing the durability of said item. Once it’s fully repaired, you’ll just continue receiving XP as normal. This can drastically reduce how many diamonds and netherite ingots you’ll need to collect to maintain optimum armor over the course of a game.

You won’t find Mending at the enchantment table by default, but if you have enough bookshelves in your library, you can potentially do enchantments with a minimum XP Level 30 required. If your character holds enough XP to apply one of these enchantments, there is a 1% chance that you will additionally get the Mending enchantment applied as a bonus. Most of the time when you manage to acquire Mending, it will be pre-applied to gear you find in chests. You can also get enchanted books with Mending applied by fishing or trading with villagers.

1/5

Swift Sneak

Swift Sneak is the best enchantment for your leggings in Minecraft.
Image: Mojang via HGG / Nathan Hart

Swift Sneak is incredibly rare and takes our pick as the best of the best enchantments for leggings in Minecraft. This enchantment was introduced in Patch 1.19, and is only applicable to leggings. The deep dark is notable for its system of “skulk sensors” and “skulk shriekers” that can detect the movement of players or mobs. After triggering the alarm system too many times, the most deadly mob in the game, the Warden, will rise from the ground and begin to pursue you through the darkness.

You can only avoid the Warden by sneaking through the deep dark and trying not to trigger its sensors. Swift Sneak helps with this in a huge way by increasing the speed at which you can move while crouched. Each level makes you move 15% faster while sneaking, bringing you all the way up to 75% of your normal movement speed when fully upgraded to Level 3!

Join the High Ground

That’s it for our ranking of the best Minecraft leggings enchantments — thanks for reading! We hope this guide will serve you well out there among the blocky environs of that colorful world. Want more Minecraft tips, especially advice on building out the rest of your suit of armor? Make sure you follow High Ground Gaming on social media and sign up for our newsletter so you can stay up-to-date with developments in The Nether.

Happy gaming!