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Getting ahold of a good helmet is an essential priority for any Minecraft player that wants to explore the deeper, more difficult sections of the game, like the mysterious temples that appear underwater, or the water-filled caves that explorers need to traverse at times. Once you have an enchanting table, it’s a good idea to place an enchantment on your iron, diamond, or netherite helmet. That’s why we’ve got the 9 best helmet enchantments in Minecraft rounded up for you.

With all the options available, how do you pick what you need? Let’s break it down.

Blast protection is a decent option for dealing with one of the most common causes of death for Minecraft players, the dreaded creeper, a mob that can easily sneak up behind you can explode. With a full suit of armor all enchanted with blast protection, you can withstand a sneak attack from a creeper without being obliterated. Likewise, you will also have an easier time fighting the ghast, the ghost-like floating mobs that inhabit the nether. 

While it’s a decent option for your helmet, blast protection is mutually exclusive with the other forms of protection listed below, so you need to be picky about which kind you take. Blast protection can be obtained at the enchanting table, or you can find books with this enchantment up to level IV.

The normal protection enchantment is an easy-to-find mainstay of every player’s first few sets of armor. It provides a general decrease in damage from all sources, at the expense of providing less damage reduction to specific sources than the other protection enchantments. It’s a great pick for a helmet. Helmets take the second least amount of resources to make all four main pieces of armor, so it’s not unusual to make at least four sets of enchanted armor so you can take advantage of all four kinds of protection. If you aren’t sure what else to pick, protection is a great default.

 That being said, most players will want their absolute best helmet, like the first one you’re able to turn to netherite, to be carrying a protection enchantment. It’s very commonly available at all levels on the enchantment table, and trading with villagers or looting buildings will find plenty of enchanted books with it as well. Protection goes up to level IV.

Projectile protection gives you resistance to almost every form of ranged damage. This includes arrows shot from either bows or crossbows, thrown tridents, blaze fireballs, or the impact damage from the fireballs that the ghast or the wither fling your direction.

Projectile protection is important for PvP situations, or certain biomes that contain lots of projectile-wielding opponents, like a soul sand desert full of skeletons in the nether. It’s also a good pick to wear during one of the pillager raids, helping you withstand mass crossbow fire. All of these situations can also have their difficulty mitigated by a shield, so with that in mind, projectile protection doesn’t need to be a high priority for your helmet. 

Like the other protection enchantments, it is mutually exclusive with any alternate version of protection, so it’s only worth getting once you already have a decent helmet with the regular protection enchantment applied.

The last of the protection enchantments is likely the one you will need to use the least. Initially, it can seem like a good choice for certain parts of the nether, as it will help you take less damage from lava or the fireballs flung at you by the blaze mobs. However, you will quickly acquire fire resistance potions after bringing down just a few blazes, so we can’t recommend taking this enchantment unless you’re looking to do some wild projects with big forests and some flint. 

It’s also worth noting there are four great alternatives for getting through a big pool of lava. You can either wear a full suit of netherite armor, drink a fire resistance potion, or tame and mount a strider in the nether. Fire protection is exclusive against the other protection enchantments, but blending a few pieces into a suit of armor can be very helpful.

Mending is one of the most difficult enchantments to get ahold of. It can appear as chest loot, fishing, or trading with a librarian villager. If you’ve built a full set of bookcases around your enchanting table to enable level 30 enchantments, any one of these you apply to a tool, weapon, or piece of armor like a helmet comes with a 1% chance that you will also acquire mending as a side enchantment.

Mending will consistently be one of the best enchantments you can place on any item in Minecraft, allowing the XP orbs that you find in the world to absorb directly into the durability damage of an enchanted item, rather than being absorbed by the player to enchant new ones. Putting mending on a helmet that already has Aqua Affinity and Respiration is a great plan for keeping your best gear in tip-top shape.

Unbreaking is a very common enchantment across many classes of items. Rather than providing your items with extra durability, as it may appear, unbreaking gives armor or tools a chance to not take damage when they are supposed to. Getting a high level of unbreaking on your helmet is almost as useful as having the rare mending enchantment in terms of how long it will help you keep your good gear active. 

It is easiest to get the unbreaking enchantment at the enchanting table, being that its one of the most common enchantments to appear for armor items like the helmet. 

Thorns is a useful enchantment for heavy fighting against lots of opponents. When you wear armor enchanted with thorns, any enemy that attacks you has a chance of taking damage themselves, complete with a knockback effect. The more pieces of armor you wear with the thorns enchantment applied, the higher your chances are of doing damage, and more of it.

The downside to thorns, and the reason you may not want it for your helmet, is that it does small amounts of damage to the durability of the item itself whenever the thorns effect is activated. Pairing thorns with a higher level of the unbreaking enchantment can mitigate this extra durability damage.

The respiration enchantment allows you to breathe underwater for a total of 15 seconds per level of enchantment, up to a maximum level of III. Level III Respiration allows for a total breath time of 60 seconds when you include the 15 seconds you usually get underwater. This can be invaluable in deep caves, many of which are full of water that hides valuable resources like diamonds. You can also use it to explore water temples and shipwrecks for loot. When the game determines the location of valuable resources like diamonds, it generates them based on how much air exposure any given block has. This means you’re much more likely to find diamonds inside a watery cave, rather than one you can easily breathe in.

Respiration is exclusive to helmets, making it one of the best enchantments you can put on your helmet. It becomes obsolete to a degree when you obtain a potion brewing station and water-breathing potions but still functions as a decent backup in case you are deep inside a water temple when your potion wears off.

For added effectiveness, put respiration on a turtle shell helmet. The turtle shell helmet all on its own adds another ten seconds of breath, giving you 70 total seconds underwater if you need it. Shipwrecks won’t stop you now!

Aqua affinity is one of the best enchantments you can put on your helmet, as it is exclusive to helmets and incredibly useful in solving some late-game problems. It only has a single level of enchantment, but that single level allows you to mine and move at an average speed while submerged in water. If you’ve ever tried to mine underwater, you know it can be a real pain, and the aqua affinity can help you collect many more resources. It is best paired with the respiration enchantment as well.

Usually, when your head is submerged in Minecraft, you can only mine blocks at 20% of the normal speed. With aqua affinity, you’re back to 100% efficiency. Floating in water is even harsher, with your mining speed usually cut back to be 25 times slower than usual. Aqua affinity also helps with this moment, allowing you to cut into the sides of underwater temples or shipwrecks with ease. 

With all the options available, it might be best to try and build a few different sets of armor in Minecraft, including a whole set ready to go underwater with the aqua affinity and respiration enchantments applied to a turtle shell helmet. Now that you’re armed with this set of knowledge, you’ll know which helmet to wear when you’re taking the higher ground.

If you enjoyed our guide on the best helmet enchantments for Minecraft leave us a comment below! Or feel free to ask our author any questions. Subscribe to our newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best from HGG.

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