Armor: Protection IV, Unbreaking III and Mending (plus additional enchants for specific items)
Helmet: Aqua Affinity and Respiration III
Boots: Depth Strider III and Feather Falling IV
Optional: Blast Protection IV on one piece of armor to better survive creeper surprise attacks.
Optional: Thorns III on one piece or armor to damage attackers.
Optional: Frost Walker II on boots (instead of Depth Strider)
Frost Walker will let you walk on water, or walk on Magma Blocks without damage.
Personally I find Depth Strider much more useful.
Pickaxe #1: Silk Touch, Efficiency V, Unbreaking III and Mending
Pickaxe #2: Fortune III, Efficiency V, Unbreaking III and Mending
Sword #1: Sharpness V, Sweeping Edge III, Looting III, Unbreaking III and Mending
Sword #2: Smite V, Sweeping Edge III, Looting III, Unbreaking III and Mending
I also like Knockback I (Knockback II is too much).
I personally do not like or recommend Fire Aspect on a sword.
Since swords are a close combat weapon you are likely to end up on fire yourself.
If you want to set mobs on fire, do it with a bow. And speaking of bows...
Bow: Power V, Unbreaking III, Punch I, Flame, Infinity and Mending (see note below)
Both of my current 1.12 worlds were created in an earlier version, so my bows have both Infinity & Mending.
For bows created in 1.12 you will have to choose one or the other (you can no longer have both enchants in 1.12).
Personally, I'd probably go with Mending, since arrows are easy to craft, and can be acquired in large quantities with a multi-mob or skele grinder. On the other hand, an AFK fishing farm will give you plenty of enchanted bows, so it will be easy to craft another OP bow if you go with Infinity and wear your old one out... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Axe: Sharpness V, Efficiency V, Unbreaking III and Mending
Optional: Fortune III or Silk Touch
Silk Touch is great for harvesting bookshelves and melons.
Shovel: Efficiency V, Unbreaking III and Mending
Optional: Fortune III or Silk Touch
Fortune will give you more flint from gravel (100% with F3). Silk touch will give you none.
Silk Touch for harvesting grass, mycelium, podzol, etc...
Elytra: Unbreaking III and Mending
These enchants are pretty much a must on Elytra (their default durability is quite poor).
Fishing Pole: Lure III, Luck of the Sea III, Unbreaking III and Mending
Some may suggest that having less luck or lure makes it better for certain things.
I have experimented with that and it is not true.
A maxed out pole is better, period! End of story. Just do it!
Optional: Shield with Unbreaking III and Mending
Shields are so inexpensive to make that the value of enchanting them is questionable.
That being said, mine is enchanted...
The order enchants are applied makes no difference in their effectiveness.
It may affect how many XP levels are required when applying the enchants...
Did I forget anything?
I also wanted to thanks you for this comprehensive list as well,
A few years ago like the OP, I used to rarely bother with enchants, but with all the builds I do now and how the scale has grown on the level of my jobs I pretty much rely on them now, and see them as an essentially with my play style. I've grown to love enchanting, but it has had to grow on me! Especially after several years of y main world.
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I actually did this (minus Efficiency, which they cannot get in Survival, at least they can't in 1.6.4, or I never checked; the Wiki says they can currently only get Unbreaking, Mending, and Curse of Vanishing; anything else can be applied if you use Creative or commands but that is not Survival) in my last (modded) world since TMCW makes it so they can get Fortune and it only works on crops if it is applied to a hoe, which also lose durability when breaking any block so higher tier hoes are actually useful.
Of course, I didn't even deplete 25% of its durability (enough for a repair with one diamond, the most you can repair it with; TMCW's version of Mending simply replaces renaming prior to 1.8 to keep the cost down), much less all of it or needing Mending to avoid "too expensive" as a full use can harvest about 20,000 potatoes (net yield of 3.2 per crop * 1562 uses * 4 for Unbreaking III), enough for close to two years of daily gameplay and I only played on the world for 5 months (I've cooked about 34,000 over nearly 1,000 daily sessions in my first world; not all of these have been eaten as I have around 5 stacks at each of 18 bases).
I was being facetious. You know, the taboo about having a diamond pick and the useless point of it? Enchants just amplify that.
I assumed you can enchant the hoe other than mending and unbreaking (my buddy does this), however I never have. I'm not the farmer on the realm. I do not normally farm on SP. I fish. I'm the one who had to point out Fort3 worked on the farming aspect... except for wheat, you just up the seed received. I discovered this when I ran through his farm with the pick. When realms came out. *Shrugs* Good to know though I suppose
He literally said this next. It also doubles as your cobble pick.
*And it didn't even grab the full quote, sigh.
Note:
Once one has more than one of these, useful as a backup to the GP Pick.
That means they say it is not what you use for general mining, and as I mentioned quite a few people say that they prefer to use Silk Touch for mining ores because it "saves" space or they don't want to risk their valuable Fortune pickaxe when Fortune III is actually easier to get than Silk Touch. Either way, you have to bring two pickaxes, and you do not get XP from using Silk Touch so the cost to maintain them is effectively doubled (with my playstyle I've never been in need of XP past my initial enchanting, thus have never built XP farms, but most players see them as necessary, even in the Mending era where costs are lower than prior to 1.8 - at one time I did run around mining everything with a maxed-out Fortune pickaxe which cost 37 levels for a single 25% repair, 5624 XP for 4 repairs, and even then I had no trouble repairing it and my other gear, I just stopped because it is a hindrance when you mine as many ores as I do. Even with the maximum of 6 Mending items being worn/held at once you'll only need up to 4686 XP to fully repair everything at once).
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It's all true. I guess the argument is in what one classifies as a GP. I mean, we all should be carry two picks regardless. Enderchest has become a must have invent item anymore, thus you have to have silk touch. Most people carry fortune. Thus, we normally have to have two picks. Like for that particular poster, he needs silk for his ores. I need fortune for my ores. You need a regular pick for your ores minus the fortune.
For me, ores do not classify under GP (or Work Pick for me), so silk touch works on my GP. My secondary pick, is my ore pick. I use it for ore and cobble only. He apparently uses it for everything. You use it for your enderchest.
It's also situational I suppose. There are moments when I am out traveling away from the house, and will just use my silk touch on everything, just to get the stuff and get back.
Also, once it gets to the point I can carry 14 double chests worth of inventory on my person, I even stop ore blocking (coal, diamond, redstone etc blocks) until i get back to the house because I have the room.
So really, depending when in the game you are, where you are, and what you are doing, I suppose it depends on the ultimate outcome of what you have. *shrug*
I disagree that your "general mining" pickaxe should have Silk Touch, and I'm not sure why it is so popular:
⋮
I suspect the preference for Silk Touch on the GP pick is a matter of playstyle affecting the relative utility.
Based on your reply and comments elsewhere, you appear both to mine in longer sessions (timewise) than do I: I find a stack of logs and a stack of charcoal quite sufficient for the few hour sessions in which I tend to engage. ( I rarely use coal other than for trading or as a construcution block [very useful for flooring starter (manual) ghast farms].)
Also, my impression is that you do a higher pecentage of what I would call spelunking – whereas the bulk of my time is feather mining (or one of its variants); I suspect this means my operations in any given session occur in a more limited area.
Another apparent difference is that much of what I mine for is stone and its variants, making the bulk of what I extract (i.e. carry out of the mine) "non-ore stuff": Silk Touch is of obvious utility when the desired product is smoothstone, and – even when mining cobble – the various ores constitute a relatively small percentage of the haul.
I agree with you that being able to process iron and gold ores (as well as coal) into blocks 'in the field' would be advantageous, but do not find the amounts I mine per session enough to justify carrying the equipment. [By the time I have shulkers, I will also have iron and gold farms sufficiently productive that the ore is more useful to me than the ingots it would produce — even given my limited interest in more highly decorated builds. Villager trading creates a similar sitution with lapis and redstone.]
I, also, carry a backup pick [as well as what I suspect is considerably more 'gear' than is typical; 2 each of swords, picks, axes, & shovels, water & empy buckets, bow & arrows, signs, ladders, enderchest (containing additional gear... including a backup silk touch tool)]. By mid-game this will be a copy of the Efficiency5/Unbreaking3/Mending/Fortune3 pick mentioned.
Overall, it appears to me that our differing choices are the result of optimizing toward different goals.
Although my 'discovery' of it was independant [driven by the desire not to risk my first Fortune3 pick (no mending on it) while maximizing diamonds at a time when I had yet to discover either AFK fishing or villager trading], I suspect at least some of the popularity of the Silk_Touch_on_GP_pick meme to be the result of its popularization by a number of widely viewed youtube publishers.
In play where the Mending / XP farm combination typical, mining session length tends to be constrained by the desire to return to an XP farm to repair gear. [My perception, based on your posts, is that you make little to no use of XP farms.] This playstyle is also widely popularized, although I've not seen my early game chickem farm technique touted.
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"Why does everything have to be so stoopid?" Harvey Pekar (from American Splendor)
WARNING: I have an extemely "grindy" playstyle; YMMV — if this doesn't seem fun to you, mine what you can from it & bin the rest.
In play where the Mending / XP farm combination typical, mining session length tends to be constrained by the desire to return to an XP farm to repair gear. [My perception, based on your posts, is that you make little to no use of XP farms.] This playstyle is also widely popularized, although I've not seen my early game chickem farm technique touted.
I don't use XP farms because I get far more XP than I could ever hope to use while caving - I occasionally hit level 70+ between repairs of any of my gear, which I do on the spot as needed - spending as much as 8000 XP to repair a single item (using the pre-1.8 costs 70 levels is 8765 XP while my pickaxe, one of my more expensive and most-used item by far, costs 31 levels, 887 XP with an optimal repair (the repair cost depends on the sacrifice durability so by slightly damaging it you can save a couple levels and still get a full repair due to the 12% bonus); an average play session yields more than 5000 XP. For comparison, Mending restores (2 / items) durability to each item being held or worn, meaning that it takes 781 XP to fully repair a diamond tool, 4686 with the maximum of 6 items at once (I have tested the effectiveness of Mending by doing some caving in 1.9+ and found no issues at all maintaining any of my gear, even the ones that do not benefit while being used).
In fact, this is part of the reason why TMCW adds amethyst, which is "better" than diamond (since it was nerfed), but far more expensive to obtain and maintain so it feels like I'm actually making use of what I get, and I still get more than enough XP (it cost 43 levels to repair my pickaxe by 25%, and while amethyst has 3x the durability of diamond the effective cost per use is still more than 3 times higher. Likewise, it effectively about 3.5 times rarer than diamond when factoring in durability and the fact that I need 4 units instead of 3 for a full repair (swords are worse while armor is better, either way, the majority of repairs are for my pickaxe, which uses around half the resources I need), and I still slowly accumulated a surplus without using Fortune, aside from what I found when branch-mining for my first resources (after this I never branch-mine again; only about half a percent of all mined ores in my last (modded) world came from branch-mining, and much less in my first world, where I did less mining and far more caving).
Actually, I spent even more XP per use back when I used a maxed-out Efficiency V, Unbreaking III, Fortune III pickaxe for all mining - 4 repairs at 37 levels each to restore full durability requires 5624 XP (0.9 XP per use, compared to 0.465 for amethyst (though I also have to spend more on other gear) and as low as 0.142 (optimal repair) for a non-Fortune pickaxe, both of the latter with Efficiency V and Unbreaking III) - and still got enough (only reaching level 40-45; since I kept durability high by trying to repair it as soon as it fell below 75% this left a large buffer for when I had to repair something else, then I could make up for it).
Until more recently I also repaired my sword with 2 diamonds for 35 levels each instead of sacrifices (twice the diamonds and 1.6 times the XP per durability point) since I didn't think you could repair it with a sacrifice (it would cost 40 levels for a new sword, but as mentioned above you can reduce the cost to 38 levels by damaging it and still get a full repair. The same sword in TMCW costs 47 levels or 2831 XP for 3/4 the durability, or 2.5 times the XP per use; 2831 XP for 4684 uses is still enough to gain back 11710 XP from killing 585 mobs which give 5 XP each, 4.14 times the XP spent, while a vanilla diamond sword yields 10.3 times the XP in return, and 3.3 times the XP with a full set of Mending gear - a ratio so high that I cannot see why anybody can't maintain it).
I don't use XP farms because I get far more XP than I could ever hope to use while caving -
This bit would seem to contain the crux of the issue: my perception is that your playstyle is largely based around caving/spelunking, whereas I explore caves as little as possible (generally only where they intersect an area in which I wish to build something or are within the radius that needs to be lit / spawn-proofed).
I spent the great bulk of my time either gathering resources or building "things"; neither of which activities tends to generate large amounts of XP [villager trading and player-kill drop-farming being exceptions]. Resources come in four basic types (ores, food, mob drops, and basic materials {wood/dirt/various stone}). Only ores and player-kill food amd mob drops provide XP and I find it is the last catagory on which I spend the most time.
While the repair protocol you follow clearly works for your style (as demonstrated by the costs analysis you have provided), empirical evidence indicates it would not work for mine.
Different goals/styles >> different answers to the question posed by the OP.
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"Why does everything have to be so stoopid?" Harvey Pekar (from American Splendor)
WARNING: I have an extemely "grindy" playstyle; YMMV — if this doesn't seem fun to you, mine what you can from it & bin the rest.
I am sorry but I don't understand why nobody mentions fire protection! I have a feeling that lava and fire from Blazes for example is much more dangerous then arrows or melee damage from mobs! It happened so many times to me I was pushed to lava by an attack or a creeper blast and died in it with all my items burnt. But when I got fire protection IV on two of my items I am finally at peace and can build things in nether and not worry about falling to a lava lake because I know I can just swim out!
Another thing is creepers: oh yes they creep me out and it happened so many times I got surprised killed and lost all mined ores and items. Putting blast protection IV on two items completely negates creepers creepiness and I can now rage through the caves with ease and with no stress or fear. The feeling of being safe from anything is so great, so I highly recommend fire resistance and blast protection over just protection.
Fire Protection 4 on one item and Protection 4 on the other three tops out the fire resistance of the armor set @20 with minimal sacrifice of other protections.
Someone else [who escapes me at present] has argued the case for swapping in one piece with Blast Protection 4 instead (for the reduction of Knockback provided by that enchantment…)
The case was well made, but I've not tried it (yet).
For the nether I also find swapping Frost Walker 2 for Depth Strider 3 useful as the latter serves no function in the nether…
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"Why does everything have to be so stoopid?" Harvey Pekar (from American Splendor)
WARNING: I have an extemely "grindy" playstyle; YMMV — if this doesn't seem fun to you, mine what you can from it & bin the rest.
Someone else [who escapes me at present] has argued the case for swapping in one piece with Blast Protection 4 instead (for the reduction of Knockback provided by that enchantment…)
That may have been me, but not because of knockback but so you can survive even a point-blank creeper explosion, at least on Hard (creepers deal up to 73 damage, more than enough to achieve the maximum possible armor penetration of 80%, which requires at least 64 points of damage in full diamond armor, meaning that armor only reduces damage by 16% by itself; full Protection IV reduces damage by an additional 64% but together they only reduce the peak damage to about 22, and even if you do not die losing most of your health isn't good. With maxed-out Blast Protection health lost is reduced to no more than about 12.3. Note that most other attacks are much weaker and armor penetration is not much of a factor; a pre-1.9 zombie (4 on Hard) deals 0.8 damage after full diamond armor while post-1.9 deals 0.96; for comparison, pre-1.9 point-blank creeper damage is 14.6).
This would also be far more beneficial for somebody like myself, as I do not wear maxed-out armor (in 1.6.4 a chestplate, leggings, and boots plus 2x Protection IV (10-20% per piece) averages 77.6% damage reduction; since prior to 1.8 enchantments are randomized the actual protection may be as low as 74.4%, which translates to a maximum of 12.5 damage from a point-blank creeper explosion on Normal (I've never seen the point of Hard when I can just upgrade my armor and use mods to add "Hard-only" effects, minus zombies breaking doors, to all difficulties - as seen above, even the changes in 1.9 that reduce armor effectiveness can be offset entirely; indeed, even as I reduced armor protection in TMCW to only 56.7% for the same armor I added Protection IV (now a constant 15% per piece) to my boots for 76.2% damage reduction; in either case I could still add a helmet and associated enchantments).
As far as Fire Resistance goes, Fire Resistance potions are vastly more effective as they negate all damage; they are the only potion that I actually use (in the Nether, otherwise a water bucket and using it on all exposed lava and being aware of the potential danger avoids most accidents when caving). You do need to get blaze rods to make potions, which means exposing yourself to fire, but I find regular armor and caution to be enough.
The only other "protection" enchantment that I normally use is Feather Falling, which is particularly effective after 1.9 as it reduces damage by a constant 80% when combined with 2 pieces of Protection IV, which is my normal armor in vanilla 1.6.4 (in this version it only reduces damage by 52-80%, which is a big difference as 80% lets you survive a 103 block fall but 52% only lets you survive 44 blocks). I also put Aqua Affinity and Respiration III on a helmet which I only wear when I need to do something underwater (e.g. extending a railway though a river or lake, as I place them a few blocks below sea level).
I have Fire Protection III on my pants. Pretty helpful when in the Nether. I also use Thorn II but I find myself having to remove it when trying to capture zombie villagers often.
Elektra with Unbreaking III / Mending I FTW!!!
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I also wanted to thanks you for this comprehensive list as well,
A few years ago like the OP, I used to rarely bother with enchants, but with all the builds I do now and how the scale has grown on the level of my jobs I pretty much rely on them now, and see them as an essentially with my play style. I've grown to love enchanting, but it has had to grow on me! Especially after several years of y main world.
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He literally said this next. It also doubles as your cobble pick.
*And it didn't even grab the full quote, sigh.
I was being facetious. You know, the taboo about having a diamond pick and the useless point of it? Enchants just amplify that.
I assumed you can enchant the hoe other than mending and unbreaking (my buddy does this), however I never have. I'm not the farmer on the realm. I do not normally farm on SP. I fish. I'm the one who had to point out Fort3 worked on the farming aspect... except for wheat, you just up the seed received. I discovered this when I ran through his farm with the pick. When realms came out. *Shrugs* Good to know though I suppose
Note:
That means they say it is not what you use for general mining, and as I mentioned quite a few people say that they prefer to use Silk Touch for mining ores because it "saves" space or they don't want to risk their valuable Fortune pickaxe when Fortune III is actually easier to get than Silk Touch. Either way, you have to bring two pickaxes, and you do not get XP from using Silk Touch so the cost to maintain them is effectively doubled (with my playstyle I've never been in need of XP past my initial enchanting, thus have never built XP farms, but most players see them as necessary, even in the Mending era where costs are lower than prior to 1.8 - at one time I did run around mining everything with a maxed-out Fortune pickaxe which cost 37 levels for a single 25% repair, 5624 XP for 4 repairs, and even then I had no trouble repairing it and my other gear, I just stopped because it is a hindrance when you mine as many ores as I do. Even with the maximum of 6 Mending items being worn/held at once you'll only need up to 4686 XP to fully repair everything at once).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
It's all true. I guess the argument is in what one classifies as a GP. I mean, we all should be carry two picks regardless. Enderchest has become a must have invent item anymore, thus you have to have silk touch. Most people carry fortune. Thus, we normally have to have two picks. Like for that particular poster, he needs silk for his ores. I need fortune for my ores. You need a regular pick for your ores minus the fortune.
For me, ores do not classify under GP (or Work Pick for me), so silk touch works on my GP. My secondary pick, is my ore pick. I use it for ore and cobble only. He apparently uses it for everything. You use it for your enderchest.
It's also situational I suppose. There are moments when I am out traveling away from the house, and will just use my silk touch on everything, just to get the stuff and get back.
Also, once it gets to the point I can carry 14 double chests worth of inventory on my person, I even stop ore blocking (coal, diamond, redstone etc blocks) until i get back to the house because I have the room.
So really, depending when in the game you are, where you are, and what you are doing, I suppose it depends on the ultimate outcome of what you have. *shrug*
quote=TheMasterCaver
I disagree that your "general mining" pickaxe should have Silk Touch, and I'm not sure why it is so popular:
I suspect the preference for Silk Touch on the GP pick is a matter of playstyle affecting the relative utility.
Based on your reply and comments elsewhere, you appear both to mine in longer sessions (timewise) than do I: I find a stack of logs and a stack of charcoal quite sufficient for the few hour sessions in which I tend to engage. ( I rarely use coal other than for trading or as a construcution block [very useful for flooring starter (manual) ghast farms].)
Also, my impression is that you do a higher pecentage of what I would call spelunking – whereas the bulk of my time is feather mining (or one of its variants); I suspect this means my operations in any given session occur in a more limited area.
Another apparent difference is that much of what I mine for is stone and its variants, making the bulk of what I extract (i.e. carry out of the mine) "non-ore stuff": Silk Touch is of obvious utility when the desired product is smoothstone, and – even when mining cobble – the various ores constitute a relatively small percentage of the haul.
I agree with you that being able to process iron and gold ores (as well as coal) into blocks 'in the field' would be advantageous, but do not find the amounts I mine per session enough to justify carrying the equipment. [By the time I have shulkers, I will also have iron and gold farms sufficiently productive that the ore is more useful to me than the ingots it would produce — even given my limited interest in more highly decorated builds. Villager trading creates a similar sitution with lapis and redstone.]
I, also, carry a backup pick [as well as what I suspect is considerably more 'gear' than is typical; 2 each of swords, picks, axes, & shovels, water & empy buckets, bow & arrows, signs, ladders, enderchest (containing additional gear... including a backup silk touch tool)]. By mid-game this will be a copy of the Efficiency5/Unbreaking3/Mending/Fortune3 pick mentioned.
Overall, it appears to me that our differing choices are the result of optimizing toward different goals.
I don't use XP farms because I get far more XP than I could ever hope to use while caving - I occasionally hit level 70+ between repairs of any of my gear, which I do on the spot as needed - spending as much as 8000 XP to repair a single item (using the pre-1.8 costs 70 levels is 8765 XP while my pickaxe, one of my more expensive and most-used item by far, costs 31 levels, 887 XP with an optimal repair (the repair cost depends on the sacrifice durability so by slightly damaging it you can save a couple levels and still get a full repair due to the 12% bonus); an average play session yields more than 5000 XP. For comparison, Mending restores (2 / items) durability to each item being held or worn, meaning that it takes 781 XP to fully repair a diamond tool, 4686 with the maximum of 6 items at once (I have tested the effectiveness of Mending by doing some caving in 1.9+ and found no issues at all maintaining any of my gear, even the ones that do not benefit while being used).
In fact, this is part of the reason why TMCW adds amethyst, which is "better" than diamond (since it was nerfed), but far more expensive to obtain and maintain so it feels like I'm actually making use of what I get, and I still get more than enough XP (it cost 43 levels to repair my pickaxe by 25%, and while amethyst has 3x the durability of diamond the effective cost per use is still more than 3 times higher. Likewise, it effectively about 3.5 times rarer than diamond when factoring in durability and the fact that I need 4 units instead of 3 for a full repair (swords are worse while armor is better, either way, the majority of repairs are for my pickaxe, which uses around half the resources I need), and I still slowly accumulated a surplus without using Fortune, aside from what I found when branch-mining for my first resources (after this I never branch-mine again; only about half a percent of all mined ores in my last (modded) world came from branch-mining, and much less in my first world, where I did less mining and far more caving).
Actually, I spent even more XP per use back when I used a maxed-out Efficiency V, Unbreaking III, Fortune III pickaxe for all mining - 4 repairs at 37 levels each to restore full durability requires 5624 XP (0.9 XP per use, compared to 0.465 for amethyst (though I also have to spend more on other gear) and as low as 0.142 (optimal repair) for a non-Fortune pickaxe, both of the latter with Efficiency V and Unbreaking III) - and still got enough (only reaching level 40-45; since I kept durability high by trying to repair it as soon as it fell below 75% this left a large buffer for when I had to repair something else, then I could make up for it).
Until more recently I also repaired my sword with 2 diamonds for 35 levels each instead of sacrifices (twice the diamonds and 1.6 times the XP per durability point) since I didn't think you could repair it with a sacrifice (it would cost 40 levels for a new sword, but as mentioned above you can reduce the cost to 38 levels by damaging it and still get a full repair. The same sword in TMCW costs 47 levels or 2831 XP for 3/4 the durability, or 2.5 times the XP per use; 2831 XP for 4684 uses is still enough to gain back 11710 XP from killing 585 mobs which give 5 XP each, 4.14 times the XP spent, while a vanilla diamond sword yields 10.3 times the XP in return, and 3.3 times the XP with a full set of Mending gear - a ratio so high that I cannot see why anybody can't maintain it).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
quote=TheMasterCaver
I don't use XP farms because I get far more XP than I could ever hope to use while caving -
This bit would seem to contain the crux of the issue: my perception is that your playstyle is largely based around caving/spelunking, whereas I explore caves as little as possible (generally only where they intersect an area in which I wish to build something or are within the radius that needs to be lit / spawn-proofed).
I spent the great bulk of my time either gathering resources or building "things"; neither of which activities tends to generate large amounts of XP [villager trading and player-kill drop-farming being exceptions]. Resources come in four basic types (ores, food, mob drops, and basic materials {wood/dirt/various stone}). Only ores and player-kill food amd mob drops provide XP and I find it is the last catagory on which I spend the most time.
While the repair protocol you follow clearly works for your style (as demonstrated by the costs analysis you have provided), empirical evidence indicates it would not work for mine.
Different goals/styles >> different answers to the question posed by the OP.
Fire Protection 4 on one item and Protection 4 on the other three tops out the fire resistance of the armor set @20 with minimal sacrifice of other protections.
Someone else [who escapes me at present] has argued the case for swapping in one piece with Blast Protection 4 instead (for the reduction of Knockback provided by that enchantment…)
The case was well made, but I've not tried it (yet).
For the nether I also find swapping Frost Walker 2 for Depth Strider 3 useful as the latter serves no function in the nether…
That may have been me, but not because of knockback but so you can survive even a point-blank creeper explosion, at least on Hard (creepers deal up to 73 damage, more than enough to achieve the maximum possible armor penetration of 80%, which requires at least 64 points of damage in full diamond armor, meaning that armor only reduces damage by 16% by itself; full Protection IV reduces damage by an additional 64% but together they only reduce the peak damage to about 22, and even if you do not die losing most of your health isn't good. With maxed-out Blast Protection health lost is reduced to no more than about 12.3. Note that most other attacks are much weaker and armor penetration is not much of a factor; a pre-1.9 zombie (4 on Hard) deals 0.8 damage after full diamond armor while post-1.9 deals 0.96; for comparison, pre-1.9 point-blank creeper damage is 14.6).
This would also be far more beneficial for somebody like myself, as I do not wear maxed-out armor (in 1.6.4 a chestplate, leggings, and boots plus 2x Protection IV (10-20% per piece) averages 77.6% damage reduction; since prior to 1.8 enchantments are randomized the actual protection may be as low as 74.4%, which translates to a maximum of 12.5 damage from a point-blank creeper explosion on Normal (I've never seen the point of Hard when I can just upgrade my armor and use mods to add "Hard-only" effects, minus zombies breaking doors, to all difficulties - as seen above, even the changes in 1.9 that reduce armor effectiveness can be offset entirely; indeed, even as I reduced armor protection in TMCW to only 56.7% for the same armor I added Protection IV (now a constant 15% per piece) to my boots for 76.2% damage reduction; in either case I could still add a helmet and associated enchantments).
As far as Fire Resistance goes, Fire Resistance potions are vastly more effective as they negate all damage; they are the only potion that I actually use (in the Nether, otherwise a water bucket and using it on all exposed lava and being aware of the potential danger avoids most accidents when caving). You do need to get blaze rods to make potions, which means exposing yourself to fire, but I find regular armor and caution to be enough.
The only other "protection" enchantment that I normally use is Feather Falling, which is particularly effective after 1.9 as it reduces damage by a constant 80% when combined with 2 pieces of Protection IV, which is my normal armor in vanilla 1.6.4 (in this version it only reduces damage by 52-80%, which is a big difference as 80% lets you survive a 103 block fall but 52% only lets you survive 44 blocks). I also put Aqua Affinity and Respiration III on a helmet which I only wear when I need to do something underwater (e.g. extending a railway though a river or lake, as I place them a few blocks below sea level).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
I have Fire Protection III on my pants. Pretty helpful when in the Nether. I also use Thorn II but I find myself having to remove it when trying to capture zombie villagers often.
Elektra with Unbreaking III / Mending I FTW!!!
See my Minecraft world (100% Survival), Dirty Baker City here:
https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft/show-your-creation/2915825-dirty-baker-city