With Minecraft having over 131 million concurrent users in 2020, it goes to show that tons of new players are still trying out this nearly ten-year-old game. The game is so popular that Minecraft Steve even made his way into Super Smash Bros.
One of the most important things when playing Minecraft is to make sure important tools aren't in disrepair. No one wants their weapons breaking right after summoning a Wither so they lose out on a precious Nether Star. The best way to avoid that is to have an anvil so players can repair their items.
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To start, players will need a total of thirty-one iron ingots to make an anvil. One way to get these ingots is to smelt iron ore in a furnace. Iron ore can found in many places, but we recommend trying to find a cave to mine in to find the ore players need. Too impatient to mine? Iron ingots can also be found in temples, dungeons, and stronghold chests.
Once players have enough ingots, players should craft three iron blocks. The recipe here is simple, it just takes nine iron ingots together. Once they have these blocks prepared, players should place 3 blocks of iron on the top horizontal row, 3 iron ingots on the bottom horizontal row, and 1 iron ingot in the middle square. Once they finish crafting, they will be the proud owner of a brand new anvil!
Anvils can be used to repair other items but it's important to understand that the anvil itself can also fall into disrepair. Each time players use the anvil it has a 12% chance of becoming damaged, which typically results in players getting to use their anvil an average of 25 times before it breaks entirely.
The anvil will first become chipped and then damaged before being outright destroyed. Anvils can't be repaired, so it's important to make sure to start mining or hunting for iron ore or ingots once it reaches its damaged state. If the entire top of the anvil has a cracked texture, it's time to start working on replacing it.
There are two ways players can go about repairing items. The first way is by combining two similar items (like two diamond swords) together. Players should be warned that this method will sometimes result in weapons not only keeping their previous enchantments but gaining strange new enchantments as well.
The other option is to use materials that were originally used to craft the item needing repair. Using a diamond sword as an example, players could simply use a single diamond to repair it. With how valuable some items can be, this is the most economical option. One of any material repairs 25% of an item's durability.
Players can also rename their items if they have a name tag they can use. There is no way to craft name tags without the use of mods, so players will have to hunt them down themselves. They're typically found in chests located in dungeons or nether fortresses.
Players can then give their items lots of wacky names! Just be sure to be careful if renaming resources for some reason. If a player names a piece of iron ore "Iron Andy" or any other silly name, they won't be able to stack with other similar resources any longer.
Minecraft is available now on Mobile, PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
