Fortune is definitely one of the best enchantments in Minecraft. This enchant increases the number of drops you get when breaking certain blocks such as ores (including diamonds and emeralds). Typically it is most useful when applied to a pickaxe while mining and it does not work for every block type.
The fortune enchant has three different levels (I, II, and III), with fortune III being the strongest and maximum level. With fortune III on your pickaxe, you can get up to four diamonds from a single diamond ore block!
What does the Minecraft Fortune Enchantment do?
Fortune essentially increases drops of “items”, but NOT placeable “blocks”. For example, it will increase the amount of diamonds, redstone, and lapis lazuli found when mining as these are “items”. However, it will NOT increase the amount of cobblestone as this is a “block” that you can place on the ground.
In the past, iron ore and gold ore did not benefit from the fortune enchantment. As of update 1.17 released in 2021, these blocks now drop “raw iron” and “raw gold”, which now receive the bonus from the fortune enchantment!
This logic applies to other parts of the game as well. For example, fortune will increase how many apples you get from breaking leaves but not logs. Fortune does not increase experience orb drops at all.
How to Get The Fortune Enchantment
The Fortune enchantment is not that rare and can be frequently found on the enchanting table. Typically, you will see Fortune III appear on tools once you are level 30 in your experience bar. Since enchants reset when you enchant an item at the table, try enchanting any item to reset the list and try again until fortune appears.
Don’t forget to surround your enchanting table with bookshelves as this will increase the quality of enchants you see on the list. You will want at least 15 bookshelves surrounding your table for maximum effectiveness.
Tips
- Since fortune does not help in any way when mining regular stone blocks, consider using a different pickaxe with efficiency and unbreaking to mine stone and then switch to the fortune pickaxe only for diamonds, redstone, gold, iron, coal, emeralds, quartz, and lapis lazuli.
- Fortune cannot be applied to any gear that already has silk touch on it. You will have to decide whether you want one or the other since you can’t have both!
- For more information on Fortune, check out this YouTube video.