What the Looting enchantment does
Looting is a sword enchantment that increases how much stuff mobs drop when you kill them. It does two things at the same time: it raises the number of common drops a mob coughs up, and it raises the chance of rare drops showing up at all. If you’ve ever wondered why your friend keeps pulling wither skeleton skulls and you don’t, this is usually the reason.
The cap is Looting III. You don’t have to enchant every sword you make, but for mob farms, late-game runs, and anything where you actually care about rare drops, Looting III on your main sword is one of the better returns you’ll get out of the enchanting table.
How Looting changes drops
There are two separate effects, and it helps to think about them apart.
Common drops (the always-drops)
Most mobs have a base drop range, like 0-2 rotten flesh for a zombie or 0-2 arrows for a skeleton. Looting adds a flat bonus of 0 to (level) extra items to the maximum. With Looting III on a zombie, you can roll anywhere from 0 to 5 rotten flesh per kill instead of 0 to 2. The roll is still random, so you don’t always max out, but the ceiling moves up.
This applies to most mob drops you bump into: bones, string, gunpowder, ender pearls, blaze rods, magma cream, ghast tears, slimeballs, leather, raw mutton, raw beef, feathers, ink sacs, glow ink, and phantom membranes.
Rare drops (the special ones)
Some drops have a base percentage chance that’s well below 100%. Things like a wither skeleton’s skull, a zombie’s rare carrot or iron ingot, or a creeper head from a kill landed by a charged creeper. Looting raises that percentage by a flat 1 percentage point per level.
The clearest example is the wither skeleton skull. With a plain sword, the base chance is 2.5%. With Looting I that becomes 3.5%, with II it’s 4.5%, and with III it’s 5.5%. Still not great, but it’s more than double the base rate, and skull drops add up fast over a beacon’s worth of grinding.
Equipment drops
If a zombie, skeleton, piglin, or other mob spawns wearing armor or holding a weapon, there’s a chance the item drops when you kill it. Looting raises that drop chance by a percentage point per level too. A skeleton with a freshly enchanted bow is much more likely to give you that bow if you finish it with a Looting III sword.
How to get Looting
There are four reliable routes.
The enchanting table
Looting can roll on any sword at any level on the table, but you want the top slot enchant to land it at higher tiers, so surround your enchanting table with 15 bookshelves. At level 30 enchants, Looting III shows up fairly often as a single roll or paired with Sharpness, Smite, or Unbreaking.
One tip worth knowing: the table won’t always show you everything you’ll get. If you see “Looting II” on the third slot, you might also get a second enchantment along with it. The list only previews the first one.
Librarian villager trades
This is the most reliable way to land Looting III with no random luck involved. A librarian villager offers enchanted books, and Looting is in the pool. Lock in a librarian by placing a lectern, check the trade, and break the lectern if it isn’t the book you want. Repeat until you see Looting III. The cost runs 5 to 64 emeralds plus a book, depending on the librarian’s level and how the trade rolled.
Bedrock players: the same loop works, but the trade reset is sometimes finicky. Break and replace the lectern before the villager finishes the workstation animation.
Loot chests and fishing
Enchanted books with Looting can show up in stronghold libraries, dungeon chests, mineshaft chests, and a handful of other generated structures. They can also be reeled in by fishing with a Luck of the Sea rod, though that’s slow, and you’ll spend more time fishing than the book is worth.
Anvil combining
Once you have the book, put it on a sword with an anvil. Looting III costs 4 levels on its own, plus the prior work penalty if the sword has been combined before. If you can, put Looting on a fresh sword that hasn’t been worked yet, so the anvil cost stays cheap.
Where Looting really pays off
Some mobs are barely worth enchanting for. Cows and pigs drop one or two items reliably and Looting just adds a small bonus. Other mobs are practically built around the enchantment. A few that earn their keep:
- Wither skeletons, for the skulls. A wither boss needs three skulls, and Looting III roughly doubles your skull rate per kill.
- Endermen, for ender pearls. Pearls drop 0-1 normally, so Looting III turns that into 0-4 per kill. Stocking up for end portals goes much faster.
- Blazes, for blaze rods. Same math as ender pearls. Blaze rods are the bottleneck for brewing, so this matters.
- Ghasts, for ghast tears. Tears are rare and used for regeneration potions and end crystals. Looting III is the difference between farming for an hour and farming for a day.
- Iron golems, for iron. A golem drops 3-5 iron base, and with Looting III you can hit 8 ingots from a single kill. With a sustainable iron farm, this is one of the highest-payoff sword enchants in the game.
- Drowned with tridents. Tridents are an equipment drop, so Looting raises the drop rate. Pair it with patience.
Mistakes that quietly cost you drops
Looting is straightforward, but a few situations cancel the bonus and most players don’t notice.
The kill has to come from a player using the Looting sword. If a wolf, an iron golem, or another mob lands the killing blow, the Looting bonus is gone. Wolves are the worst offender. A pack of tamed wolves will gladly steal every wither skeleton kill while you wave your sword around.
Indirect kills don’t count either. If the mob dies to fall damage, fire, lava, suffocation, drowning, or a stray TNT blast, you’re back to base drop rates. Bow kills don’t apply either, even if you’re holding the Looting sword in your off-hand at the same time. The bow is the weapon that delivered the kill.
Holding the sword in your off-hand is also a no. Looting only applies when the sword is in your main hand and is the weapon that lands the killing blow.
Java vs. Bedrock notes
The core mechanic is the same on both editions. The only quirks worth knowing:
On Bedrock, the anvil cost math is slightly different in edge cases, but Looting III still costs the same base 4 levels. You’re unlikely to notice unless you’re stacking many enchantments at once.
Villager trade resetting via lectern works on both, but the timing window is tighter on Bedrock, especially on servers with custom tick rates.
Frequently asked questions
What’s the max level of Looting?
Looting III. There is no way to legitimately get Looting IV or higher in survival. Modified games or commands can push it further, but vanilla caps at III.
Does Looting work on axes?
No. Looting is a sword-only enchantment in both Java and Bedrock. Axes can deal damage as melee weapons, but they can’t carry Looting. If you want the drop bonus, use a sword.
Does Looting work on the Ender Dragon or the Wither?
For most boss drops, no. The dragon egg and elytra are guaranteed structure rewards, not mob drops, so Looting has no effect. The Wither doesn’t have unique loot to roll on. Stick to other enchants for bosses.
Does Looting affect XP?
No. Looting affects item drops only. Experience orbs from mob kills are fixed by the mob type, not by your sword’s enchantments.
Can I put Looting and Sharpness on the same sword?
Yes. They don’t conflict. A common end-game sword carries Sharpness V, Looting III, Unbreaking III, Mending, Sweeping Edge III (Java only), and Fire Aspect II. You can drop Fire Aspect if you’re farming creepers, since fire scorches the gunpowder drop.
Does Looting work on raid mobs?
Yes. Pillagers, vindicators, evokers, and ravagers all drop loot that Looting can boost, including emeralds and totems of undying from evokers. A Looting III sword during a raid is one of the easier ways to stack totems.
Does Bane of Arthropods help on spider drops?
Bane of Arthropods is a damage boost against spider-type mobs. It doesn’t change drops on its own. Pair it with Looting if you want to clear spider spawners faster and still collect more string and spider eyes.
Bottom line
If you only enchant one sword in a world, this is one of the two enchantments worth chasing alongside Sharpness. Looting III is the difference between farming a wither skeleton for a week and farming one for a weekend, and the difference between a casual mob grinder and a real loot pipeline. Get a librarian villager set up early, lock in the book trade, and you’ll wonder how you played without it.