Should You Get Silk Touch on Your Axe in Minecraft? Yes, Absolutely.

As an avid Minecraft player and content creator, I am constantly exploring different enchantment combinations to take my gear to the next level. And without a doubt, putting Silk Touch on your diamond or netherite axe is 100% recommended for most players.

In this comprehensive guide, we‘ll dig into all the details, pros and cons, use cases, and expert tips so you can fully utilize Silk Touch axes in your next Minecraft world. Let‘s get started!

An Overview on Silk Touch – One of the Most Versatile and Useful Enchantments

First introduced officially in the 1.1 release, Silk Touch allows you to mine blocks to retrieve the actual block itself, rather than the standard drop items. For example, you can mine diamond ore to get the diamond ore block to place instead of just the diamond.

According to the developers at Mojang and various Minecraft Gamepedia sources, here‘s an quick overview table on what Silk Touch enables:

With the ability to retrieve so many blocks with Silk Touch, it opens up a world of opportunities for building, transport, resource management, and more.

Now let‘s look at the main reasons you should absolutely put Silk Touch on your main axe.

5 Benefits of Silk Touch on Your Axe

1. Break Leaf and Wood Blocks Efficiently

One of the best uses of a Silk Touch axe in survival mode is to quickly harvest leaf and log blocks. Instead of chopping down an entire tree, you can break the logs individually and they will drop as log blocks.

• This allows easier transportation back to your base.
• Save inventory space since you don‘t have planks filling it up.
• Create specialized wood farms more efficiently.

You can also break leaves to get the blocks to use for landscaping or collecting saplings without dealing with stick drops.

2. Transport and Build with Glass, Ice, Packed Ice

Glass is one of the most popular building materials given its aesthetic appeal. But mining it normally causes it to drop nothing. With Silk Touch on an axe though, you can break and carry around glass blocks easily as you gather resources and build.

The same goes for ice blocks and packed ice, which are vital resources for building efficient transportation infrastructure like ice boats roads and nether tunnels.

3. Flexible Mining of Ore Blocks

While ores won‘t drop their resources with Silk Touch, many players love having the ability to mine ores as the actual blocks for building and decorating structures:

• Construct an emerald temple with emerald ore blocks
• Use diamond and gold ores to make paths and logos
• Decorate your enchanting room with ore blocks and mining themes

So while you‘ll still need a Fortune pickaxe for mass mining, think of Silk Touch as more targeted collecting.

4. Create Melon and Pumpkin Farms

Silk Touch takes the frustration out of melon and pumpkin farming. Instead of breaking the stems and sometimes losing resources, you can harvest the melon/pumpkin blocks directly each time.

Over a large crop field, this saves a ton of potential loss and wasted farming efforts.

5. Retrieve Bookshelves, Beehives, and More

A Silk Touch axe helps you collect other useful blocks as well:

• **Bookshelves** – Get 3 books + oak planks instead of just books
• **Bee Nests/Hives** – Transport them fully intact with bees still inside
• **Mushroom Blocks** – Pick up the full mushroom block instantly

As you can see, a Silk Touch axe is almost like having an advanced retrieval and building tool combined with the strength and speed of an axe.

Downsides to Consider

I want to provide balanced expertise though – there are a couple downsides to equipping Silk Touch on your axe:

Takes up an enchantment slot – Since you can only have up to 6 enchantments on an axe, Silk Touch takes one slot that could be used for damage or durability enchantments.

Can make clearing trees/plants slower – Removing entire trees and foliage can sometimes be slower with Silk Touch since you have to break each block individually. Fortune or Efficiency might serve you better there.

So you need to think about your playstyle. If you focus more on exploring, combat, and collection resources, maybe Silk Touch isn‘t as vital on an axe specifically. But almost every player enjoys building, so even those who don‘t focus on it as much benefit from keeping one Silk Touch axe at least in their toolkit.

Expert Tip – Combine Silk Touch with These Enchantments

Through extensive playing time, researching, and testing, I‘ve found combining Silk Touch with Unbreaking III and Efficiency V creates the optimal axe for building and harvesting. Here‘s why:

Unbreaking – Ensures you minimize risk of losing the precious Silk Touch axe since it has high durability

Efficiency – Increases break speed so you can rapidly gather logs, glass blocks, melons and anything else. This compensates for any potential slowdown from harvesting block-by-block.

Mending is also excellent for ensuring your axe stays repaired without having to re-enchant constantly.

And there you have it – a complete breakdown on Silk Touch on axes. Let me know if you have any other questions! Happy crafting!