Smite is a powerful enchantment that increases the damage of your weapons to every undead entity, such as drowned, zoglins, normal and camel husks, zombified piglins, wither, wither skeletons, and every other zombie or skeleton variant you can think of.
In this guide, we will take a detailed look at the Smite enchantment, including how it works, how to apply it to a weapon, and a few mods that can further enhance your experience.
How the Smite Enchantment Works
The Smite enchantment is available with five possible levels, with each level of Smite dealing 2.5 times the normal damage (a little over a heart) to undead creatures with every attack.
At higher levels, Smite can deal a tremendous 12.5 points of damage with every attack. A wooden sword with Smite V will deal more damage to a zombie than a netherite sword without any enchantments, for example. Even an iron or diamond sword with Smite II is enough to take down most undead mobs with only two hits.
How to Get Smite on Your Sword, Axe, or Spear
The traditional method of getting the Smite enchantment on your weapon is to use an enchanting table. You can also get a weapon with Smite by using enchanted books or by looting them from End Cities and Bastion Remnants.
Using an Enchanting Table
- Craft an enchanting table with four obsidian, two diamonds, and one book, if you haven’t already.
- Place the table down and surround it with bookshelf blocks, leaving one block of open space between them and the table. You’ll know it’s working when letters float out from the bookshelves and into the table. Once active, you can place what you want to enchant onto the table, along with some lapis lazuli. You will then be given three choices for the enchantment, along with an experience level cost.
- Select one to spend the experience and the available lapis lazuli and enchant the item.
Note: The enchanting table will list one guaranteed enchantment with each choice. This is not the only enchantment the item will get, however. Oftentimes, especially at higher levels, the item will be given multiple different effects.
Unfortunately, it’s completely random as to what enchantment you will get. It will likely take multiple attempts before Smite appears.
Combining It with Enchanted Books
You can also enchant books to stockpile on different effects on the cheap.
- Enchant books until one of them has Smite.
- Combine your weapon of choice with that enchanted book using an anvil.
Tip: Anvils can be crafted with four iron ingots and three iron blocks. It’s commonly used to repair items with ingots of the same type, but it can also combine two items with different enchantments into one that has both.
Loot End Cities and Bastion Remnants
Enchanted swords have a chance to be generated inside chests in two specific structures: End Cities and Bastion Remnants.
End Cities are scattered throughout The End. To reach any of these areas, you have to defeat the End Dragon and step into the floating portal node that spawns somewhere on the edge of the central island.
Bastion Remnants are found throughout the Nether. They come in different varieties and always have around three chests of loot hiding inside. They’re heavily populated by piglins, however.
Tip: Potions of invisibility can make you undetectable enough so you can walk right in and loot the chests without the piglins ever noticing.
Top Minecraft Mods to Improve Enchanted Weapons
Even in its vanilla state, Smite is an absolute game changer against undead mobs. That being said, the lack of in-game tooltips and the rather bland nature of the enchantment leave more to be desired.
Whether you’re looking to fix the flaws of the Smite enchantment, or you want to boost its might further, these mods will no doubt help.
Enchantment Descriptions
This lightweight UI mod adds descriptions of each enchantment to the tooltip pop-up. The concise details provide extra clarity about each enchantment effect, making it easier to quickly know what your enchanted gear does.
Immersive Damage Indicators
Damage is key in Minecraft combat, but it’s hard to know how much damage you’re actually dealing to mobs. With this simple, informative mod, every time you damage a mob, a number will pop off of their character model showing how much damage that attack did.
Extra Damage Enchantments
Extra Damage Enchantments takes the philosophy behind Smite and expands it to include more mob types. It introduces five new enchantment effects, each dealing bonus damage to mob types like humanoids, beasts, and arcane.
How to Install Minecraft Mods
You can install the above mods automatically using the CurseForge app or manually by placing the mod files within your game’s mods folder. Both methods allow you to easily add custom features and enhancements into your vanilla Minecraft experience.If you want to learn more, you can read our detailed guide on how to install Minecraft mods.
Common Issues and Quick Fixes
Smite won’t transfer to the weapon at an anvil
Make sure that the weapons are made of the same material, with enchanted books being an exception. If that doesn’t work, check that your weapon doesn’t have a conflicting enchantment.
Some enchantments will also block other enchantments from being added on. Smite is incompatible with Sharpness, Bane of Arthropods, Density, Breach, and Cleaving.
My weapon isn’t dealing as much damage as it should
Double-check that the mob you’re fighting is, indeed, an undead mob. Otherwise, keep an eye on how quickly you attack.
All attacks have a recharge speed, indicated by the sword icon. Attacking before the sword is full will result in a weaker attack. So, the sooner you strike again, the less damage you deal. The rate is approximately equal to how full the bar is (a half filled bar will deal half the damage from both your weapon and its enchantment)
This damage reduction applies to any other enchantments you have as well. So Smite, even against zombies, will deal less damage if you attack before your attack recharges.
I can’t increase the Smite enchantment level
Like all enchantments, Smite can be leveled up to deal more damage per strike. To do so, use an anvil to combine two enchanted items of the same Smite level. The new weapon will then have one Smite level higher than the rest.
Tip: You can also use an enchanted book with Smite to increase the enchantment level on your weapon.
They need to be the same level, though, otherwise the resulting item will be whichever level is higher, instead of raising up to a new level.
Some examples:
- Two diamond swords with Smite I will combine into a single diamond sword with Smite II.
- A diamond sword with Smite III and an enchanted book with Smite III will combine into a single diamond sword with Smite IV.
- One diamond sword with Smite II and one with Smite III will combine into a diamond sword with Smite III.