What is Aqua Affinity

Aqua Affinity is one of Minecraft‘s most basic but underrated helmet enchantments. The enchantment simply gets rid of the mining speed penalty, which makes it 5x slower when standing underwater, and 25x slower when floating. This makes it the best utility in the game for players interested in underwater mining. The enchantment only activates when the player’s head is fully submerged in water. 

Aqua affinity can also only be applied to helmets, including leather caps, turtle shells, and other forms of helmets from different armor sets. Also, unlike most helmet enchantments, aqua affinity can only be at level 1 in survival.

How can you get Aqua Affinity?

Enchantment Table

There are quite a few ways to get the enchantment. The most common way to obtain the enchantment is through an enchanting table. Using 1-3 lapis lazuli (depending on the enchantment lvl) you can obtain it by random chance, and you can obtain this enchantment at any enchantment level.

Enchanted Books

You can also obtain enchanted books with aqua affinity in a variety of ways. One of the many ways is through fishing, where you have a random chance to fish for it and other enchantments. 

You can also obtain it from villager trades with librarian villagers. By breaking and placing down the librarian’s lectern, you can reset their trades. This can be done an infinite number of times by trapping the villager in a small space and constantly breaking and replacing the lectern. However, once you purchase anything from that librarian, the trade will be locked, regardless of whether it is reset.

The final way is through chest loot from different locations, such as dungeons, monuments, desert temples, ancient cities, underwater ruins, mineshafts, and pillager outposts. With a little bit of exploring you are bound to find the enchantment you are looking for! Once you receive the enchanted book, you can use an anvil to apply the enchantment to your equipment.

You can also use the game command, /enchant @p aqua_affinity 1 in the chat box, to give yourself the effect if you have the permissions on your server.

How can you use Aqua Affinity?

Due to aqua affinity being relatively basic, most would think it doesn’t really do much, but it’s actually quite useful. When paired with respiration, which increases the amount of time you can be underwater before you drown, it allows the user to do underwater projects with great ease. This is also incredibly helpful when exploring underwater ruins and ocean monuments or looking for underwater materials such as clay and sponges.

Like respiration, you can also combine aqua affinity with depth-strider enchantment for your boots. This allows players to move quicker in water, which will be very useful for quick mining trips underwater. Using all three of these enchantments at once makes any underwater gameplay feel much better and more fluid.

The final thing you can pair aqua affinity with quite well are potions of water breathing. This works differently compared to what respiration does, in a more efficient manner, and it takes away any player’s worries about drowning as long as the effect persists. This pretty much allows the player to do long-term underwater projects without worry, and with aqua affinity, these projects become even more efficient.