What is Feather Falling?

Feather falling is an enchantment that’s unique to boots in Minecraft. What it does is reduce all forms of fall damage to the player upon landing. This enchantment can be applied to all types of enchanted boots.

This enchantment is especially useful because fall damage is usually ignored by armor. The enchantment works similar to naturally spawned items that reduce fall damage, such as hay bales and beds.

Enchantment Values

The value of falling damage reduced by the enchantment is used by the damage formula (12 x level)%. This means at Feather Falling IV (which is the maximum level of the enchantment), it caps out at a 48% falling damage reduction. It can save you from significant fall damage, but not all of it.

You can stack this enchantment with the Protection enchantment to further decrease falling damage. The maximum falling damage reduction you can stack is 80% due to the upper limit cap. This means you cannot achieve this cap unless you use commands to give yourself the feather falling level VII enchantment. However, using the protection enchantment, you can reach this limit in vanilla Minecraft. Specifically, by applying multiple pieces of your armor pieces with full protection IV. By this method you can survive a maximum fall distance of roughly 103 blocks at full health, making it incredibly useful in a lot of scenarios when you go to higher places, such as large structures.

Elytra and Ender Pearls

Feather falling is a great enchantment to pair with elytra’s, as it will reduce the damage you take upon landing, making it much safer to use an elytra. Players should note, however, that it will not reduce damage upon crashing into a wall, so it’s best to avoid this.

This enchantment is also very key if you plan on using a lot of ender pearls, as it reduces the amount of damage taken from using them. Ender pearl teleportations are used quite commonly early on, so this makes this enchantment useful at all stages of the game.

How do I obtain feather falling?

There are quite a few ways of obtaining the feather falling enchantment, as it’s quite a common enchantment.

Enchantment Table

A way to obtain the enchantment is through an enchanting table. Using 1-3 lapis lazuli (depending on the enchantment level), you can obtain it by random chance at any level of the enchantment. This enchantment is quite rare at level 30, but becomes quite common at level 22, with 24 and 26 also providing a decent chance to obtain the enchantment compared to level 30, which is quite low.

Fishing

You can obtain this enchantment from fishing only in Bedrock Edition. You have a random chance to fish for feather falling at a random level, along with other enchantments. You can also use the luck of the sea enchantment to increase this chance further.

Trading

Players can obtain the feather falling enchantment from villager trades with librarian villagers. You can gain all tiers of feather falling by using this method. 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.

Exploration

You can also find the Feather falling enchantment in different loot chests from different naturally spawned structures in Minecraft. While this isn’t a guaranteed way, it’s good to check these structures if you need the enchantment.

Applying the enchantment

Once you receive the enchanted book with feathers falling, you can use an anvil to apply the enchantment to your boots. It can be applied to both unenchanted items and items with enchantments on them, including the previous tier of feather falling. If you have two instances of feather falling III on either your boots or enchanted book, you can combine them to make feather falling IV through an anvil as well.

Game Commands

You can also achieve feather falling through using a game command. By using the command “/enchant @p feather_falling 4” and replacing 4 with any number between 1 and 7, you can give yourself the enchantment. Going to level 7 with the use of commands gives you the damage cap of protection you can have with the enchantment, thus meaning there’s no point in going into further damage reduction, typically speaking.