The Best Helmet Enchantments In Minecraft

What Are The Best Helmet Enchantments In Minecraft?

The best helmet enchantments in Minecraft are:

• Aqua Affinity
• Respiration
• Thorns
• Unbreaking
• Protection

Aqua Affinity Helmet Enchantment

Aqua affinity is one of the best Minecraft helmet enchantments, simply because it affects what Minecraft players do best: mine.

Aqua affinity allows players who wear a helmet enchanted with it faster underwater mining speed.

While this doesn't exactly sound impressive, aqua affinity becomes an excellent addition to your enchanted helmet collection when paired with other enchantments such as respiration, which gives players more time to spend underwater.

Aqua affinity allows players to mine five times faster underwater than usual, effectively bringing the mining speed underwater up to mining speed above water.

Respiration Helmet Enchantment

The respiration helmet enchantment is one of the most popular and useful helmet enchantments because it allows the wearer to breathe longer underwater.

Respiration has three levels and paired with other Minecraft helmet enchantments (such as aqua affinity) can give the player a powerful helmet for mining underwater without the worry of drowning.

This situational enchantment gives the player 45 additional seconds of time to breathe underwater at maximum level, meaning this enchantment increases a players underwater breathing time (at respiration level III) to 60 seconds in total before taking drowning damage.

Turtle Shells And Water Breathing

Turtle shells in Minecraft are a sort of enchanted armor, in that they also help the player to stay underwater for longer.

The turtle shell gives 10 seconds of breathing time and an armor rate of 2 points when worn.

Thorns Helmet Enchantment

Thorns is a universal enchantment for all armor pieces (it's in fact one of the best enchantments for armor in Minecraft), but is still a great enchantment when cast onto a helmet.

Thorns at max level (Thorns III) packs a punch, as thorns gives the player a chance to deal damage (ranging between half a heart - 2 hearts worth) to any attacker to the player.

This damage is dealt whether the incoming attack is melee damage or ranged (such as arrows or thrown tridents) and the chance to inflict it increases with each level of thorns:

Players should note however that thorns does come with a durability point penalty to the helmet; each time thorns deals damage in retaliation to incoming damage to an attacker, 2 durability points will be taken.

Unbreaking Helmet Enchantment

The unbreaking enchantment is one of the best enchantments in Minecraft, because it not only ensures you’ll always have your favorite piece of armor with you, but it increases your helmet’s durability by giving it a chance to avoid reductions in durability when it's used.

Practically, this means a helmet at maximum enchantment level (unbreaking III) has a 110% chance to avoid durability (for golden helmets) when used.

The turtle shell can also be enchanted with unbreaking:

Using a turtle shell as a helmet in Minecraft can offer the same chance of durability reduction when enchanted with unbreaking, with chances being much higher:

This coupled with the turtle shell’s water breathing effect when worn makes it one of the best helmets in Minecraft.

Protection Helmet Enchantment

The protection helmet enchantment is an exceptionally good enchantment to use in Minecraft, and is another that is applicable to all pieces of armor.

The protection enchantment has 4 different types (protection, fire protection, blast protection and projectile protection) and they do what their names suggest- they protect the player from various forms of damage.

The protection enchantment has 4 levels and with each, offers an increase in damage resistance and reduced damage to the player.

These are stackable, with more pieces of armor worn besides a helmet offering increased protection, up to a maximum of 80% damage reduction at maximum enchantment level (protection IV).

This helmet enchantment also reduces damage from sources a normal, unenchanted helmet wouldn't, which makes it one of the best helmet enchantments in Minecraft.

Protection offers damage resistance from the following sources:

• Explosions
• Fire
• Fireworks
• Lava
• Fall damage
• Wither (Java edition only)
• Mob Attacks
• Drowning and suffocation
• Freezing

The protection enchantment is not effective against:

• The Kill command
• Hunger
• The Void
• The warden’s sonic attack

This means that protection is a well-rounded enchantment for your helmet, however it is not compatible with the other types of protection enchantment.

Protection I - Protection IV Damage Resistance

The protection enchantment increases damage resistance with each level, as shown below:

When enchanting a helmet with protection, it's important to note that while protection is mutually exclusive with blast protection and fire protection, other pieces of armor with these enchantments can be worn, and the damage protection percentage will stack.

Fire Protection

The fire protection enchantment is one of the best helmet enchantments to use if you’re looking to explore volcanic places in your Minecraft world.

Fire protection protects against specific sources of fire damage to the player.

These are any ongoing source of fire damage:

• Damage from fire
• Damage from soul fire
• Damage from lava

Each level of the fire protection helmet enchantment increases this resistance by a certain percentage:

While more damage resistance is offered by fire protection than protection, its damage reduction is limited to only fire, so it’s wise to consider what would be the best helmet enchantment for you according to your playstyle.

Blast Protection

The blast protection enchantment is similar to fire and projectile protection in that it protects against one type of damage: explosions, however this enchantment may offer more usefulness than other protection enchantments.

The damage sources blast protection reduces are:

• Fireworks
• Wither Skulls
• Wither (Bedrock edition only)
• TNT
• Creepers
• Charged Creepers
• Ghast Fireballs
• End Crystals

The level of protection from explosions is reduced by the same amounts as the fire protection and projectile protection enchantments:

Helmets enchanted with blast protection are also able to reduce knockback form explosions in the Java edition, up to 75% at the maximum level.

Projectile Protection

Helmets enchanted with projectile protection afford the player damage resistance to projectiles such as:

• Arrows
• Thrown Tridents
• Llama Spit
• Blaze Fireballs
• Wither Skulls (Direct hit)
• Shulker Bullets
• Ghast Fireballs (Direct hit)

While the damage reduction percentage is similar to other protection enchantments, blast protection does not protect against:

• Splash Potions Of Harming
• Dragon Fireballs 
• Firework Rockets

Helmets enchanted with projectile protection are unable to be enchanted with other protection enchantments, however can be used with other armor pieces to stack damage resistance up to 80% (including the turtle shell).