How to View Enchantment Descriptions in Minecraft With Enchantment Descriptions

guide

Enchantment Descriptions is a Minecraft utility mod that shows you what each enchantment actually does while you are playing, without leaving the game or checking an external reference. Instead of guessing from an enchantment's name, you can read a short explanation of its effect directly on screen.

How to View Descriptions

Hold shift to view enchantment descriptions.

That is the core interaction. While you are holding shift, the mod reveals the description text for the enchantment you are looking at, so you can read what it does before deciding whether to keep, apply, or combine it.

What the Mod Does

The mod attaches a plain-language explanation to enchantments. Each description tells you the practical effect of the enchantment in a single line or short passage. The descriptions cover a wide range of enchantment types, including:

Protective enchantments that lessen incoming harm from most sources, from fire, from falls and ender pearl teleportation, from explosions and their knockback, and from projectiles such as arrows and fireballs.
Enchantments that extend how long you can stay submerged and that speed up mining while you are underwater.
Enchantments that punish attackers by dealing damage back when you are hit.
Weapon enchantments that raise an item's damage, add extra damage against undead mobs like Zombies and Skeletons, add extra damage against arthropods like Spiders and Silverfish, increase knockback strength, and add fire damage on hit.
Enchantments that make mobs drop more loot when killed.
Tool enchantments that raise mining speed, let fragile blocks such as glass be collected, slow down durability loss, and cause some blocks like coal and diamond ore to drop additional items.
Bow enchantments that raise arrow damage, raise arrow knockback, add fire damage to arrows, and let the bow fire normal arrows for free as long as you have at least one arrow.
Fishing enchantments that improve the chance of good loot and shorten the wait before a fish bites.
Enchantments that raise movement speed underwater, freeze water beneath you into frosted ice, and repair armor and tool durability using XP.
Curse enchantments, including one that keeps a cursed item locked in an armor slot and one that destroys the cursed item if you die while carrying it.
Combat enchantments that raise sweeping attack damage, let a trident return on its own after being thrown, raise damage to aquatic mobs, launch you forward when you use a trident in rain or water, and let a trident call down lightning during thunderstorms.
Crossbow enchantments that fire extra arrows in similar directions and speed up reloading.
Enchantments that let projectiles pass through mobs, raise movement speed on soul blocks, raise movement speed while sneaking, improve attacks against armored targets, raise attack damage based on how far you have fallen, and launch you back into the air after a smash attack.

Mod Support

The mod also provides descriptions for enchantments added by other mods it supports, including Go Fish, Shields+, Grapple Mod, Hunter Illager, Better Archeology, Deeper Darker, Endless Biomes, Stalwart Dungeons, Dungeons Enchantments, Create Stuff, and Improved Exp. These descriptions follow the same pattern: a short statement of what the enchantment does, such as knocking back attackers and projectiles, reflecting damage back at attackers, increasing how much damage shields block, reducing damage taken while blocking, setting attackers and projectiles on fire, allowing faster movement while blocking, reducing shield cooldown times, and giving a shield a bash attack.

Some supported enchantments have more unusual effects, such as running on walls, jumping twice, sliding using built-up momentum, increasing how much boomerangs bounce off walls, letting some damage bypass protection enchantments, catching more types of treasure, boosting an elytra on takeoff, mining the block below the target block as well, spreading sculk nearby when mobs are killed, increasing damage to sculk-based mobs, teleporting away enemies that attack you, and dealing excess damage from a kill to nearby mobs.

Using the Descriptions

The descriptions are meant to be read in the moment. Hold shift while viewing an enchantment and the mod supplies the explanation. There is no crafting step and no separate menu to open for this: the information appears as part of the normal interface while you hold shift. If you want to change which key performs this action, set the corresponding hotkey in the controls menu.