What does the thorns enchantment do in Minecraft 1.19 update?

At its core, Minecraft is a survival experience. With night comes not only darkness but also hordes of hostile mobs such as skeletons, zombies, creepers, and spiders. This means that players will need to work to protect themselves by building a base and crafting armor and shields to take back the night.

While armor on its own is an effective method of protection, players can elevate their protective abilities through the use of enchantments. These enchantments can increase their armor’s ability to protect them or even punish attackers for attacking them, as will be detailed below.

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Everything about the thorns enchantment in Minecraft 1.19

What thorns does

Putting thorns on a netherite chest plate (Image via Minecraft)

Thorns is an armor enchantment that can cause mobs attacking the wearer to take some damage in return. This effect can be seen in guardians and elder guardians, which will deal damage to the player if the player hits them with a melee attack when their spikes are out.

Unlike the guardian style of thorns, the thorns enchantment can deal damage to both melee and ranged attackers, rather than just melee attackers. The damage that thorns deals is random within a range. This damage range is not influenced by the level of the enchantment and ranges from half a heart to two hearts.

The variable that is influenced by the level of the enchantment is the chance that attackers take damage. Each level of thorns has a 15% chance of dealing random damage to an attacker, up to a maximum of a 45% chance. Multiple pieces of armor can stack thorns and have an independent chance to inflict thorns damage. However, the damage dealt back is capped at two hearts.

Having one armor piece with thorns three has an 11.25% chance of dealing two hearts of damage and deals an average of 1.125 damage, which is just a little more than half a heart. Two items with thorns three have a 28.83% chance to deal max damage and deal around a heart of damage on average.

With the thorns three enchantment on three pieces of armor, there is a 46.33% chance of max damage and average damage of around 1.3 hearts. And finally, if all four of the player’s armor pieces have thorns three, there is a 61.18% chance of dealing two hearts of damage, and the armor deals average damage of just over 1.5 hearts.

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What thorns goes on

A custom shield, which thorns can not be placed on (Image via Minecraft)

Thorns is a defensive enchantment. As this designation might imply, this means it can be applied to the game’s armor. This includes boots, leggings, chest plates, and helmets. Interestingly, the thorns enchantment cannot be placed on shields. This is a puzzling phenomenon as it would be a perfect fit for this enchantment, dealing damage when the player defends themselves from attack.

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Obtaining the thorns enchantment

An example of a desert temple (Image via Minecraft)

As an enchantment, thorns can be acquired just like any other enchantment through the enchanting table. In addition to the normal enchanting method, thorns one and two books can be found in several places throughout Minecraft.

Players can find them on armor enchantments that zombies and skeletons are wearing, enchanted books that a player fishes up, trading with librarian villagers, and as random loot in many of the game’s generated structures, such as desert temples.

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Potential downsides

A zombie villager found in an igloo's basement (Image via Minecraft)

This enchantment is a bit of a double-edged sword as its potential drawback is its greatest strength: It deals damage to mobs that hit the player. There are certain mobs that players might not want to kill, such as zombie villagers, which can be cured for amazing trading deals later on. Leading these zombie villagers to an area to keep them safe and boxing them in can result in the zombie dying from thorns, which is quite frustrating.

Another one of the drawbacks of the thorns enchantment is that it does not always proc when the player is attacked. This means it cannot be relied upon to deal with potential threats.

These downsides detract quite a bit from the potential usefulness of the enchantment, and many of the game’s most well-known players, such as Ph1lza, openly consider the enchantment one of the worst in the game.