Every enchantable item now has a slot budget, shown as a row of pips in the Catalogue. Enchanting spends slots. Run out, and you have to choose what matters on that item.
| Tier | Slots | Items |
|---|
| 3 | 3 | Wood, stone, copper, leather, bow, fishing rod, shield |
| 4 | 4 | Iron, chainmail, crossbow |
| 5 | 5 | Diamond, netherite, elytra, turtle helmet, mace, trident |
| 6 | 6 | All gold gear |
Gold is the outlier on purpose. It is the softest material in the game and the one nobody had a reason to enchant, so it gets the largest budget: fragile, brilliant, and worth protecting.
An enchantment costs slots equal to its level. Protection IV would cost four, Fire Aspect II costs two, and so on. Mending is a flat 3 regardless.
Curses are free. They cost zero slots and each one grants an extra slot on top. Accepting Curse of Binding on a chestplate is a genuine bargain rather than a joke.
Vanilla's grindstone strips enchantments and refunds a little experience, with no downside. Here it strips everything including curses, and stamps the item with a permanent penalty that removes one maximum slot per use.
An anvil can buy one of those slots back. Put the scarred item in with its repair material and pay the levels:
| Material | Levels |
|---|
| Netherite | 10 |
| Diamond | 8 |
| Gold | 5 |
| Iron, chainmail | 5 |
| Copper | 3 |
| Anything else | 2 |
The penalty is stored on the item itself, so it survives repairs, renaming and trading. A twice-ground sword is permanently a worse sword until you pay to restore it.
