In Minecraft, repairing items using an anvil is a crucial aspect of maintaining your gear. However, as you repeatedly repair items, the cost in experience levels increases exponentially. This raises the question: can you repair items forever, or is there a limit?
The Repair Cost Mechanic
When repairing an item using an anvil, the cost is determined by several factors:
If the target item is undamaged, there is no charge for repair.
If the target item is damaged, the base repair cost is 2 levels.
If the sacrifice item (used for repair) has enchantments, the enchantment cost is added to the repair cost.
The total cost includes any prior work penalties, repair costs, and rename costs.
The key point is that each time an enchanted item is combined with an anvil, the repair cost doubles. This exponential increase is designed to keep the game interesting by making heavily repaired items more expensive to maintain.
The Repair Cost Limit
In Java Edition, the anvil can only apply 39 levels worth of work in a single operation. If the job would cost 40 or more levels, it will be rejected as “Too Expensive!”.
Once the repair cost exceeds 2,147,483,647 levels, further repairs become impossible. This effectively means that you cannot repair an item forever, as the cost will eventually become prohibitively high.
To mitigate this issue, many players rely on the Mending enchantment, which allows repairing an item by gathering experience orbs. This provides a sustainable way to maintain gear without dealing with the exponential repair cost increase.