Currently, there is an imbalance with Mending. It works really well with armor but very poorly with tools. The way it works is simple: sometimes when you get experience, all of your equipment which is currently equipped or in use will be partially repaired. This includes all armor pieces and anything selected or in the off hand. It doesn't work very well for tools because most tool actions don't result in experience gain, and most experience-gaining actions don't repair the tools since they aren't selected. Your sword or bow can do just fine because you're usually using them while gaining experience. Armor has it even better: it's repairing no matter what you're doing as long as you get experience from it. Armor is repairing when you're doing combat with hostile mobs, but it's also repairing when you collect ore or pull stuff from the furnace.
I set mending on all of my equipment. It is all diamond and has Unbreaking II or III. In practice, I find that my armor repairs itself much faster than it gets damaged even in direct combat. It even manages to stay in good repair during combat which causes the armor to take heavy damage, such as when I'm fighting silverfish or guardians. My sword and bow also repair themselves just fine. But my pick, axe, and shovel seem to gain almost nothing at all from mending during normal use. Even when I'm caving and ores are the majority of what I'm gathering, my pick repairs barely faster than it breaks. Things I use the axe or shovel for never yield experience. I set up an experience farm which I use to repair my tools, but as I can only repair one at a time (whatever I put in the off hand), it winds up being very tedious and I get so many enchantment levels by the time even one tool is repaired that I finally just spend diamonds to repair the others on the anvil. My level will easily go into the 50s before even one tool is repaired.
One possible solution to this is to make everything with Mending on the hotbar repair from experience, so that your tools and armor alike will constantly gain from it even if you don't have the tools selected at all times. I like that solution but I'd like to go deeper. The issue then would be that mending is perhaps too powerful, as everything would generally stay repaired as long as you're gaining experience on a regular basis. When combined with Unbreaking, it would become trivially easy to maintain your tools, weapons, and armor. My solution is to reduce the rate of repair overall but have it be increased in certain situations. Weapons and armor would repair best from experience gained through combat, while tools would repair best when you gather experience from breaking blocks. Since the vast majority of experience from blocks comes from pick blocks, the three tools (pick, axe, shovel) should all gain the full bonus from all block experience. The overall difference this would make to Mending is as follows:
1.) armor would repair the same in combat, but less from breaking blocks
- armor repairs a bit less overall
2.) weapons would repair the same in combat, but now can also repair when you break blocks
- weapons repair slightly more overall
3.) tools would repair more overall, but especially when you're gaining experience through breaking blocks
- tools repair a lot more overall
I would also make it a bit harder to fit enchantments on equipment. I currently have unbreaking 3, efficiency 3 or 4, and mending on all three tools plus each has an extra attribute: fortune 3 on the pick, silk touch on the shovel, and sharpness 3 on the axe. My armor has unbreaking 3 (2 on the helmet) along with a protection attribute. In addition to this my helmet has respiration 3, and my boots have depth strider 3 and feather falling 4. They all have mending. My sword has sharpness 4, unbreaking 2, looting 2, and mending. I haven't worked any of these to their max level yet. It seems like there's room to have pretty much perfect equipment in every slot. I'd definitely make some of these enchantments cost more levels, at least that way if you have unbreaking with mending, you have to give something else up. That would further balance mending by making it cost more than finding your third librarian who sells the book virtually indefinitely for 20 emeralds each.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I want ocean content(thanks Möjang!), nether biomes(again thanks!!), and savanna passive mobs (meerkats incoming!?).
The 3rd paragraph provides a intelligent and sensible solution to the problem of tools barely getting XP. But what axe/shovel blocks specifically give XP?
Support.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Console Battle is two games rolled into one: gambling (whether or not you get one of the OP weapons) and betting (which teammate won't turn on you, since teaming is pretty much a requirement to kill off another team)! Of course, it's not all chance; at its core, Battle is about triumphing and defeating other players... by kicking them out if they win to make yourself feel better.
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While I have never really used Mending before, I do know what the enchantment does, and I understand how it works as well. According to what you said about balancing the enchantment to make tools regain durability by gaining experience from blocks, I think that this problem needs to be fixed.
Another way to fix this issue would be to change how Mending works so that, instead of repairing upon picking XP up, it instead causes damaged tools to drain the XP bar until they're repaired, which would also mean that it wouldn't be so powerful on armor.
That might prevent players from being able to add more enchantments to their equipment, but I guess that most people will already have their equipment enchanted the way they want it anyway.
I don't know, I've never had a problem keeping it all near max durability once I had Mending. Pickaxe is simple, I get plenty of XP from just mining. If I really need to, I hold it in my hand when taking Iron and Gold out of the Furnace too. For the Axe and Shovel I just carry it in my offhand while I breed and kill animals (usually using the Axe to kill the animals since it is a 1 shot), or when cooking, smelting, trading, fishing, or even combat or mining. I don't think I ever have Unbreaking 3 gear go under 75% durability once I get Mending on it.
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Want some advice on how to thrive in the Suggestions section? Check this handy list of guidelines and tips for posting your ideas and responding to the ideas of others!
Personally, I think that they should revert the entire repair system to the pre-1.8 one and have Mending work the same way that renaming used to - then not only do you actually need to mine more diamonds to repair your gear you still need to use anvils and cannot make max-enchanted gear if you want to keep it forever or repair it easily (for example, a diamond pickaxe with Efficiency V and Unbreaking III costs 33 levels (1032 XP) to repair with a new pickaxe; if you add Fortune III, the cost explodes to 37 levels (1406 XP) for a single diamond per repair - 4 of which are required to fully repair it for over 5 times the XP cost per use).
Even with this cost (0.9 XP per use) I was able to sustainably use such a pickaxe for all mining while caving. Similarly, a Sharpness V, Knockback II, Unbreaking III diamond sword costs 40 levels to repair with a new sword, one level too much, although you can use a slightly damaged sword to lower the cost to 38-39 levels and still get a full repair due to the anvil bonus, or use 1-2 individual diamonds for 29-35 levels, and either way it gives you far more XP than you need to repair it (6248 uses at 2 hits per mob * 5 XP per mob = 15620 XP; the surplus can go to repairing armor or other items).
In fact, I even implemented this in a mod, with some tweaks to costs so that Mending items cost about the same as before while non-Mending items are cheaper (since I made Mending cost 8 levels and each repair increases the cost by 2 levels an item which would be too expensive to repair if you put Mending on it can still get up to 4 repairs), as well as adding more expensive items in part to make more use of the XP that I get.
Also, either way the majority of players use XP farms to top off their Mending gear - I get the impression that very few players are able to get as much XP during "normal" gameplay as I do (of course, they likely use tools to mainly mine stone and other building blocks, not mostly ore) - I certainly do not think that you should have to resort to farms in order to maintain your gear; even with the XP that I get I've calculated that I need at least Unbreaking II on my pickaxe in order to keep up if I used 6 Mending items at once (in a recent world I mined an average of 4375 blocks and gained 5308 XP per play session spent caving. With the maximum of 6 Mending items being held or worn at once you need 3281 XP, assuming you pick it all up while holding the pickaxe. The cost without Unbreaking would be 13125 XP; Unbreaking I 6563 and Unbreaking II 4375. While I do not use that many items at once (3x armor + one of several held items) XP isn't evenly distributed; my pickaxe mainly gets XP from mining while my sword mainly gets XP from combat, either way I had no trouble at all keeping all items in full repair when I played with 1.9+).
Another advantage of the old system is that you can store XP in your XP bar until you need to spend it; it doesn't matter whether the items I use while caving all give me XP and similarly the items which I do not use while caving are repaired using surplus XP that I have in my XP bar when I return (I could also bring the item with me while caving so I could repair it then but I never have needed to do this). Conversely, death has a harsher penalty; what happens if you need to repair an expensive item soon but die and lose most of your levels? Likewise, the changes to enchanting costs in 1.8 were done for this reason; it costs more to reach level 30 the first time but much less to get back after spending 3 levels, such that after 3 enchantments you've spent less XP overall.
The 3rd paragraph provides a intelligent and sensible solution to the problem of tools barely getting XP. But what axe/shovel blocks specifically give XP?
Support.
According to the wiki, none at all. The closest you can get is breaking wood or clay and smelting it in a furnace.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I want ocean content(thanks Möjang!), nether biomes(again thanks!!), and savanna passive mobs (meerkats incoming!?).
Personally, I think that they should revert the entire repair system to the pre-1.8 one and have Mending work the same way that renaming used to - then not only do you actually need to mine more diamonds to repair your gear you still need to use anvils and cannot make max-enchanted gear if you want to keep it forever or repair it easily (for example, a diamond pickaxe with Efficiency V and Unbreaking III costs 33 levels (1032 XP) to repair with a new pickaxe; if you add Fortune III, the cost explodes to 37 levels (1406 XP) for a single diamond per repair - 4 of which are required to fully repair it for over 5 times the XP cost per use).
Even with this cost (0.9 XP per use) I was able to sustainably use such a pickaxe for all mining while caving. Similarly, a Sharpness V, Knockback II, Unbreaking III diamond sword costs 40 levels to repair with a new sword, one level too much, although you can use a slightly damaged sword to lower the cost to 38-39 levels and still get a full repair due to the anvil bonus, or use 1-2 individual diamonds for 29-35 levels, and either way it gives you far more XP than you need to repair it (6248 uses at 2 hits per mob * 5 XP per mob = 15620 XP; the surplus can go to repairing armor or other items).
In fact, I even implemented this in a mod, with some tweaks to costs so that Mending items cost about the same as before while non-Mending items are cheaper (since I made Mending cost 8 levels and each repair increases the cost by 2 levels an item which would be too expensive to repair if you put Mending on it can still get up to 4 repairs), as well as adding more expensive items in part to make more use of the XP that I get.
Also, either way the majority of players use XP farms to top off their Mending gear - I get the impression that very few players are able to get as much XP during "normal" gameplay as I do (of course, they likely use tools to mainly mine stone and other building blocks, not mostly ore) - I certainly do not think that you should have to resort to farms in order to maintain your gear; even with the XP that I get I've calculated that I need at least Unbreaking II on my pickaxe in order to keep up if I used 6 Mending items at once (in a recent world I mined an average of 4375 blocks and gained 5308 XP per play session spent caving. With the maximum of 6 Mending items being held or worn at once you need 3281 XP, assuming you pick it all up while holding the pickaxe. The cost without Unbreaking would be 13125 XP; Unbreaking I 6563 and Unbreaking II 4375. While I do not use that many items at once (3x armor + one of several held items) XP isn't evenly distributed; my pickaxe mainly gets XP from mining while my sword mainly gets XP from combat, either way I had no trouble at all keeping all items in full repair when I played with 1.9+).
Another advantage of the old system is that you can store XP in your XP bar until you need to spend it; it doesn't matter whether the items I use while caving all give me XP and similarly the items which I do not use while caving are repaired using surplus XP that I have in my XP bar when I return (I could also bring the item with me while caving so I could repair it then but I never have needed to do this). Conversely, death has a harsher penalty; what happens if you need to repair an expensive item soon but die and lose most of your levels? Likewise, the changes to enchanting costs in 1.8 were done for this reason; it costs more to reach level 30 the first time but much less to get back after spending 3 levels, such that after 3 enchantments you've spent less XP overall.
Excellent points, make mending your tools tough work again.
What I normally do is take off my gear and either use an exp mob farm, or trade with villagers, to repair my tools.
I do think the pre-1.8 anvil repair system was better balanced though. My preference would be to just remove this penalty from the repair system completely and just let people repair items with materials. I don't understand why mojang likes this confusing invisible "exp penalty/too expensive" system. It's just annoying, imo.
That is an even bigger reason why the prior work penalty should be removed, as all there is between a lot of Mending enchantment books is getting lucky with villager trades, and considering that a lot of doors and either Fire Charges or Flint and Steel (If you don't want to lower village popularity) will make getting lucky a lot easier (Make a lot of houses in a village so villagers breed. A bunch of farms nearby helps a lot. If it has reached the villager cap, set on fire the "excess" villagers such as Nitwits or those with bad, redundant trade offers such as generally worse trades than another villager of the same profession so the villagers will breed again).
If there were no prior work penalty then you'd only need to spend 1-4 levels to repair any item (2 for a sacrifice repair), regardless of what it is or its enchantments, far cheaper than using Mending (the XP required to fully repair a diamond tool with Mending is enough to go from level 0-23, or level 27-30 more than twice), making it pointless to ever use (well, I guess that some people would rather not have to mine anymore but you don't really need that many diamonds and the iron for anvils is even cheaper):
Repairing a "tiered" target item using units of its material restores up to 25% total durability per unit and costs 1 level per unit of material used in addition to any applicable Prior Work penalties.
The target will be repaired, adding the durability of the sacrifice plus a bonus of 12% of the maximum durability, up to the item's maximum durability. If the target item is undamaged, there will be no charge for repair, otherwise the cost is 2 levels.
Hence, again the old repair system is better since you actually had to pay not just for durability but for enchantments, and while there was a prior work penalty it only increased by 2 levels per operation, allowing you to repair less enchanted items much more (since 1.8 the final two repairs will cause the prior work penalty to jump from 15 to 31 to 63; for comparison, prior to 1.8 an item with a base cost of 15 and a repair cost of 2 could be repaired 12 times before it became too expensive):
The most important concept for using an anvil is the Base Value of an item, figured in experience levels. Other than combining with enchanted books, any change made to an item will cost its Base Value plus costs for the change. An item's Base Value is the sum of the costs of its enchantments, plus a charge for the number of its enchantments. Note that the item's material does not affect its base cost, nor does the order of its enchantments. An unenchanted (or unenchantable) item has Base Value 0.
Repairing a "tiered" target item using units of its material restores up to 25% total durability per unit and costs the sum of the unit costs of each unit. (In addition to the Base Value and Prior Work Penalty.)
The total cost for combining two similar items is the sum of:
Base Value of the target.
Prior Work Penalties of both target and sacrifice.
If renaming, the extra cost of renaming
If the target item is not at full durability, the repair cost depending on the sacrifice.
If the sacrifice has enchantments, the enchantment cost
Example
A maxed out fishing rod (Lure 3, Luck 3, Unbreaking 3) which has been renamed is barely repairable. It has base value 36 (12 for luck, 12 for lure, 6 for unbreaking, 6 for three enchantments). Assuming it's been renamed, repairing it will cost that plus 2 for prior work, and 1 for the repair itself, for a total of exactly 39. If it has not been renamed, then its second combination or repair will make it too expensive to repair. (It might be rescued from this state by combining it with an incompatible book, which will allow simultaneously renaming it. See below for details.)
As long as that asinine anvil mechanics that limit the amount of times you can repair something exist, it is necessary for Mending to stay the way it is right now.
I feel that the cost of combining on the anvil should be the same as the cost of repairing, and that it should be decided entirely by what enchantments are on it. The more heavily enchanted it is, the more expensive it should be to repair it. The level limit would just set an upper limit on how well enchanted you can get items, but you should be able to repair anything you can make.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I want ocean content(thanks Möjang!), nether biomes(again thanks!!), and savanna passive mobs (meerkats incoming!?).
Currently, there is an imbalance with Mending. It works really well with armor but very poorly with tools. The way it works is simple: sometimes when you get experience, all of your equipment which is currently equipped or in use will be partially repaired. This includes all armor pieces and anything selected or in the off hand. It doesn't work very well for tools because most tool actions don't result in experience gain, and most experience-gaining actions don't repair the tools since they aren't selected. Your sword or bow can do just fine because you're usually using them while gaining experience. Armor has it even better: it's repairing no matter what you're doing as long as you get experience from it. Armor is repairing when you're doing combat with hostile mobs, but it's also repairing when you collect ore or pull stuff from the furnace.
I set mending on all of my equipment. It is all diamond and has Unbreaking II or III. In practice, I find that my armor repairs itself much faster than it gets damaged even in direct combat. It even manages to stay in good repair during combat which causes the armor to take heavy damage, such as when I'm fighting silverfish or guardians. My sword and bow also repair themselves just fine. But my pick, axe, and shovel seem to gain almost nothing at all from mending during normal use. Even when I'm caving and ores are the majority of what I'm gathering, my pick repairs barely faster than it breaks. Things I use the axe or shovel for never yield experience. I set up an experience farm which I use to repair my tools, but as I can only repair one at a time (whatever I put in the off hand), it winds up being very tedious and I get so many enchantment levels by the time even one tool is repaired that I finally just spend diamonds to repair the others on the anvil. My level will easily go into the 50s before even one tool is repaired.
One possible solution to this is to make everything with Mending on the hotbar repair from experience, so that your tools and armor alike will constantly gain from it even if you don't have the tools selected at all times. I like that solution but I'd like to go deeper. The issue then would be that mending is perhaps too powerful, as everything would generally stay repaired as long as you're gaining experience on a regular basis. When combined with Unbreaking, it would become trivially easy to maintain your tools, weapons, and armor. My solution is to reduce the rate of repair overall but have it be increased in certain situations. Weapons and armor would repair best from experience gained through combat, while tools would repair best when you gather experience from breaking blocks. Since the vast majority of experience from blocks comes from pick blocks, the three tools (pick, axe, shovel) should all gain the full bonus from all block experience. The overall difference this would make to Mending is as follows:
1.) armor would repair the same in combat, but less from breaking blocks
- armor repairs a bit less overall
2.) weapons would repair the same in combat, but now can also repair when you break blocks
- weapons repair slightly more overall
3.) tools would repair more overall, but especially when you're gaining experience through breaking blocks
- tools repair a lot more overall
I would also make it a bit harder to fit enchantments on equipment. I currently have unbreaking 3, efficiency 3 or 4, and mending on all three tools plus each has an extra attribute: fortune 3 on the pick, silk touch on the shovel, and sharpness 3 on the axe. My armor has unbreaking 3 (2 on the helmet) along with a protection attribute. In addition to this my helmet has respiration 3, and my boots have depth strider 3 and feather falling 4. They all have mending. My sword has sharpness 4, unbreaking 2, looting 2, and mending. I haven't worked any of these to their max level yet. It seems like there's room to have pretty much perfect equipment in every slot. I'd definitely make some of these enchantments cost more levels, at least that way if you have unbreaking with mending, you have to give something else up. That would further balance mending by making it cost more than finding your third librarian who sells the book virtually indefinitely for 20 emeralds each.
I want
ocean content(thanks Möjang!),nether biomes(again thanks!!), and savanna passive mobs (meerkats incoming!?).The 3rd paragraph provides a intelligent and sensible solution to the problem of tools barely getting XP. But what axe/shovel blocks specifically give XP?
Support.
Console Battle is two games rolled into one: gambling (whether or not you get one of the OP weapons) and betting (which teammate won't turn on you, since teaming is pretty much a requirement to kill off another team)! Of course, it's not all chance; at its core, Battle is about triumphing and defeating other players... by kicking them out if they win to make yourself feel better.
Some
not sucky suggestion threads I made: Console Minigame: Ram Attack! - New Arrows!(quality)While I have never really used Mending before, I do know what the enchantment does, and I understand how it works as well. According to what you said about balancing the enchantment to make tools regain durability by gaining experience from blocks, I think that this problem needs to be fixed.
I support this suggestion.
That might prevent players from being able to add more enchantments to their equipment, but I guess that most people will already have their equipment enchanted the way they want it anyway.
I don't know, I've never had a problem keeping it all near max durability once I had Mending. Pickaxe is simple, I get plenty of XP from just mining. If I really need to, I hold it in my hand when taking Iron and Gold out of the Furnace too. For the Axe and Shovel I just carry it in my offhand while I breed and kill animals (usually using the Axe to kill the animals since it is a 1 shot), or when cooking, smelting, trading, fishing, or even combat or mining. I don't think I ever have Unbreaking 3 gear go under 75% durability once I get Mending on it.
Want some advice on how to thrive in the Suggestions section? Check this handy list of guidelines and tips for posting your ideas and responding to the ideas of others!
http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-discussion/suggestions/2775557-guidelines-for-the-suggestions-forum
Personally, I think that they should revert the entire repair system to the pre-1.8 one and have Mending work the same way that renaming used to - then not only do you actually need to mine more diamonds to repair your gear you still need to use anvils and cannot make max-enchanted gear if you want to keep it forever or repair it easily (for example, a diamond pickaxe with Efficiency V and Unbreaking III costs 33 levels (1032 XP) to repair with a new pickaxe; if you add Fortune III, the cost explodes to 37 levels (1406 XP) for a single diamond per repair - 4 of which are required to fully repair it for over 5 times the XP cost per use).
Even with this cost (0.9 XP per use) I was able to sustainably use such a pickaxe for all mining while caving. Similarly, a Sharpness V, Knockback II, Unbreaking III diamond sword costs 40 levels to repair with a new sword, one level too much, although you can use a slightly damaged sword to lower the cost to 38-39 levels and still get a full repair due to the anvil bonus, or use 1-2 individual diamonds for 29-35 levels, and either way it gives you far more XP than you need to repair it (6248 uses at 2 hits per mob * 5 XP per mob = 15620 XP; the surplus can go to repairing armor or other items).
In fact, I even implemented this in a mod, with some tweaks to costs so that Mending items cost about the same as before while non-Mending items are cheaper (since I made Mending cost 8 levels and each repair increases the cost by 2 levels an item which would be too expensive to repair if you put Mending on it can still get up to 4 repairs), as well as adding more expensive items in part to make more use of the XP that I get.
Also, either way the majority of players use XP farms to top off their Mending gear - I get the impression that very few players are able to get as much XP during "normal" gameplay as I do (of course, they likely use tools to mainly mine stone and other building blocks, not mostly ore) - I certainly do not think that you should have to resort to farms in order to maintain your gear; even with the XP that I get I've calculated that I need at least Unbreaking II on my pickaxe in order to keep up if I used 6 Mending items at once (in a recent world I mined an average of 4375 blocks and gained 5308 XP per play session spent caving. With the maximum of 6 Mending items being held or worn at once you need 3281 XP, assuming you pick it all up while holding the pickaxe. The cost without Unbreaking would be 13125 XP; Unbreaking I 6563 and Unbreaking II 4375. While I do not use that many items at once (3x armor + one of several held items) XP isn't evenly distributed; my pickaxe mainly gets XP from mining while my sword mainly gets XP from combat, either way I had no trouble at all keeping all items in full repair when I played with 1.9+).
Another advantage of the old system is that you can store XP in your XP bar until you need to spend it; it doesn't matter whether the items I use while caving all give me XP and similarly the items which I do not use while caving are repaired using surplus XP that I have in my XP bar when I return (I could also bring the item with me while caving so I could repair it then but I never have needed to do this). Conversely, death has a harsher penalty; what happens if you need to repair an expensive item soon but die and lose most of your levels? Likewise, the changes to enchanting costs in 1.8 were done for this reason; it costs more to reach level 30 the first time but much less to get back after spending 3 levels, such that after 3 enchantments you've spent less XP overall.
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
According to the wiki, none at all. The closest you can get is breaking wood or clay and smelting it in a furnace.
I want
ocean content(thanks Möjang!),nether biomes(again thanks!!), and savanna passive mobs (meerkats incoming!?).Excellent points, make mending your tools tough work again.
Why am I here
What I normally do is take off my gear and either use an exp mob farm, or trade with villagers, to repair my tools.
I do think the pre-1.8 anvil repair system was better balanced though. My preference would be to just remove this penalty from the repair system completely and just let people repair items with materials. I don't understand why mojang likes this confusing invisible "exp penalty/too expensive" system. It's just annoying, imo.
that's what mending currently does anyway.
If there were no prior work penalty then you'd only need to spend 1-4 levels to repair any item (2 for a sacrifice repair), regardless of what it is or its enchantments, far cheaper than using Mending (the XP required to fully repair a diamond tool with Mending is enough to go from level 0-23, or level 27-30 more than twice), making it pointless to ever use (well, I guess that some people would rather not have to mine anymore but you don't really need that many diamonds and the iron for anvils is even cheaper):
The target will be repaired, adding the durability of the sacrifice plus a bonus of 12% of the maximum durability, up to the item's maximum durability. If the target item is undamaged, there will be no charge for repair, otherwise the cost is 2 levels.
https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Anvil_mechanics
Hence, again the old repair system is better since you actually had to pay not just for durability but for enchantments, and while there was a prior work penalty it only increased by 2 levels per operation, allowing you to repair less enchanted items much more (since 1.8 the final two repairs will cause the prior work penalty to jump from 15 to 31 to 63; for comparison, prior to 1.8 an item with a base cost of 15 and a repair cost of 2 could be repaired 12 times before it became too expensive):
Repairing a "tiered" target item using units of its material restores up to 25% total durability per unit and costs the sum of the unit costs of each unit. (In addition to the Base Value and Prior Work Penalty.)
The total cost for combining two similar items is the sum of:
Base Value of the target.
Prior Work Penalties of both target and sacrifice.
If renaming, the extra cost of renaming
If the target item is not at full durability, the repair cost depending on the sacrifice.
If the sacrifice has enchantments, the enchantment cost
Example
A maxed out fishing rod (Lure 3, Luck 3, Unbreaking 3) which has been renamed is barely repairable. It has base value 36 (12 for luck, 12 for lure, 6 for unbreaking, 6 for three enchantments). Assuming it's been renamed, repairing it will cost that plus 2 for prior work, and 1 for the repair itself, for a total of exactly 39. If it has not been renamed, then its second combination or repair will make it too expensive to repair. (It might be rescued from this state by combining it with an incompatible book, which will allow simultaneously renaming it. See below for details.)
https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Anvil_mechanics/Before_1.8
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
As long as that asinine anvil mechanics that limit the amount of times you can repair something exist, it is necessary for Mending to stay the way it is right now.
I feel that the cost of combining on the anvil should be the same as the cost of repairing, and that it should be decided entirely by what enchantments are on it. The more heavily enchanted it is, the more expensive it should be to repair it. The level limit would just set an upper limit on how well enchanted you can get items, but you should be able to repair anything you can make.
I want
ocean content(thanks Möjang!),nether biomes(again thanks!!), and savanna passive mobs (meerkats incoming!?).