Curse of Vanishing in Minecraft: What It Is & How To Use It
Last updated: Mar 31, 2025 • 7 min readWhenever you are playing Minecraft, you hope that all your precious items can be recovered as soon as possible when your player dies.
Well, even though that’s the common thing to happen, there’s the possibility of losing the item equipped forever.
So, why does that happen? Is it because you are playing the Minecraft Pocket Edition or the Nintendo Switch version? Or is it just bad luck?
The answer is… none of the previously mentioned.
Although the game world might seem like a friendly place to loot chests and use your Diamond Sword against easy-to-kill enemies, there’s a Minecraft curse that can make your game a bit harder.
We are talking about the Minecraft Curse of Vanishing, an enchantment that will make your cursed items completely disappear upon death in-game.
Fear not - we will tell you all you must know about this Vanishing Enchantment so you can prepare yourself for the challenges to come!
After reading, you will comprehend:
- What does “Vanishing in Minecraft” stands for;
- Everything you must know about the Curse of Vanishing Enchantment;
- How to remove curses forever (is it possible, though? Let’s find out).
What is Curse of Vanishing Enchantment?
To make a long story short, Curse of Vanishing is an enchantment that will make a cursed item vanish forever when the player dies.
This includes cursed armor, weapons, and basically all items that you decide to enchant.
There’s a reason why Minecraft players find Curse of Vanishing enchantment so annoying.
No one wants their beautiful weapons, armor, and more to disappear. Still, to comprehend this Vanishing Curse, it’s necessary to understand enchantments a little bit more.
Enchantment Basics
What’s Enchanting?
Enchanting is the process of improving items’ current abilities. In theory, an enchanted item (weapon, tool, or armor enchanted) should experience an improvement after the enchant.
Enchantment book
Enchantment books are meant to add enchantments to items. In this case, Curse of Vanishing is one of the rarest Enchanted Books in the game; thus, compared to all the other enchantments, it is very powerful.
Enchanting table
The Enchantment Table is the block that allows you to enchant tools, other items, and basically other enchantments.
You can create a cursed book here, but you can’t remove enchantments or destroy a cursed item here.
Understanding Minecraft Curses
The enchantment process is actually designed to make an item better than it previously was - but this doesn’t happen with curses. Minecraft has two main curses:
- Curse of Binding.
- Curse of Vanishing.
These two are meant to turn useful tools and armor into a cursed item that will not have the use you are expecting. In this blog post, we are focusing on Curse of Vanishing enchantment, but don’t worry - we’ll talk about Curse of Binding enchantment later on.
Vanishing Curse Enchantment Uses
So, why would anyone want to use this curse? Wouldn’t it be better just to have un-cursed items and that’s it?
Remember that cursed items won’t drop as you expect when the player dies - they will just vanish. However, if you decide to drop the item manually, it won’t disappear.
Nonetheless, you might mitigate the effects of this Curse Vanishing Enchantment by placing the cursed weapon, armor, or tool inside a shulker box.
Pro tip
Shulker Boxes are blocks that allow you and other players to store and transport items inside the game. You can mine them or create them on a crafting table easily!
Also, you can use the Game Command “Keep Inventory” to be “true” in order to keep the same item in your inventory without losing it.
So, someone can implement Curse of Vanishing just for the sake of making this game harder.
Cursed armors, tools, weapons, and more, will surely make a more challenging adventure for you.
To summarize - the Curse of Vanishing Enchantment won’t offer you any benefits at all.
If you enchant an item with this curse, it won’t get better, it won’t be enhanced and it won’t for sure assist you in your journey.
Minecraft Curse of Vanishing is a Treasure Enchantment: What Does That Mean?
In this particular case, treasure enchantments only appear in chests or are found naturally all over the Minecraft world.
Curse of Vanishing enchantment is considered a treasure enchantment, so the crafting table won’t be useful enough for getting it.
Pro tip
Curse of Vanishing can also be found on raid rewards, but only on Minecraft Bedrock Edition.
Therefore, if you really want to obtain the Curse of Vanishing, you will have to spend some time on it!
Luckily for you, Minecraft is so fun and playable that even such an activity is fun, exciting, and full of new stories.
How To Find Curse of Vanishing Enchantment?
There are three ways to find the Curse of Vanishing in Minecraft.
Nevertheless, we must mention that this can become a frustrating activity since it highly depends on luck.
Remember that we are looking for enchanted books which contain the curse and not items that have been previously cursed.
Chest loot
You might find Curse of Vanishing in a buried treasure or other types of loot.
Still, this can be a complicated process or a quick one - remember that it’s found naturally, so it all depends on the odds.
Fishing Rod
Use fishing rods in the water and wait for the enchantment to appear. It might take one minute, one hour, or one day. Who knows?! We are talking about pure luck, so take your fishing rod out and wait patiently.
Trading with a Librarian Villager
If you don’t like leaving things to chance, then you can also try to trade with Librarian Villagers to find Curse of Vanishing.
Nonetheless, this only applies to Minecraft Java Edition, so if you play on Nintendo Switch or another platform, don’t lose your time trying this.
You will need to complete some transactions with Librarians.
This will allow new trade options to be unlocked on the left-hand side of the menu, which will give you a higher chance of finding the Curse of Vanishing.
Is it Possible to Remove This Curse?
Although at first there was the option to remove Curse of Vanishing by combining it with an un-enchanted object of the same time in a crafting interface, this is no longer possible anymore since the Java Edition Snapshot 20w06a.
So, is there another way to remove this awful curse in Minecraft? Before you decide to enchant an item, first consider that a Grindstone won’t help you remove Curse of Vanishing.
Pro tip:
Grindstones are usually a great way to repair tools, items and remove enchantments, but it won’t work with Curse of Vanishing.
The only known way to remove Curse of Vanishing is by setting the game world rules “Keep inventory” / “True,” as we mentioned before.
You might find different information on the Internet, but keep in mind that the new Snapshot 20w06a was launched on February 6, 2020.
You can verify this by visiting Mojang’s official website.
Final Thoughts
Yes, Curse of Vanishing doesn’t seem like something you would like to have in your items, but it’s worth knowing everything you can about it!
Minecraft also has its dark side, being Curse of vanishing one of the most annoying things the players can face.
Still, you might find this Vanishing enchantment to provide an extra difficulty in your game, which ultimately makes it more fun and challenging to play!
If you know other methods to find or remove Curse of Vanishing, leave a comment to share your knowledge with other players!
Curse of Vanishing FAQ
What is the Curse of Vanishing Maximum Level in Minecraft?
The maximum level of this Vanishing enchantment is 1. Therefore, 1 Curse of Vanishing can enchant only 1 item.
Is it possible to get rid of Curse of vanishing?
Just by modifying game rules. Grindstones and “Cursed/Un-cursed Item” methods don’t work anymore since February 2020.
What happens if you drop something with Curse of Vanishing in Minecraft?
If a player drops a cursed item on purpose, nothing will happen to it. On the other hand, if the player dies, the dropped item will forever disappear.