Minecraft Riptide: What It Does and How to Add It to Your Trident

Minecraft Riptide is a trident enchantment that launches you forward when you throw the weapon, but only while you are in water or it is raining. This makes it an essential tool for fast travel across oceans, rivers, and even the land during a storm, turning your trident into a personal rocket.

What does Minecraft Riptide do?

When you throw a trident enchanted with Riptide while standing in water, submerged, or during rain or snow, the enchantment propels you in the direction you threw it. This allows for rapid movement, especially useful for crossing large bodies of water or traveling quickly on land during a storm. You can also combine a Riptide trident with an elytra to achieve fast flight during rain. A key limitation is that a Riptide trident cannot be used as a normal thrown projectile; it always propels the player instead of being thrown and retrieved. The enchantment has three levels (I, II, and III), with higher levels increasing your travel speed and distance. The distance launched depends on where you use it: underwater, you travel 7, 11, or 15 blocks per level; standing in water or rain, you travel 9, 15, or 21 blocks per level. Colliding with mobs or other players while using Riptide also deals damage, which can be critical if you hit them from a height.

How to get the Minecraft Riptide enchantment

There are three main ways to obtain the Riptide enchantment for your trident:

• Enchanting table: Place your trident and lapis lazuli in an enchanting table. The enchantment offered is random, but with only seven possible trident enchantments, you will likely see Riptide after a few tries.
• Enchanted books: Find a Riptide enchanted book through fishing, looting chests in structures like temples or shipwrecks, or trading with a librarian villager.
• Villager trading: A librarian villager can offer a Riptide enchanted book as a trade. You can cure a zombie villager or level up a librarian to access better trades.

How to add Riptide to your trident

Before you can add Riptide, you must remove any incompatible enchantments from your trident. Riptide cannot be combined with Loyalty or Channeling.

Remove incompatible enchantments

Use a grindstone to disenchant your trident:

1. Place the grindstone on any block.
2. Open the grindstone interface.
3. Place your trident in either of the two input slots.
4. Take the disenchanted trident from the output slot.

Your trident is now ready to receive Riptide.

Apply Riptide using an enchanting table

1. Place your enchanting table anywhere.
2. Open the enchanting table interface.
3. Put your trident in the left slot under "Enchant".
4. Place at least three lapis lazuli in the slot beside the trident.
5. If Riptide appears as one of the three options, select it to apply the enchantment.

Apply Riptide using an anvil with an enchanted book

1. Place your anvil anywhere.
2. Open the anvil interface.
3. Put your trident in the left input slot.
4. Put the Riptide enchanted book in the right input slot.
5. Take the enchanted trident from the output slot.

Minecraft Riptide compatibility and limitations

Riptide is incompatible with Loyalty and Channeling. These enchantments cannot be applied to the same trident because an anvil will not allow conflicting enchantments on a single item. If Loyalty or Channeling are added via commands, Riptide takes precedence and the other two enchantments won't be usable. Riptide is compatible with Mending, Unbreaking, Impaling, and Curse of Vanishing. Environmentally, Riptide only works when you are in water or when it is raining or snowing in a snowy biome. It does not work in dry biomes like deserts, savannas, or badlands, and it cannot be used in the Nether at all.

How to repair a Riptide trident

A Riptide trident can break from use. In Java Edition, it loses one durability point each time it is thrown, and in all versions, it loses one durability point every time you collide with a mob or player. You can repair it using an anvil:

1. Place your anvil anywhere.
2. Open the anvil interface.
3. Put your damaged Riptide trident in the left input slot.
4. Put a regular (unenchanted) trident in the right input slot.
5. Take the repaired trident from the output slot.

Alternatively, you can use the Mending enchantment. With Mending, your trident repairs itself using experience orbs you collect, such as from killing mobs. This is a passive way to keep your trident in good condition without needing a second trident. If you are looking for the best trident builds for specific game scenarios, you can check mobile game tier lists for community-ranked enchantment combinations.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I use a Riptide trident in the End?

No, the End does not have rain or water bodies that trigger Riptide, so the enchantment will not work there.

Does Riptide work with a trident in the off-hand?

Yes, you can hold a Riptide trident in either your main hand or off-hand, and it will still launch you when thrown.

Can I enchant a trident with both Riptide and Impaling?

Yes, Riptide is fully compatible with Impaling, Mending, Unbreaking, and Curse of Vanishing.

How do I get a Riptide trident without an enchanting table?

You can find a trident already enchanted with Riptide from a drowned zombie, or you can trade with a librarian villager for a Riptide enchanted book and apply it using an anvil.

Does Riptide damage the trident when used?

Yes, each use of a Riptide trident reduces its durability by one point, and collisions with mobs also cost one durability point.

What mob transformations can Channeling cause?

Channeling can turn creepers into charged creepers, pigs into zombified piglins, villagers into witches, and red/brown mooshrooms into the other variant, allowing you to collect mob heads.