How Lunge Works in Minecraft and When to Use Each Level

Lunge is a movement-focused enchantment for spears in Minecraft’s Mounts of Mayhem update. It turns the spear’s jab attack into a short dash, letting you throw yourself forward while attacking. Used well, it changes how you move through the world and how you start fights.

Lunge basics: what it does and where it goes

Lunge is a spear-only enchantment with three levels (I–III) and an enchantment weight of 5. When it is on a spear, every jab attack adds a burst of horizontal speed in the direction you are facing. The game treats this as a one-tick momentum boost, which then feeds into your overall movement and, if you follow up with a charge, into your damage.

The boost scales by level:

The speed values above describe the instant push; actual distance depends on where you use it (ground vs midair) and how long your movement continues afterward.

For players, Lunge always consumes saturation first, then visible hunger. It refuses to fire if your hunger bar is at 5 points or lower, which is the same threshold that blocks sprinting. Mobs do not have hunger, so they can always trigger Lunge as long as the spear still has durability.

How to get the Lunge enchantment

Lunge is available on both Java Edition (from 1.21.11) and Bedrock Edition (from 1.21.130 previews and later). It can appear in the usual places for weapon enchantments:

• Enchanting table with a spear in the slot and enough bookshelves for higher-level rolls.
• Enchanting table on books, then applying the enchanted book to a spear with an anvil.
• Villager trades from librarians of any level, until the Villager Trade Rebalance changes those tables.
• Fishing as a rare enchanted book catch.

Once you have a Lunge book, apply it like any other weapon enchantment with an anvil. Lunge can be combined on the same spear with Sharpness, Knockback, Looting, Fire Aspect, Unbreaking, and Mending in current versions.

How to trigger Lunge in combat and movement

Lunge only responds to jab attacks, not charge attacks. A jab is the spear’s quick left-click hit, the low-damage poke that applies knockback. When you jab while holding a Lunge spear, the game adds that horizontal push on the same tick.

Lunge respects several conditions:

• Hunger requirement for players – your hunger bar must be at 6 points or above. If you are too hungry to sprint, you are too hungry to lunge.
• Grounded vs midair – the boost is stronger when used midair because friction from the ground does not cut it down immediately.
• Horizontal aim – looking straight ahead gives the best distance. Any vertical component in the boost is canceled before being applied, so tilting up or down reduces useful movement.
• No mounts, vehicles, or elytra – Lunge will not fire if you are riding something, using a vehicle, gliding with elytra, or touching water.

Hunger, saturation, and how many lunges you actually get

Because Lunge burns exhaustion, which drains saturation first, well-fed players can dash many times in a row before seeing their hunger bar go down.

With maximum saturation and a full hunger bar, the typical number of lunges before you start needing to eat again looks like this:

At all levels, each jab still costs 1 point of spear durability. Unbreaking extends the life of your spear by giving each hit a chance to ignore damage, but there is no way to reduce the hunger cost.

Lunge and the spear’s charge attack

The spear’s identity is built around two attacks: a quick jab and a high-impact charge. Lunge sits between them as a way to turn that jab into a positional tool.

A Lunge jab does not itself count as a charge attack and does not gain the charge’s bonus damage. However, you can chain the two:

Step 1: Start at a distance from your target, looking straight at them. Jump and jab with a Lunge spear to launch forward.

Step 2: Immediately after the jab, begin holding right-click to start a charge attack while your velocity from Lunge carries you onward.

Step 3: Reach the target just as the charge “engages” and hit them to apply the velocity-based damage boost.

Because charge damage scales with how fast you are moving, using Lunge as the initial accelerator can push charge attacks into very high damage ranges, especially at Lunge III speeds. This is where one-hit kills on unarmored players and fast mob clears become realistic.

The trade-off is spacing. You need enough distance between you and your target for the charge to fully arm after the jab. If you are too close, you will reach them while the spear is still in its “tired” or “disengaged” phase and lose some of the knockback or dismounting power.

Lunge levels as design choices, not a straight upgrade

Most Minecraft enchantments behave like a staircase: higher level means strictly better, with almost no downside. Lunge takes a different approach. Higher levels increase range and damage potential, but they also chew through your stamina and opportunities faster.

Each level roughly maps to a different role:

• Lunge I behaves like a low-cost dash with lots of charges. It is easier on hunger and still covers noticeable distance, making it good for regular overworld travel and repeated repositioning in fights.
• Lunge II strikes a middle ground. You trade some total uses for a bigger distance and higher starting velocity, which suits aggressive melee players and mobility-heavy survival play.
• Lunge III is tuned around burst movement and high-stakes hits. It gives the longest dash and the strongest charge setups, but you only get a handful of them before needing to eat and repair.

This design lines up with the spear’s material scaling. Lower-tier spears attack faster but break quickly, which feels like a short-cooldown, low-durability dash stick. Higher-tier spears have more durability and slower jab speed, which turns each Lunge use into a more deliberate commitment. Combining spear tier and Lunge level lets you shape how it behaves: quick, frequent hops on a weaker spear, or rare, huge jumps on a high-tier one.

Using Lunge for everyday movement

Outside of combat, Lunge is a flexible horizontal mobility tool. It is closer to a reusable “rocket” or wind charge than to a permanent, always-on upgrade.

Some practical uses:

• Travel on foot – jump-jab chains with Lunge I or II let you cover flat terrain very quickly if you keep hunger topped up with high-saturation foods.
• Crossing gaps – Lunge II and III can clear small ravines, rivers, or lava pockets when timed at jump apex. Players often use it like a horizontal leap where a camel or elytra is not available.
• Parkour and adventure maps – because map makers can set spears to be unbreakable, Lunge III becomes a level-design tool for long jumps that are impossible with vanilla movement.
• Vertical tricks with other items – in combination with items like wind charges or elytra activation, Lunge can add a quick horizontal burst before switching to vertical or glide movement.

Viewed this way, a Lunge spear is closer to a stack of consumable movement charges than to a “forever tool” like a fully enchanted pickaxe. Making multiple spears with different Lunge levels and tiers and swapping between them as needed fits the intended cost profile.

Lunge in PvE and PvP combat

In survival combat, Lunge changes both how you open fights and how you escape them. The spear already has extended reach (up to 4.5 blocks) and a two-block minimum range, which makes spacing critical. Lunge helps you move into that sweet spot.

Some patterns that emerge:

• Engaging from out of range – a Lunge jab lets you close the distance from outside the enemy’s reach, land a hit, and then immediately choose to dodge or charge.
• Dodging projectiles – short, sideways lunges with level I or II spears make it easier to sidestep arrows or fireballs while still attacking.
• High-velocity burst damage – Lunge III into a fully armed charge attack pushes spear damage into territory where it can one-shot low-armor targets, especially with Sharpness and good velocity.

On the flip side, the hunger drain and durability cost ensure that Lunge cannot be spammed forever. In extended PvE sessions, you need strong food sources (golden carrots, cooked meats, or saturation stews) and either multiple spears or a way to repair them. In PvP, shields become even more important, because blocking that one big Lunge + charge combo often decides the fight.

Patch history and balance tweaks

Lunge went through noticeable tuning during its preview stages.

• In its earliest form, it did not consume hunger at all and instead burned large chunks of durability, especially at higher levels. Level III could shred a spear in a handful of uses.
• Later snapshots removed the durability loss and tied the cost to hunger and saturation using a higher exhaustion formula that made dashes very expensive.
• The current design keeps a small flat durability cost (1 per use at all levels) but lowers the exhaustion formula to the values listed earlier, making the enchantment more sustainable for everyday use.
• Compatibility with Mending was also adjusted during testing and is now allowed, so players can repair a favorite spear with experience.

The end result is a mobility option that is strong enough to matter in combat and traversal, but balanced around food and planning rather than permanent, cost-free speed.

Lunge turns the spear into more than just another melee weapon. It is a dash button with teeth, gated by hunger, durability, and your sense of distance. Treat it like a consumable movement tool, pick the level that fits what you are doing, and it becomes one of the more expressive ways to move through Minecraft’s world.