When combining enchantments at an anvil, the prior work penalty counts only the item with the most prior work. This means that when combining many enchantments on a single item, it is far cheaper to combine all the enchantments in pairs, then combine pairs of the pairs, etc, instead of combining by adding new enchantments one by one to a "base item". The end result of both methods is the exact same item, so the large cost discrepancy is ridiculous. Moreover, messing up the combining order often makes it impossible to get many enchantments on an item since you quickly hit the "too expensive" anvil threshold. Newer players are especially hurt by this because optimizing for prior work penalty is not at all clearly shown in-game. It's very natural to upgrade your items bit by bit as you get the books-- e.g. finding a Sharpness III book and adding it your sword, then next trip out you find Looting III so you add it to your Sharpness III sword, then even later putting Fire Aspect on your Sharpness III, Looting III sword, etc--, meaning newer players may not ever discover the cheaper way.
To fix these issues, the experience cost of combining items at the anvil should be based ONLY on the resulting item. That way, combining many enchantments into a "god" item costs the same no matter what order you add the enchantments. This suggestion does not make it too easy to obtain these incredibly powerful items; indeed, they should be expensive. But that cost should be consistent and fair.
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