There is one number in Minecraft that quietly ends the life of every tool you care about, and it is 40.
Once an item has been through the anvil enough times, its prior work penalty doubles until the next repair would cost forty levels. At that point the anvil stops saying a price and starts saying "Too Expensive!", and the item is finished. It does not matter that you have two hundred levels. It does not matter that the item is a netherite pickaxe with Mending, Fortune III and Efficiency V that took a week to build. The anvil will not do it, ever again, and there is nothing you can craft that will change its mind.
Anvil Unbound moves the number.
By default the limit becomes 200 instead of 40. That is high enough that a tool repaired for an entire world never reaches it, and low enough to still be a limit rather than an off switch. You can set it to anything from 1 to 99999.
WHAT DOES NOT CHANGE
The cost is still calculated exactly the way vanilla calculates it. The prior work penalty still doubles. You still pay in levels, and you still cannot pay levels you do not have. Renaming still costs one level. Enchanting, grindstones, and every recipe in the game are untouched.
The only thing that changes is where the anvil gives up.
CONFIGURATION
A plain properties file is written to your config folder on first launch:
enabled - set to false to restore vanilla's 40 without uninstalling the mod.
limit - the level at which the anvil says Too Expensive. Default 200.
NOTES
One tiny mixin, on one method, replacing one number. No new items, no new blocks, no recipes, no commands, and nothing added to your world.
Works in singleplayer and on servers. On a server it applies to everyone.
WIKI

