Pickaxes are inconsistently applying mending. With no other mending items in toolbar or equipped that are not already at full durability... and a netherite pick that is in the red, it appears that only the first orb mends. The remainder go to the XP Bar. This tracks with the visualization of the tool on the hotbar... it does not "jitter" like it would when being mended. I've sometimes had luck switching off the tool and back but honestly it seems more time based than toggle based. Didn't notice a similar problem with diamond tool but honestly haven't had time to test yet.
Linked issues
Comments 4
Yeah I reported this a while back, some mod told me thats how the game works but I think its really bad design...
Whats happening is your mending armor has a draw on the xp, say you have 5 things with mending including what you are holding and armor... Theres a 1/5th chance the xp goes to the tool in your hand and a 4/5s chance it goes to your xp bar (bad game design in my opinion, why does full gear have a draw on xp just to put it in your xp bar?) Hope this clears it up
This causes mending to be painfully slow if you just need 1 tool fixed.... A really inconvenient bug I dislike a lot because I have to take all my armor off regularly to heal a tool at max speed...
The way it works currently is it choses a piece of equipped gear randomly, that can be from your worn armour or your held item. If the item it chooses is full durability it goes to your XP bar instead.
You can test this by removing all armour and holding the broken tool, none of the XP will go to the XP bar until the pick is repaired.
Java worked the same way until late last year, its being tracked under MCPE-80156 as a parity break from the Buzzy Bees update.
Unfortunate, but makes sense. Most of the notes/reading I see tend to be Java based, so sometimes these parity issues are hard to confirm. If anyone on here knows someone more active on the wiki, it might be helpful to update the mending page to note the parity... disparity... pardon the pun.
Hope they bring parity along sometime soon, this is... irritating. Thanks IconicEcko and Elijah Bloom
This may match an existing bug after more digging, but It's unclear so I'm opening a new one for now. Open to feedback. MCPE-80156