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Minecraft Crossbow

The Minecraft crossbow has long been a strong contender against the other ranged weapon of choice, the Minecraft bow. Even though both use the exact same munition, that being arrows, the bow appears to overshadow its cousin, but is this really justified? Is the crossbow truly inferior or is it actually underrated? This article will cover everything you need to know about the versatile weapon, from crafting recipes, durability and Minecraft crossbow enchantments.

Overview Minecraft Crossbow:

  • long range weapon
  • high damage and precision
  • easy to craft
  • powerful enchantments available

The Minecraft Crossbow: The Basics

Whether you’re hunting, battling mobs or facing other players in PvP, the best crossbow Minecraft offers as well as its weaker versions are a vital addition to your arsenal. The Minecraft crossbow is a ranged weapon that can fire arrows and firework rockets. This may sound limited, but keep in mind that there are many different types of arrows, so this selection is a lot more versatile than it seems at first. It’s not so much an upgrade to the traditional bow, it’s more of an alternative.

A Minecraft crossbow, in contrast to the bow, can actually fire rockets, making it even more versatile. Rockets spread an explosion on impact, allowing you to take out high numbers of enemies in one go. By the way, if you don’t want to use them as ammunition, you can also use them in tandem with the elytra to fly even faster. Whichever ammunition you choose, the Minecraft crossbow brings new possibilities to the game, since it differs from the bow in a few key ways.

Differences between the Minecraft Crossbow & the Bow

While arrows can be easily loaded and fired with a bow in rapid succession, the Minecraft crossbow demands better time management in return for more damage and more precise shots. If you want to use this deadly weapon you have to follow these steps:

  1. Hold the Minecraft crossbow in your main- or off-hand.
  2. Use the crossbow. This will cause your character to load it. The arrow is typically taken from the closest hotbar, so adjust your inventory if you plan on using different arrows.
  3. Fire the crossbow.

Since Minecraft crossbows are still loaded even after being stored in your inventory or a chest, you can prepare them for combat easily, giving you a quick attack before the battle has even started.

The Minecraft Crossbow Recipe

Now that you know about the advantages and disadvantages of the Minecraft crossbow, you should also know how to get your hands on one. Luckily, crafting a crossbow in Minecraft is rather straightforward. The crossbow Minecraft recipe is as follows:

3x stick + 2x string + 1x iron ingot + 1x tripwire hook = 1x crossbow

Luckily, most of these ingredients are easy to gather even in the early stages of your game. Sticks can be crafted from wood and string is often dropped by spiders. They may even drop some spider eyes you can use for potions while you hunt them. The most difficult ingredient to acquire is the iron ingot and even that one is easy to find if you know where to look.

Other Ways to Find a Crossbow in Minecraft

If you don’t want to craft a Minecraft crossbow, you can also confront pillagers that may have gathered around your village. Especially during a raid caused by the bad omen effect, a lot of pillagers are present, increasing your chance for a crossbow dramatically. Piglins can also spawn with a crossbow they can drop, though this doesn’t happen nearly as often as with the pillagers. Sometimes you might just find one on your journey to a bastion remnant or a pillager outpost when you look into every chest. 
If there is a fletcher in your village that is at least a journeyman, you can also simply buy a crossbow. At master-level, there are even enchanted Minecraft crossbows to be found in their inventory. Just use the fletching table to turn a villager into a fletcher.

Minecraft Crossbow Durability

The standard crossbow in Minecraft has a durability of 326 uses. It can be repaired with an anvil and two damaged crossbows or by using the grindstone. If you do so, be sure to fire any arrows left in the Minecraft crossbows, as they can be lost during the repair. 

Best Crossbow Enchantments

When it comes to crossbow enchantments, Minecraft offers several options to explore:

  • quick charge: This enchantment reduces the reload time of the crossbow. Once you have upgraded it to quick charge 3, Minecraft becomes significantly easier.  With the highest level of this enchantment, the reload time is reduced to 0.25 seconds. If you see questions in forums about Minecraft concerning a quick charge 5 crossbow, you can ignore them for the most part, as you would need a command to increase the enchantment to this value.
  • crossbow multishot: A useful enchantment that allows you to shoot three arrows simultaneously for the price of one. It adds a horizontal spread to the attack. However, this can rapidly reduce the Minecraft crossbow’s durability, especially when using rockets. On the upside, special arrows are multiplied normally, tripling their already high impact. Multishot cannot be combined with piercing.
  • piercing: This enchantment enables arrows to pass through multiple mobs. If you line up your shot perfectly, you can take out two enemies at once. Piercing also causes the arrows to ignore shields, so you should keep a Minecraft crossbow with this enchantment around just in case.

You can find these either by collecting dropped Minecraft crossbows or by using the enchantment table. Either way, try using all of them at least once so you know which one fits your playstyle.

Fun Fact: Charging a crossbow with quick charge VI effectively breaks the game, as the reload animation has to work with a negative time value. Waiting for the animation to complete would theoretically take 69.4 years.

All Crossbow Enchantments

Besides the best enchantments for a Minecraft crossbow listed above, other enchantments like unbreaking and mending also apply to the crossbow. MC has a lot of good enchantments, so don’t be shy to experiment with them to find the one that suits you the best. 

Imploding Crossbow

You may have heard of something called the ‘imploding crossbow’ and now want to use it in Minecraft? Unfortunately, when it comes to the imploding crossbow, Minecraft Dungeons is the only game in which you can use it. Although, the team behind Minecraft might always just add it with a future update. 

Conclusion: Minecraft Crossbow

Although many players seem to prefer the bow over the crossbow due to the enhanced loading time of the bow, one should not underestimate just how powerful the MC crossbow can be. Its high damage and precision can bring death to your enemies swiftly and easily, especially when the right enchantments are on the weapon.

If you want to test out just how capable the Minecraft crossbow can be, you should not waste any more time and head over to a Minecraft server from G-Portal. With this powerful and easy to use ranged weapon, you and your friends (when in multiplayer) can become deadly hunters that search their prey through any biome necessary or guardians of your castle that valiantly smash through attacking mobs until there are none left.

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