Top 6 Tips And Tricks To Use Bow And Crossbow In Minecraft

July 25, 2024

Ranged weapons are very popular in Minecraft. While consuming ammunition, they allow players to dispatch all the mobs without having to get close. However, players usually complain about their lower damage in comparison to melee weapons. In this article, we are going to showcase the top 5 tips and tricks to use bow and crossbow in Minecraft more effectively.

1. Preload crossbows

The crossbow can even be placed in another inventory slot or into an item frame without the arrow or firework rocket being unloaded or fired. This allows players to skip the arrow loading time by having multiple crossbows in their inventory.

By doing this trick, players can switch between loaded crossbow to spam whatever projectile of their choosing. Overall, this can be pretty deadly in PVP.

2. Use tipped arrows

Players can imbue arrows with potion effects to increase their potency. While the duration of the effect is only 1/8 of the corresponding potion, it is still an easy way to get an extra advantage in a fight. Useful effects for tipped arrows are Decay, Slowness, Harming, Healing and Poison

To get tipped arrows, players can loot from mobs, trade or barter. However, in Bedrock Edition, it is possible to fill a cauldron with a potion and use that to create tipped arrows with corresponding effects.

3. Use Firework Rockets

Crossbows can be armed with powerful firework rockets that cause explosions. While this type of ammunition is expensive (you need 7 firework stars for the maximum damage), the effect is pretty spectacular and is definitely worth using in PVP matches for style points.

The maximum explosion damage is 19, which is more than anything the usual bow or crossbow can dish out.

4. Multishot crossbow

Multishot is one of the best enchantments to get on the crossbow, as it effectively triples the damage of the weapon. At point blank, players can hit an enemy with three arrows using only one shot. This also works on firework rockets, releasing three massive explosions instead of just one.

This enchantment is mutually exclusive with piercing. Players need to choose between one of them unless they can give the crossbow both enchantments using console commands.

5. Medium charge to fire arrows faster

Players don't really need to charge for the full 1 second when firing a bow. After 0.2 second of charging, the bow would already reach medium charge, dealing 5 damage per shot. Charging it for the full second only gives you 1 extra damage... and a critical hit of more than 1 second charge is only 11 damage.

Therefore, it is best to practice spamming arrows by charging them only 0.2 - 0.3 seconds for the maximum DPS possible.

6. Flame enchantment

Getting the Flame enchantment on your bow allows it to deal fire damage to anyone hit as well as igniting TNT and campfires. An arrow shot from a bow enchanted with Flame can ignite Endermen, despite their tendency to teleport out of the way.

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