Compared to tridents, swords, and even axes, bows are underrated in-game weapons for Minecraft players. Many beginners avoid making bows just because of the additional effort that goes into using arrows. But using these best bow enchantments, you can easily turn bows into the most powerful weapon in Minecraft. All you need to make it work is a good aim. But if you are more into close-range combat, the best sword enchantments would be a better pick. And you can always combine the long and short-range combat using these best trident enchantments. With that out, let’s dive right into our list of the best bow enchantments that Minecraft has to offer.
The bow enchantments listed below work perfectly on both Minecraft Java and Bedrock editions of the game. We have tested each of these enchantments on the latest Minecraft 1.18 update as well. So, you can rest assured about the compatibility.
PunchPowerFlameUnbreakingMendingInfinityCurse of VanishingBonus: Best Crossbow Enchantments
Quick ChargeMultishotPiercing
Quick ChargeMultishotPiercing
1. Punch
Almost every in-game attack causes a small push to the receiver, and this push is called knockback. And our first bow enchantment, punch increases the dealt knockback by an additional 3 blocks. Since you can upgrade it once, you can use Punch II to push an in-game entity to a maximum of 6 additional blocks with a single arrow.
Power is one of the most common Minecraft bow enchantments, and as the name suggests, it increases damage dealt by arrows. This enchantment has a maximum of 5 levels. If you fire an arrow with no charge, it will still cause damage worth 1.5 hearts at level V. And if you use an arrow at the maximum charge, it can cause a deadly 12.5 hearts worth of damage. It makes bows useful in 1 vs 1combat in Minecraft multiplayer mode.
3. Flame
As the name suggests, flame sets entities on fire. The fire lasts for 5 seconds and causes around 2.5 hearts worths of damage. You can use it to light TNT, campfires, and candles too. But unlike fire charge or flint and steel, you can’t light put other blocks on fire. If you kill food-based mobs with flame, they drop cooked meat instead of regular meat.
In Minecraft, some items like tools and weapons have predefined durability and get destroyed after a certain amount of usage. Applying the unbreaking enchantment makes a bow last longer. Technically, it reduces the chances of durability’s reduction while using a bow. With 3 levels of upgrades, you can ensure that your bow will last long enough, even during tiresome and long battles. Among the long list of best bow enchantments in Minecraft, this one is probably the easiest to find.
Similar to unbreaking, mending also helps your bow to last longer. But instead of increasing the durability, it allows you to repair or restore the reduced durability of your bow. The repair costs experience orbs which you can easily collect by killing mobs. So, you can keep killing mobs, and your bow will keep restoring itself. Combined with mending, this enchantment can make your bow or other items almost close to indestructible.
6. Infinity
Infinity is not only one of the best bow enchantments in Minecraft but also the most popular one. In simple terms, it gives you infinite arrows to use with the bow. Technically, it stops the bow from consuming any arrows. However, keep in mind that you still need at least one arrow in your inventory for this enchantment to function.
After all the best bow enchantments in Minecraft, there’s also a negative enchantment which you shouldn’t wish for. Curse of vanishing is one of the most well-known enchantments, and it causes the bow to disappear on your death instead of dropping as an item. That means enemies can’t steal your bow, and you can’t get it back after respawning. You have to recreate the bow from scratch and reapply the enchantments once it disappears.
By chance, if you have an iron ingot and a tripwire hook, you can craft a crossbow instead of a bow for an upgrade. As you might expect, a crossbow is more powerful than a regular bow. Thus, it also has some exciting enchantments. Here are some of the unique ones:
1. Quick Charge
Crossbows have a reload time similar to rifles in FPS games. That’s why players can’t use it to spam mobs with arrows. However, if you apply the quick charge enchantment on the crossbow, it reduces the reload time by up to .75 seconds.
Multishot is one of the most popular crossbow enchantments in Minecraft. It allows players to fire three projectiles at the same time. But doing so only consumes one item from your inventory. So, you can fire three arrows at the cost of one arrow.
For the last crossbow enchantment in Minecraft, we have the piercing enchantment. It allows the shot arrows to pierce through entities and continue moving until they hit another target. It’s a great way to kill multiple enemies at once while saving ammunition.
