When you want to take part in long-range combat in Minecraft, it’s not enough to just craft a bow and equip it. You’ll also need arrows to go along with it.
Bows in Minecraft (especially enchanted ones) are easy to make and incredibly useful.
In this post, we’ll look at how to make arrows in Minecraft easily and how you can make different types of arrows, too.
Minecraft Arrow Recipe
- 1 flint
- 1 stick
- 1 feather
The ingredients needed to make an arrow are pretty easy to find.
When chickens die, they usually drop chicken meat which you can cook and eat. They will usually also drop feathers, which you need for making arrows.
There’s a rather easy way of finding flint quickly.
Rather than looking for large amounts of gravel, having just a few gravel blocks that you place down and break over and over again can generate plenty of flint.
When you break gravel you are always guaranteed to get the block and there’s a small chance to get flint from this block. Even with a single block of gravel, you can farm flint indefinitely.
Once you have your ingredients just arrange them on the crafting table:
One recipe yields 4 arrows.
Minecraft Tipped Arrow Recipe
- 8 arrows
- 1 lingering potion of a chosen effect
Tipped arrows can be made by combining regular arrows with any potion that has a lingering effect. When hitting a target they will give it the effect of the potion that was used during crafting.
Almost any effect that a lingering potion can give can be applied to arrows.
They are immune to the infinity enchantment, meaning they get consumed no matter if the bow has the enchantment or not.
You can tell tipped arrows apart from regular arrows by the colored tip and particles.
This recipe yields 8 tipped arrows with the same effect as the lingering potion you used.
Minecraft Spectral Arrow Recipe
- 1 arrow
- 4 glowstone dust
Spectral arrows are exclusive to Java Edition Minecraft.
These arrows can’t be affected by the infinity enchantment like regular arrows can. Their main purpose is to give you a slight “wall-hack” when hitting an enemy.
Anyone hit with a spectral arrow will have a glowing outline that is visible to you through walls. It is a very good thing to have in PVP if you’re playing the Java edition.
This recipe yields 2 spectral arrows.
Finding Arrows
You can trade emeralds to villagers in exchange for arrows in villages.
Otherwise the best source of arrows is simply killing skeletons or strays, if you can’t craft them. On death they drop up to 2 arrows, which can be increased with the looting enchantment.
How to Use Arrows
To use arrows you will need to have a bow ready.
To actually use them, you will have to have the arrows in your inventory and your bow equipped in your main hand.
You can draw an arrow by holding down the right mouse button and fire it by releasing the button.
Depending how long you hold the button, the arrow will fly farther and hit harder. Holding the arrow drawn too long will wear down your bow, which will require you to fix it.
Firing an arrow will consume the ones you have in your inventory.
If you are worried about wasting your arrows by missing shots, you don’t have to worry. Any arrow that does not hit a mob can be picked up from the block it landed on.
That is why you can fire an arrow in the ground to pick it up immediately if you think you’ll miss the shot.
Arrows can’t be used as replacements for bolts that are used in crossbows. Bolts can also have tipped versions that will give the shot mobs the lingering status effects.
What to Do Next
Having to endlessly remake and collect your arrows will eventually become a pain and you will need a shortcut to this.
Enchanting your bow with the infinity enchantment is the perfect way to counter this.
This enchantment allows you to fire an infinite amount of arrows as long as you have a single arrow in your inventory at all times.
