Minecraft gives you a huge world to play around with, and having a Bow is essential to protect you against monsters and other hostile creatures, as it allows you to pick them off from a distance.
Thankfully, you can craft Bows quite early in the game. Here’s how you can make one in Minecraft.
Crafting recipe for a Bow in Minecraft
The crafting recipe for a Bow in Minecraft is quite simple, and you can find it in the image below.
Here are the materials you need and how to get them :
- Stick: You need three of these. You can craft sticks using wooden planks. Additionally, you can craft four wooden planks using one wood log, so get your axe out and start chopping down trees.
- String: You’ll need three pieces of this material as well. You can get it in the following ways:
- Mining Tripwire (you can find five pieces of string in a Jungle Temple)
- Breaking a cobweb with a sword or a piston
- Fishing
- Killing a Spider or Cave Spider
- Killing Striders
- Killing Cats, or getting it as a gift from one
- Looting chests in Dungeons, Pillager Outposts, Bastion Remnants, Trail Ruins, Woodland Mansions, or Desert Temples
- Bartering with Piglins
How to use the Bow
Firing a bow is even easier than crafting it, as all you need to do is hold and release the right-click button on your mouse to use it. However, you’ll need arrows as ammunition. Here’s how you can get them:
Crafting recipe for arrows
Like the Bow, you can create Arrows easily. You’ll need feathers, sticks, and flint. One of each of these materials will give you four arrows.
You can get feathers as drops from Chickens, Parrots, and sometimes, Foxes. You can also obtain them from chests inside Shipwrecks and Villages, as a gift from cats, and by trading with Fletchers. Flint can be mined from Gravel blocks, looted in Ruined Portal or Village chests, or obtained by trading with Fletchers.
How to upgrade your Bow
While the Bow in Minecraft doesn’t have any higher-tier variants like Swords, Axes, and other tools do, you can enchant it. Enchanting is done at an enchanting table, and imbues your gear with special abilities that make it stronger, faster, and more efficient.
Best enchantments for the Bow
There are several enchantments that you can use to make your Bow stronger. Here are five of the best ones, in no particular order:
- Punch: Increases the knockback value on each arrow.
- Power: Increases the damage dealt by each arrow.
- Flame: Makes all arrows flaming arrows, dealing burning damage. You can also use this to acquire cooked meat directly from sheep, pigs, cows, and similar animals.
- Infinity: Gives you infinite arrows as long as you have at least one in your inventory.
- Unbreaking: Increases the durability of your Bow.
