Best Bow Enchantments in Minecraft

By José Zapata Updated November 19, 2022

Minecraft sometimes feels overwhelming, and we’ll help you sort through its mechanics. Now, we’re ranking the best bow enchantments in Minecraft.

Because there’s a single bow type in the game (plus crossbows), the ranged weapon is underrepresented. They are also harder to use, as you must micro-manage the arrow crafting. But there’s a way to make bows stand on top of your favorite melee weapons. That is by putting Enchantments, some of which are easy to find.

We’re detailing how the buff works, and we’ll share an overview of how to obtain it. Minecraft has an overwhelming amount of exploration, crafting, combat, and trading mechanics. Our goal is to simplify your experience.

Selecting the Best Bow Enchantments in Minecraft

Enchantments are power-ups you can place on weapons, tools, and armor using the Anvil. You’d recognize an Enchanted bow because it looks purple.

Now, bows have seven Enchantments available. These buffs offer some variety, but some are more useful than others. Also, some of these Enchantments have tiers, while others come in a single variant.

You can craft six Enchantments on the bow simultaneously, but these weapons can’t have both Infinity and Mending (only one of the two). That means you can have a bow with all Enchantments except Infinity or Mending.

We’re ranking these seven Enchantments. At the top, we’re putting the ones that will make your life easier or your character more powerful. These are the ones you should find or buy sooner rather than later.

Then, at the bottom, we left the ones that are not as special. In other words, you can skip them or save your currency if you find these Enchantment books on traders. Lastly, the Enchantments are available for Minecraft Bedrock and Java editions, but there’s an exception. Unbreaking doesn’t seem to be available on Java.

Power

Power is a straightforward buff, a sure choice for all players. In essence, it’s a damage buff. Minecraft offers a single type of bow, so you can’t craft a powerful diamond bow -but you can craft a diamond sword.

Crafting is not the way to increase the weapon’s damage. Instead, Power is one of the two ways to increase the damage. The other way is using Tipped Arrows, some of which can pack an extra punch.

Power comes in five tiers. Each tier is more powerful. Once you reach Power V, you’ll get a 150% damage increase. More specifically, Power will increase damage by 25% per level, and the damage will round itself up to the nearest half-heart. Here’s the chart:

Power Tier	Damage Increase	No Charge	Medium Charge	Full Charge	Full Charge (Critical Damage)
Standard bow	No increase	1 heart	3 hearts	3 hearts	5.5 hearts
I	+50% (3.0)	1 heart	4 hearts	4.5 hearts	8 hearts
II	+75% (3.5)	1 heart	4.5 hearts	5.5 hearts	9.5 hearts
III	+100% (4.0)	1 heart	5 hearts	6 hearts	10 hearts
IV	+125% (4.5)	2 hearts	6 hearts	7 hearts	11.5 hearts
V	+150% (5.0)	2 hearts	6.5 hearts	7.5 hearts	12.5 hearts

Flame

Flame is, no doubt, the most fun Enchantment for bows. A Flame bow will make mobs burn!

The fire will last on the mob for five seconds, and it will cause 2.5 hearts of damage per second. That’s a total of 12.5 hearts, which may sound little. However, it grants a lot of power to elemental arrows, making them very easy to craft.

Similarly, Flame bows will benefit from damage-dealing arrowheads. You can even fire a poison-head arrow with your Flame bow, and the mob will get on fire and suffer from the poison damage tick.

It looks fantastic, and food-based mobs who die in flames will drop cooked meat. You can use Flame bows on campfires, TNTs, and candles. However, you can’t put blocks on fire with a fire blow.

One thing to remember is that the Flame buff won’t affect most enemies in the nether dimension. They will get the damage of the arrow you’re using.

The Flame Enchantment is quite good, even if the damage tick seems little. If you already have Power on the bow, Flame will make a nice difference in exploring and fighting mobs or bosses. More importantly, Flame can save you the hassle of crafting unique arrowheads. And if you want to see mobs on fire, feel free to rush to this buff.

Unbreaking

Repairing an Enchanted bow is not difficult. You only need to combine the Enchanted bow with a regular bow on the Anvil, and the Enchanted bow will get the durability of the standard version.

But you wouldn’t want to linger around your base all the time. Sometimes, you want to explore, fight, and go on big hunts.

In these cases, Unbreaking effectively upgrades the bow’s durability. Specifically, it will reduce the change of arrow shots reducing the bow’s durability. Unbreaking has three levels, and each level will improve the effect further. It will help you sustain the weapon during long and complex battles.

Ideally, you’d want to place Unbreaking after you place a couple of Enchantments on the bow (like Flame and Power). Luckily, this Enchantment is the easiest to find fishing, trading, or in the Enchantment table.

Lastly, here’s the effective durability the Unbreaking Enchantment adds:

Unbreaking Tier	Effective Durability
Standard bow	384
I	768
II	1152
III	1536

Infinity

Infinity is the Enchantment that will make the life of your bow character way easier. And while it won’t raise damage as Power or Flame, it’s the most useful buff for the weapon.

In essence, Infinity gives you infinite arrows. Any arrow type you have on your inventory will become infinite as long as you’re holding an Infinity Bow in your primary hand. Infinity is a mid-game Enchantment. That’s because there’s no point in doing this on basic arrows -it takes about ten elemental arrows to take down a cow, so they are nearly worthless.

But once you put Power and Flame into the bow, you’ll realize your damage is significantly up. So, you’d want to save time crafting and spend extra time fighting with the ranged weapon.

Also, you can use the Infinity bow alongside your best arrow types. For example, the Harming and Poison arrows are the only arrowheads that raise damage. The other types available are buffs for yourself or other players or depuffs for the enemies.

Let’s say you have a single Arrow of Poison in your inventory. The Infinity Bow will allow you to fire the Arrow of Poison infinitely. The same is to say about Arrows of Harming. Harming arrows can raise the damage up to eleven hearts. However, these arrows don’t work with Power bows.

Lastly, Infinity has a single level, which is Infinity I.

Punch

Punch is one of the least favorite Enchantments for bow, and it’s because it can make the bow harder to use -especially for beginners.

Its function is simple. See, every attack in Minecraft pushes the receiver back slightly. This is known as a “knockback,” and there’s even a “Knockback” Enchantment for swords.

Punch will increase the bow’s knockback by three blocks. So every time you fire an arrow, you will push enemies back. Moreover, if you fire an arrow at yourself, you will push yourself back.

Then, Punch comes in two levels. The second level increases the knockback to six blocks. The knockback won’t increase the damage, but it will help you escape difficult situations or push mobs to traps and cliffs.

It has a drawback, though. Constantly pushing the enemies back will force you to re-aim your bow per each shot, making fights longer and the bow less reliable. We recommend using it on a secondary bow as a means to escape. Or, if your ranged skills are precise, put it on your main bow.

Mending

Mending is similar to Unbreaking, as it’s another utility Enchantment to protect your bow’s durability. And while it sounds incredible, we don’t recommend putting it on bows. The Mending buff will allow you to repair the bow without using the Anvil. Instead, if you’re holding the Mending bow on your main hand, experience orbs will heal it.

You can get experience orbs mainly by killing mobs. Additional ways to get orbs (such as fishing) depend on the Minecraft edition. However, fighting is the easiest way to do it. There’re two downsides, though. First, you can’t collect experience to level up if you collect the orbs to repair the bow. So, unless the bow has full durability, you won’t gain any XP.

Secondly, the Enchantment doesn’t work correctly if you simultaneously wear more than a single Mending item. If this is the case, the experience orbs will randomly heal any of these items.

Because of its drawbacks, it would be best to pick Infinity rather than Mending. After all, repairing an Enchanted bow is easy, and you can increase its durability with Unbreaking.

You can repair an enchanted bow by combining it with a regular bow on an Anvil. Traditional bows are cheap, so Mending is not as appealing as it should be. However, it’s a must Enchantment for pricy gear such as Diamond Swords. And lastly, Mending is a rare Enchantment. You can’t find it on the Enchantment table. Instead, you’d have to fish it or find it on a chest.

Curse of Vanishing

Lastly, we’ve reached the odd Curse of Vanishing. The “buff” will make your bow disappear when your characters die.

It means other players won’t be able to loot it from your body in multiplayer game modes. You won’t be able to pick it up, either. In that sense, the Enchantment can be useful in multiplayer lobbies. Nobody (not you and not any other player) will get your Enchanted bow.

Consider this: if you die in PvP, you will lose the bow anyways. So, do as you did when you were a kid. When you lose, take the ball (it’s your ball), go home, and ruin everybody else’s fun.