The Ultimate Minecraft 1.20 Weapons Guide – Sword, Bow, Axe, Trident & Crossbow Compared

In minecraft there are five main weapons to fight players and mobs with all of them have unique functions enchantments and uses so in this weapons guide i’ll compare them all to find out which one is the best in minecraft 1.19 the five weapons in minecraft are the bow the

Crossbow the trident the netherrite sword and the netherite axe and we’re gonna start off with the bow bows can be obtained by either crafting them or buying them from fletcher villagers now to use a bow we draw back on it and fire at whatever mob we’re trying to get but

Something really important to know about the bow is the enchantments that you use with it every weapon in fact basically every single enchantable item in minecraft can have unbreaking and mending on it so we’re just going to focus on the pvp-based enchantments for these specific items for the bow we have

Power five now this increases the amount of damage that is delivered from the boat and i’ll go into the exact numbers later there is also flame this is basically the exact same as fire aspect for the sword this will make anything that you hit light on fire which is an incredibly

Effective enchantment especially for burning up mobs you would let’s say get a food drop from next there is punch which is the bow variant of knockback and if you hit a mob with a punch bow the mob will be knocked back considerably finally we have infinity

Which you can only add to a bow if it doesn’t have mending infinity makes it so that when you’re using the bow no arrows are actually consumed another interesting thing about infinity is then you cannot pick up the arrows that you fire and they can’t even disappear when

You walk over them they just stay there until they despawn now how much damage does a bow do if you right click very quickly and shoot that arrow without charging up your bow very much then it’s only one damage or a singular half heart however if you charge up your bow for

0.2 to 0.9 seconds that charge will make there be five points of damage so two and a half hearts if you fully charge your bow and you’ll know it’s fully charged because it’ll stop drawing back and then you fire like that then your damage will be anywhere from 6 to 11

You may be wondering why it is a differing value that’s because the damage with the bow is actually variable so at the full level it depends on how much of a critical hit you’ll get the chance of getting a critical hit is completely random so for instance

Hitting this skeleton here we could be taking almost six hearts off of its health or we may only be taking about three hearts off of its health and the average bow damage at full charge unenchanted is eight to ten points of damage so about four to five hearts per

Hit well power five upgrades your bow so anything you hit will give you anywhere between 15 to 25 points of damage or that’s seven and a half hearts all the way up to 12 and a half hearts so in the end the unique uses for the bow are

Firing tipped arrows so for instance these arrows of instance damage will make much more damage be incurred to the mobs that we’re hitting than it normally would and of course there’s tipped arrows of a lot of different types every potion type the other big advantage of

The boat is not having to fight mobs close up but instead being a ranged weapon two other cool things you can do with the bow if you have the flame enchantment is to ignite tnt with it or to blow up the tnt mine carts both of

These uses of the bow are unique to its flame enchantment what’s your favorite weapon in minecraft be sure to leave your answer in the comments below to see which one is most popular alright well enough about the bow what about the crossbow you’d assume it’d be an upgrade

To the bow in every way well let’s find out so you can get the crossbow from it being dropped from the pillager mob they also use it as their main weapon along with half of piglens however another way you can get the crossbow is by trading with villagers if you would prefer to

Craft the crossbow place an iron ingot and a tripwire hook in the crafting grid place sticks like this and string like this and that will give you the crossbow with this item you hold right click to charge it like the bow but if you try and fire now it doesn’t fire but it

Simply charges up the crossbow once it’s charged you can just simply right click again to fire at the mobs you’re trying to hit however something that makes the crossbow very much more unique than the bow is the fact that you can load up fireworks that’s right fireworks into

The crossbow these provide a large splash area of damage so let’s take a look at the enchantments that the crossbow has to offer so to start off we have the quick charge enchantment going up to quick charge 3. it’s really easy to assume what this does compared to the normal loading

Speed of the crossbow the loading speed of the quick charge enchantment is much quicker beyond that there is also the multi-shot enchantment which is incredibly overpowered considering the fact that with only one arrow you can shoot three arrows out of the crossbow you’ll notice you only pick one of them

Up those two other arrows act like infinity arrows and this gives you a wide range to get your target correct you can even fire multiple mobs at once with this which is incredibly useful if you have a large crowd of mobs you need to kill now the other enchantment on the

Crossbow is mutually exclusive with the multi-shot enchantment and that is piercing it actually works a little bit similarly to multi-shot for instance right here we’re able to hit through multiple husks at once as you just saw not just one and this is really great if

You do have a big crowd of mobs as a damage from one arrow can be super efficient going all the way up to piercing 4 so what is the damage given by the crossbow unlike all the other pvp weapons in the game there are no specific enchantments which give us

Better attack damage the damage is anywhere between 7 to 11 points of damage that would be an average of about 9 or 4 and a half hearts average per shot all the specific uses of the crossbow really are tailored to fighting multiple mobs at once or group mob

Combat the average of the firework is 11 to 18. this is definitely a large amount of damage and is much more than you would get with the arrows so that could be all the way up to 9 hertz of damage however the average on this is not that

Many the average is 14.5 points or a little over 7 hertz of damage it is also possible to use tipped arrows with the multi-shot crossbow as you can see and so because of that you can maximize the effect of one tipped arrow but overall i would say the crossbows uses are for any

Scenario in which you want to have a large field of damage or fighting multiple mobs at once on two minecrafts only aquatic focused weapon that is the trident you cannot craft the trident however what you can do is you can get it from trident bearing drowned in bedrock edition it’s fairly common to

Get triton drowns it’s also fairly common to get the trident from the drowned when they die however in java that’s exactly the opposite it’s actually incredibly difficult to get the trident from the trident round in java the triton has a total of four enchantments that are exclusive to it

The first enchantment we’re going to look at is impaling this works completely differently in bedrock as it does in java in bedrock any mob that is in the water will have extra damage when hit with an impaling trident versus a standard trident however in java any aquatic mob will gain more damage when

It is hit by the impaling trident meaning impaling is only really useful on things like drowned maybe puffer fish and guardians elder guardians in java edition whereas in bedrock if anything’s happening underwater you want that impaling enchantment the next enchantment is loyalty this fundamentally changes how the trident

Works as standardly you’ll throw it down it’ll just sit in the ground like that however if you throw a trident with loyalty once it hits the ground or its target it will fly back up to you and eventually go into your inventory giving you a sort of returning weapon maybe

Boomerang like next there is the channeling enchantment if it’s thunder and you throw your trident at any single mob or entity a lightning bolt will be summoned hitting those mobs now something interesting you may have noticed is that we’re in the desert it’s not raining but you can tell by the sky

That it is the thunderous weather and so what’s really interesting about that is that you can summon the lightning bolt no matter where you are as long as you’re inside of the overworld if it is thundering the final enchantment we have does work with impaling but does not

Work with loyalty or with channeling and that is the riptide enchantment riptide’s main use is as a way to quickly travel through the water sort of making this strange swirling effect as you shoot through the water but also as you saw right there we hit a fish and

Damage was incurred to that fish killing it now because of this you can use it to kill things that are under water or even your underwater now one really cool thing about this if you’re in java is if you have that rib tied trident in your

Offhand and you have a weapon in your main hand and you hit a mob the damage effect works with the item that you have in your main hand alright so what is the damage of the trident for standard melee attacks with a trident the damage of

That is nine you can do critical attacks and so with that critical attack it is 13.5 points of damage or a little under seven hertz of damage for one hit for the ranged attack it is eight damage and there is no variability with that impaling 5 adds 12.5 points of damage to

Any attack with a trident that means a melee attack on aquatic mobs or mobs in the water if you’re in bedrock is now 21.5 points of damage or over 10 hertz of damage whereas a ranged attack is about 10 hertz of damage as well only being one half herd of damage less so

The ideal uses of the trident are on underwater mobs and let’s fly away from using the trident a bit and go on to a more traditional weapon of the sword the sword is made with two diamonds or whatever other material you want to make your sword out of and a singular stick

Now the sword can also be combined with a netherite ingot to make a netherrite sword the sword is a fairly basic item however something to be aware of is the fact you have to be very close to things when fighting with the sword which can make it dangerous when fighting certain

Mobs of pvp affecting enchantments there are seven that are able to be put on the sword first of all we have smite and what this will do is this will make there be extra damage to all undead mobs there’s also sharpness which goes up to five it works on every single mob next

There’s also bane of arthropods which increases substantially the attack damage on arthropod mobs next once you’ve chosen either sharpness smite or bane of arthropods we have the knockback enchantment the knockback is great on things like creepers or really any mob you do not want to have close spidey

When you’re fighting them so let’s see if we’re going to hit this piglet right down here when we hit the piglet it’s going to be knocked back incredibly far like you saw right there then there is fire aspect which works basically the same as the flame enchantment does on

The bow the fire aspect enchantment is great on things like hoglands maybe pigs cows really a lot of farming mobs because when you kill something with the fire damage effect you’ll notice that their drops are cooked next we have the only enchantment that is exclusive between bedrock and java that is

Sweeping edge which is exclusive to java edition now sweeping edge is something that really levels up the abilities of the sword if you have a large horde of mobs that you have to deal with you’ll notice with that sweeping edge effect multiple mobs are hit at the exact same time and

That’s because 75 of the main mob’s damage is attributed to the mobs that are also hit on the side so looting is the final enchantment exclusive to the sword basically looting is the equivalent of fortune but for a sword so for instance when let’s say slaying this hogland when the hogland is

Killed the number of pork chops that it drops will generally be a lot higher for things especially like wither skeleton skull hunting you definitely want looting on there so what’s the damage of this weapon that has so many enchantments on it well generally the damage is eight so that would be 4 hertz

Of damage with no enchantments and hit on the way down the damage is leveled up to 12 or 6 hertz of damage for sharpness that’s 11 for non-critical and 15 for a critical hit and for smite that is 21.5 for the standard hit and 24.5 for

The critical hit the attack speed of the sword is 1.5 which is fairly fast so you can rebound very quickly and the recovery time is only 0.624 which also means if you miss it you can re-hit a mob very quickly the uses for this weapon are definitely in close

Fast-paced combat as well as mobs you want to get a lot of loot from and scenarios in which the enchantments on the sword would be useful also if you’re on bedrock edition the sword is much better than on java and that has to do with the axe which we’re going to be

Talking about next as we’ll say goodbye to the sword for now the axe is created if you craft it with three material and two sticks this could for instance be gold maybe iron or diamond you can also buy axes as well as swords from the villagers if we put the axe into the

Anvil there are four enchantments for the accent effect the way that it works the first one is efficiency now axes can disable shields and there is a 25 chance of this happening or a 75 chance if you’re sprinting however with the efficiency enchantment per level of efficiency that adds five percent to the

Chance of it being disabled which means that if we’re sprinting and have efficiency five on our axe every single time we attack a player its shield would be disabled if it has one just like the sword the axe can have the bane of arthropods enchantment the sharpness enchantment or the smite enchantment the

Sharpness enchantment also something i didn’t mention earlier it does work differently in both versions in bedrock it’s a lot better adding a very decent amount of damage per level whereas in java it’s not even half as effective but still sharpness works against all mobs whereas smite doesn’t now if we put

Smite on the sax for instance it would then work similarly to a smite sword you can also put bane of arthropods on an axe if you want to so what is the damage for the axe well if you’re using a netherrite axe and you hit something in

A non-critical hit as you can do critical hits with axes then that will inflict 10 points of damage if you’re doing a critical hit with an unenchanted netherite axe then that will give you 15 points of damage or about seven and a half hearts now a critical hit with a

Sharpness enchanted axe will give you the damage of 18. a non-critical hit the damage is 13 and if you have a netherright axe you can get the highest of all time damage from a standard tool and that is 22.5 if it’s a non-critical hit however if it’s a critical hit you

Can have 27.5 points of damage or a little under 14 hertz of damage with one hit which is of course incredibly overpowered although it does only apply to the undead mobs now the attack speed of this is only one meaning it attacks slower than the sword does that’s one of

The reasons outside of things like looting or knock back that an axe isn’t necessarily as good as a sword in terms of all combat uses also its recovery time is slower so let’s say we hit a mob incorrectly the amount of time it takes for that to rebound is going to be

Longer than that of a sword meaning our combat cannot be as fast paced now something incredibly important to note is the fact that axes are very different in bedrock edition and bedrock axes are not super good because basically their damage is one point lower than it would

Be for a sword so take the damage of a sword and make there be one less damage on there that is the amount of damage for an axe in bedrock edition definitely nowhere near as strong as they are in java but overall in a little bit slower

Paced combat as well as fighting a player with shield pvp in general if you want to have a slower but incredibly strong close range weapon the axe is your go-to and now for the final analysis what is the best weapon in minecraft the results are in the best

Long range weapon is the bow thanks to its power 5 enchantment affecting all mobs and its incredible damage also how easy it is to get early game and its intuitive use next for the best late game weapon we have the sword for things like the looting enchantment as well as

Let’s say knock back 2 or maybe the sweeping edge there’s a lot of uses you’ll encounter late game for this sword that really make it indispensable as well as the fact of its quick action often times late game you want to be very careful with what you do and you

Don’t want to die from not being able to react quickly enough to a scenario next the winner for the best early game weapon is actually the stone axe or really the axe in general the reason why is that the stone sword which is something you’d be making extra on top

Of the stone axe anyway considering the fact that generally players will make a stone axe to get themselves trees more efficiently at first this stone sword has a damage of only five and the stone axe has a damage of nine in fact that means that the stone axe has a higher

Amount of damage than the netherrate sword does which is incredibly crazy but it’s true meaning you definitely should make a stone axe in your survival world when you’re first starting out although if you’re in bedrock this is not the case and so you just want to make a

Stone sword there now for the most damaging weapon the winner is also the axe although in this case not the stone axe but the netherride axe as of course the netherate acts with smite can go all the way up to 27.5 points of damage as

The next closest one which is a power 5 bow can only go up to 25 points of damage at the most luckiest chance with the average being much lower than that the axe is definitely the best weapon if you’re considering the amount of damage that it causes and finally the best

Weapon for large groups of mobs is the firework crossbow considering the fact of the massive amount of splash damage that it causes especially if this is combined with the multi-shot enchantment killing massive crowds of mobs is incredibly easy if you have on you the crossbow i hope you enjoyed that combat

Guide be sure to smite the like button i’ll see you later if i survive being a living pincushion goodbye You