Talk:Bow

Fuel Section Cleanup
Using a table in the fuel section is what should be cleaned up as I understand it. Looking at a couple other articles on items that also have different fuel values between Java/Bedrock, a table is not useful and clutters the page: see boat and slab. Albee12 (talk) 17:25, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Major info missing: Velocity and Damage range.
There should be info about velocity affecting the bow damage (as it is already in another wiki section about Arrow), adding with drag or lose of velocity the longer the arrow travel. Someone also dug the code and says that the damage inflicted by critical hits could be way more than 1-2, with unenchanted could go around 10-16 damage instead of just 10. This also includes the one in the Power enchantment section, which gives wrong impression that it is consistent damage inflicted (so, stating damage range might be way better).

All in all, there're a lot of info not yet to be updated to reflect the actual damage range, which is NOT consistently between 9 or 10.

In short, things that should be checked and updated:
 * Affected by velocity (shooting down = more damage).
 * Affected by drag (longer horizontal distance = less damage).
 * Damage range, enchanted & unenchanted.

Credit to TheMasterCaver that dug the code and informing about this (couldn't find anywhere else except maybe some YouTube vids):
 * https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-java-edition/survival-mode/2605728-is-there-velocity-in-the-bow?comment=4
 * https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-java-edition/survival-mode/2864640-power-enchantment-damage-confusion?comment=2 (Contains testing)

Some more testing by video:
 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilH2IejQyHI

Again, it's also an old forum, hence why further checking is required.

--101.128.68.172 19:55, 4 September 2019 (UTC)


 * I'd like to give some closure to this section: Yes, velocity does affect bow damage. Yes, critical hits are completely random, with their base damage being up to 1.5x a non-critical hit. Tested in 1.16.5's codebase; velocity DOES matter (you can reach terminal arrow velocity at any height above 200 blocks, and possibly some heights below); drag DOES matter, but the amount of drag is slightly offset by the fact that the arrow is constantly accelerating at 0.05b/t downwards; damage ranges are yet to be calculated but I suspect that they deal about average damage at maximum range, with their lowest being at the peak of their arc and highest being at the lowest point. sev (talk) 03:42, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Trivia: Nocked Arrows?
There is no way to cancel charged bows........... except on some platforms? That's the most wrong piece of trivia I've ever seen on a wiki outside of Dan Avidan mining out the Qumran Caves. What makes it worse is the lack of describing what platforms you can't do it on. I play Bedrock and PC and on both platforms I cancel a charge bow by changing my selected hotbar item (aka scrolling). I'm not entirely sure that there's a platform you CAN'T do that on. --74.139.134.146 04:02, 26 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I agree that seemed silly. I have removed that trivia item. I'm not a fan of trivia sections in general, so anything one can do to shorten or eliminate them is a good thing IMO. ~ Amatulic (talk) 17:49, 5 November 2019 (UTC)


 * In PS3 it works – reply was added by 2.83.119.156 (talk) at 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Damage clarifications
I think the damage numbers on this article conflict with the numbers on the Power article, so which article is right? Also, I'm pretty sure the "an arrow deals 1 point of damage + 4 if it's full charged. Each tenth of a second (0.1s) for which it is charged has a 97% chance of adding 1 hp, so there is a 12.5% probability of causing as much damage as 10. A bow enchanted with Power V is 125% more powerful, causing up to ." is wrong. It takes 10 tenths of a second to charge the bow, so if the calculation is right, then the max damage would be 1 + 4 + 10 = 15. an_awsome_person (talk) 01:19, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

Bow damage is heavily inaccurate. I've looked through the 1.16.4 code, and critical hits work entirely different. Will update the page to match, may not be concise. Formula to calculate starting velocity (and thus, damage) is based off of how long it is charged. Fully charged, it will travel at a maximum of 3 blocks per second. The lowest value I could get for a minimum charge was approximately 0.3m/s. This is also effected by gravity. In addition, critical hits deal up to a maximum of (1.5*[max]) + 2 damage, but can get anywhere from 0 to the critical maximum as a random number. Please let me know if I should format it any different- this is obtained from the 1.16.4 MCP reloaded, and I can provide the github for it if needed. Alt234mega (talk) 20:15, 7 January 2021 (UTC) Edit: Neglected to actually reply to anyone in a useful way. Moved this to the damage clarifications section. sev (talk) 09:15, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Bow animation
The bow animation is strange. Added in release 1.8 i can see the animation in videos from 2011, that's very strange...

Even stranger is - In the TU9 End trailer, the bow animation was seen, but in PlayStation 3 Edition (maybe 1.04 or 1.05) there was no bow animation 2.83.119.156 10:38, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

I'm talking about this:

Java Edition, Console Edition, Pi Edition and Pocket Edition prior to v0.8.0:

Bedrock Edition, New Nintendo 3DS Edition and Education Edition version:

–What? comment was added by 2.83.119.156 15:48, 2 January 2020 (UTC) can someone comment?

--2.83.119.156 12:13, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Damage Changes
Hi, person who changed all the damage values a while back due to them being inaccurate to the open source minecraft datamining project. It's clear that the damage values have been wrong for a very long time- the original values were added to commemorate the 1.9 beta update in 2011. I trust that the original values were correct- but I'm not sure when they were changed. It might be prudent to do a quick and dirty practical test- shoot a pig that's been hit by a bare hand once at full charge and see whether it dies in one shot (as the initial values were 9/10 and not 6/11). If it lives, you know that that version was changed. If it dies, try it a few more times (crits are random, and I'm fairly sure that you can't get rid of the critical hit stat on any given bow without manually changing the bow's code- which would defeat the whole purpose of a quick and dirty practical test.)

If we could get a couple of edits on this section of the talk page discussing specific versions and the findings people have gotten, that would be extremely helpful for the people who edit the history section. (forgot to sign) sev (talk) 01:22, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Bow slowing you down while charging it
The bow slows you down when you are charging it, and prevents you from initiating a sprint. The wiki does not seem to even acknowledge that the bow slows you down in Java edition, and the closest I can find is an entry in version history for Pocket Edition Alpha. I think the exact rate of which the bow slows you down while charging it, and the fact it "disables" sprinting (similar to blindness) should be documented. – Unsigned comment added by The Eye of Cthulu (talk • contribs) at 04:46, 12 January 2022‎ (UTC). Sign comments with
 * I tested this in Bedrock Edition and I observed the same thing. Drawing a bow, or even holding a bow that is drawn, restricted me to slow speed, like you're sneaking. I added a couple of sentences to the article about this. I never noticed this before because typically I'm standing still when drawing a bow. Amatulic (talk) 07:00, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Bow Piercing
Bows can't pierce, even if they are enchanted with piercing using creative/commands. (JE) – Unsigned comment added by DaDucIsDaKey (talk • contribs) at 02:49, 23 March 2023‎ (UTC). Sign comments with