Crossbow

A crossbow is a ranged weapon that uses arrows or fireworks as ammunition.

Pillagers
Pillagers have a small chance (8.5%) of dropping a loaded or unloaded crossbow when killed; this rate increases by 1% per level of Looting: 9.5% with Looting I, 10.5% with Looting II and 11.5% with Looting III. It will have a random durability, and can be rarely (10% chance) enchanted at level 5–19 whether or not it was enchanted when it spawned.

Piglins
Piglins have a chance of wielding a crossbow upon spawning, and they also have a small chance (8.5%) of dropping a loaded or unloaded crossbow when killed; this rate increases by 1% per level of Looting: 9.5% with Looting I, 10.5% with Looting II and 11.5% with Looting III. It will have a random durability, and can be rarely (10% chance) enchanted at level 5–19 whether or not it was enchanted when it spawned.

Natural generation
Crossbows have a 50% chance to be found in pillager outpost watchtower chest.

Trading
Journeyman-level Fletcher villagers will sell an unenchanted crossbow for 3 emeralds.

Master-level Fletcher villagers have a $1/16$ (6.25%) chance of selling an enchanted crossbow for 8 emeralds.

Master-level Fletcher villagers have $2/3$ chance of selling an enchanted crossbow for 7-22 emeralds.

Usage
Despite using iron in their crafting recipe, crossbows cannot be smelted into iron nuggets.

Weapon
Crossbows are similar to bows, but take longer to load and are slightly more powerful, shooting farther due to slightly higher accuracy. They can be drawn back by them, forcing the player to move at a sneaking speed, and unlike bows, the arrow or firework rocket can be fired only after it is fully charged. Once it has reached full charge, the player's speed returns to normal and the crossbow can be placed in another inventory slot or into an item frame without the arrow or firework rocket being unloaded or fired. In order to use the crossbow, at least one arrow or firework rocket must be present in the inventory. The player can choose which type of arrow to fire based on its location in their inventory. Arrows in the off-hand, or the selected hotbar slot if the crossbow is in the off-hand, are prioritized first. If there are no arrows in the off-hand or selected hotbar slot, the arrow closest to slot 0 is selected. Once loaded, a crossbow retains its ammunition even if unselected. Also, crossbows take about three seconds to load. However, once loaded, they still need to be used once more to fire the arrow or firework. The player can load either an arrow (tipped will still work) or a firework. Any color of firework will work.

Endermen teleport away from projectile paths, so they cannot be hit with crossbow arrows.


 * Attack strength:

Java Edition:

Bedrock Edition
 * Always

Fireworks
Firework rockets can be fired by loading the crossbow while holding the rockets in the off-hand. They fly at 32 m/s. Firework rockets with higher flight durations have a longer time before they explode and therefore travel farther. Firing a firework rocket uses 3 durability points per shot.

Firework rockets also work with the Multishot enchantment, enabling the player to shoot 3 firework rockets at a time. The increased durability usage stacks, resulting in 9 durability being consumed with each shot.

A shot firework rocket explodes instantly when it hits a mob or block. If the firework rocket has no explosion effect, it deals no damage. The explosion of a firework rocket deals to  points of damage, with one firework star. Each additional firework star on the rocket deals an additional to  points of damage, for a maximum of  to  with 7 firework stars.

Repair
Crossbows can be repaired in an anvil or grindstone by combining two crossbows. Any loaded ammunition is retained from the crossbow in the first slot, but sacrificed from the crossbow in the second slot.

Enchantments
Multishot and Piercing are mutually exclusive. Normal methods of enchanting allow only one of them to be applied to a crossbow.

Crossbows can receive 3 unique enchantments, and have a base enchantability of 1. Enchantments specific to crossbows include Quick Charge, Multishot and Piercing.

Fuel
Crossbows can be used as fuel in furnaces, smelting 1.5 items per crossbow.

Trivia

 * Crossbows enchanted with Quick Charge VI and above get stuck on the first frame on the recharging animation because the resulting charge time is negative, and the game never reaches the time markers that tell it to advance the animation or the reloading procedure itself. It is technically possible to charge such crossbows, but this would require overflowing the value that determines how long the crossbow has been charged. This takes such an amount of time that this is practically impossible: for example, charging a crossbow with Quick Charge VI would take 69.4 years to complete.
 * Due to being able to be put away and still be loaded, a player could have 9 crossbows in their hotbar, allowing for the rapid unloading of arrows. With average damage, this does 90 total damage with normal arrows, which is enough to kill a player in Protection IV diamond armor with Resistance II (38.1 damage total, taking armor toughness into account), the highest effect obtainable in survival without using a Potion of the Turtle Master.
 * In terms of ammunition, power, and single targets, bows are more effective with the Infinity and Power enchantments, while crossbows are good at crowd-controlling with Multishot/Piercing enchantments.
 * Skeletons and their variants do not know how to use a crossbow, despite the same using method as a bow.
 * Loading a crossbow with fireworks and then firing it at an enderman or wither with its Wither Armor active can damage it. This is because fireworks deal explosion damage and not projectile damage. This is the only method of damaging an enderman or wither with its Wither Armor at a long range.
 * The Piercing enchantment can be useful to save arrows because they can still be picked up after they hit a wall.
 * Shooting a charged crossbow will not delay any of the player's current action like sprinting, swimming, etc.
 * Although Piercing allows arrows to bypass shields, they can't get through the Wither Armor.
 * The Advancement "Ol' Betsy" is most likely a reference to the character Trigger from the 1973 Disney animated film Robin Hood, who has a crossbow he calls Ol' Betsy.
 * The Advancement "Arbalistic" could be a reference to the arbalest, the ballista, or both.
 * In Bedrock Edition, the crossbow has a constant damage of 9 per arrow.
 * The crossbow's first-person loading animation in Bedrock is different from Java.