Arrow

Arrows are ammunition for bows and dispensers.

Obtaining
Arrows can be crafted, and are a possible drop from skeletons.

Usage
When fired, arrows will fly in a ballistic trajectory affected by gravity and drag in air or water and will travel approximately 3 blocks when fired parallel to a flat plane with no charge, 15 blocks average with medium charge, and 24 blocks average with maximum charge. Arrows in water get much more drag than in air, and leave a trail of bubbles in their wake. Arrows (with bow at full strength) can travel 120 blocks when fired from the optimal angle. The maximum height an arrow fired by a bow can reach is around 66 blocks.

An arrow's damage is determined by its speed. When fired from a fully-charged bow, arrows do 9 damage, with a small chance to do 10 damage. They do 6 damage from a medium-charged bow, and 1 damage  from a bow with no charge. Arrows fired from dispensers do 3 damage.

Immediately after hitting the target, there is a 0.5 second cooldown during which the target will be immune to further damage. Arrows hitting the mob in this state will lose all speed and drop to the ground.

Arrows will also stick into objects they come in contact with and will remain there for exactly a minute before disappearing; the distance from the object and the angle determine how far into the target the arrow will go. Arrows that have been fired by the player and stuck into terrain are retrievable and never break. Arrows shot by skeletons are special entities and cannot be collected. If someone is hit by an arrow while they have the Absorption effect, the arrow will do no damage when the effect wears off.

If an arrow is stuck in a block and the block in which the arrow is stuck in is broken or disappears (e.g., leaves), then the arrow will fall. A falling arrow will do damage, with the amount of damage depending on how much speed it acquires while falling.

Arrows can bounce off entities like minecarts and mobs immune to damage. In multiplayer, if PvP is on, a player can hurt themselves if they run forward while shooting arrows while the server is lagging. It is also possible for players to damage themselves with their own arrows by firing one directly up and standing still. Arrows fired directly upward using a fully charged bow will fly so high that they disappear from view, but eventually fall.

Arrows shot through lava (but not through fire) will catch on fire and show an appropriate animation until they pass through water. They can set other entities they hit on fire.

Arrows shot at rails will stop a minecart from passing over that block until the arrow despawns or is collected.

An arrow shot at a boat or any kind of minecart will cause the vehicle to break, dropping any components (including container contents).

Sometimes, in the Xbox 360 Edition, arrows will fly into a mob, however not damaging the mob and bouncing back, causing a graphical glitch: after a second they will teleport to where they really landed.

Arrows and circuits
An arrow can activate a wooden button, wooden pressure plate, or tripwire. If the arrow sticks in the switch they will remain activated until the arrow despawns after one minute. Other switches are not affected by arrows.

Arrows can also be used to block or destroy minecarts, or to destroy boats or paintings (which can then fall onto wooden pressure plates or tripwire).

When arrows are fired into the sides of blocks, they change their orientation to point more downwards than their original flight path might indicate. This can cause them to intersect and thus trigger switches above them that they didn't actually hit, or block rails above them.

Arrows shot into a repeater, comparator, or redstone lamp will shake when going from an off to an on state.

The ability for arrows to activate wooden pressure plates or buttons is not currently a feature in the Xbox 360 edition.

Arrows and explosions
Arrows are affected by the blast from TNT and creepers while they are in flight. A perfectly timed dispenser can be used to fire an arrow over primed TNT and the blast force imparted can be used to increase the flight range of the arrow. Using this same mechanic, a player could time a creeper explosion to do the same. Since explosions increase the speed of an arrow, they can also increase the damage dealt by them. Thus, enough TNT (or any explosion) propelling an arrow can kill a player in one hit.

Trivia

 * If an arrow is lodged in a block which has multiple states, it will dislodge itself when the block updates. This causes the arrow to shift slightly, and to replay the impact sound effect. Blocks affected include furnaces, doors, gates, redstone ore, redstone lamps, redstone repeaters, pistons and command blocks.
 * Arrows fired at Nether Portals will often skip through the portal block completely and fail to collide, thus continuing through to the opposite side of the block.
 * Server lag will often cause arrows to appear to bounce off of mobs and players, though damage is still applied correctly.

Gallery
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