Crossbow

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

Pillagers
When killed, a pillager has a small chance (8.5%) of dropping a loaded or unloaded crossbow with random durability; the drop rate increases by 1% per level of Looting: 9.5% with Looting I, 10.5% with Looting II and 11.5% with Looting III. The dropped crossbow can rarely (10% chance) be enchanted at level 5–19 regardless of being enchanted when it spawned.

Crossbows dropped by pillagers may have multiple enchantments, including duplicate enchantments on the same weapon.

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 of random durability 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 can rarely (10% chance) be enchanted at level 5–19 regardless of being enchanted when spawned.

Trading
Journeyman-level Fletcher villagers offer to 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 ingots 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 with slightly higher accuracy. Load them by them, which makes the player move at sneak speed. Unlike bows, the arrow or firework rocket can be fired only after it is fully charged. At this point, it must be used once more to fire its bolt.

Once it has reached full charge, the player's speed returns to normal. After that, shooting a charged crossbow does not delay any of the player's current action like sprinting or swimming.

The crossbow can even be placed in another inventory slot or into an item frame without the arrow or firework rocket being unloaded or fired. A charged crossbow also remains charged after enchanting it with an enchantment table or with an anvil.

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: Crossbows take 1.25 seconds (25 ticks) to load.
 * 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.

The player can load either an arrow (tipped still works) or a firework of any color.

Endermen teleport away from projectile paths, so they cannot be hit with crossbow arrows. However, they can still get harmed by firework rocket explosions, if they can't detect the firework rocket.


 * Attack strength:

Java Edition:

Bedrock Edition
 * Always

Fireworks
Firework rockets can be fired by loading the crossbow only while holding the rockets in the off-hand. They fly at 32 m/s. Firework rockets with higher flight duration 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. The explosion has a radius of roughly 4 blocks, which is unaffected by the firework star's effect. Each additional firework star on the rocket deals an additional to  points of damage, for a maximum of  to  with 7 firework stars. The flight duration of the firework does not affect the damage output of the firework, only increasing the maximum range the firework can travel before exploding. Likewise, the damage remains the same regardless of any dyes used. The Piercing enchantment causes the firework rocket to pierce a number of entities based on its respective level before exploding.

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.

ID




Item data



 * The tag tag.


 * See Bedrock Edition level format/Item format.
 * See Bedrock Edition level format/Item format.

Trivia

 * Alongside pillagers, crossbows were inspired by Minecraft Dungeons, even though they were added in the base game first.
 * 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.
 * 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 a 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.
 * 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 crossbow's first-person loading animation in Bedrock is different from Java.
 * Even if a crossbow is already wound with a projectile, when it drops on the ground, it always looks uncharged.