Trident

"If you don't want to throw it away permanently, then you should invest in Loyalty. This common enchantment makes your trident come back to you. Riptide, which makes you lunge with your trident when you throw it (as long as you're in water, or it's raining) is also well worth seeking out!"

- Tom Stone

A trident is a type of weapon that can be used in melee or ranged combat.

Obtaining
Tridents are not craftable; it can only be obtained via the methods below.

Drowned
15% of drowned will spawn with a trident as their natural weapon, and they have an 8.5% chance of dropping the trident which has a random durability. Each level of Looting will increase the chance by 1 percentage point (11.5% with Looting III).

Drowned can also drop a trident as one of its normal drops. The trident has a 3.7% chance, 4% chance with Looting I, 4.3% chance with Looting II and 4.7% chance with Looting III of dropping itself.

Only naturally-spawned drowned, not converted zombies, will spawn with a trident or have a chance of dropping one.

Thrown tridents
Tridents that were thrown onto the ground can be picked up, similarly to a fired arrow. Tridents that are enchanted with Loyalty will return to the thrower within seconds, the time taken will become shorter with each level of Loyalty enchanted onto the trident. Like skeleton and stray arrows, tridents thrown by drowned cannot be picked up.

Drowned
15% of drowned will spawn with a trident as its natural weapon and it will use it to attack its target. They will throw the trident at its opponent every 1.5 seconds, which will deal damage to its target. Villagers can also be turned into zombie villagers if it was killed by a trident thrown by a drowned, this chance is 0% on Easy difficulty, 50% on Normal and 100% on Hard and Hardcore.

In Bedrock Edition, drowned can use the trident’s melee attack if its target is three blocks away or less, which deals damage to its target.

The trident the drowned spawned with will never be enchanted, and the drowned can throw an infinite amount of tridents without losing it.

Melee Attack
Pressing while holding a trident will increase your damage to both mobs and players. Upon damaging a mob or player, the trident's durability will decrease by 1.

Ranged Attack
Pressing and holding while holding  a trident will charge the trident. When released at full charge, the trident will be thrown and deal damage to the entity that it hits, if any. It flies on a ballistic trajectory similar to that of an arrow, but at 80% strength. If the trident hits a block, it will stick to the block, and if it hits an entity, it will bounce and land nearby. It is also blocked by shields, and can be retrieved once it lands in the ground. Thrown tridents can press wooden buttons and pressure plates.

Unlike other projectiles, the trident does not slow down when thrown through water.

The Impaling enchantment will affect all water mobs and players, but will not include drowned.

Java Edition
Tridents have an attack speed of 1.1 and take ~0.91 seconds to recover.

Bedrock Edition
In the Bedrock Edition, tridents have no attack cooldown and do the following damage:

Elytra
A trident with the Riptide enchantment can be used to propel the elytra, but only in rainy weather or while the player is in a body of water.

Enchantments
Tridents can receive the following enchantments:


 * Loyalty
 * Channeling
 * Riptide
 * Impaling
 * Unbreaking
 * Mending
 * Curse of Vanishing

Repairing
Tridents can only be repaired by combining a damaged trident with another on an anvil, by crafting, or the Mending enchantment. Note that using a crafting table or the inventory 2x2 grid, will remove the trident's enchantments.

Data values
Tridents have entity data associated with them that contain various properties of the entity. Their entity ID is.

Trivia

 * While tridents deal more melee damage than a diamond sword, they only have the same durability as an iron sword, which has 251 durability.