Sword

A sword is a melee weapon that is mainly used to damage entities and for cutting cobwebs or bamboo (resulting in twice the normal damage being taken). A sword is made from one of six materials, in order of increasing quality and expense: wood, gold, stone, iron, diamond and netherite.

Unit repair
A sword can be repaired in an anvil by adding units of the tiers' repair material, with each repair material restoring 25% of the sword's maximum durability, rounded down.

Mob loot
Some mobs can spawn with a sword and have an 8.5% chance of dropping them upon death caused by player. This chance is increased by 1% per level of Looting, up to a maximum of 11.5% with Looting III. Zombies and husks can drop iron swords, zombified piglins and piglins can drop golden swords, and wither skeletons can drop stone swords. The dropped sword is usually badly damaged and may be enchanted. Stone swords dropped by wither skeletons are never enchanted.

A vex wields an iron sword that normally has a 0% chance of dropping, because their main hand's  is 0. However, this chance increases by 1 percentage point per level of Looting. It is never damaged and may be enchanted.

$$, pillagers and vindicators that spawn from raids have a 4.1% chance (5.12% chance on hard mode) of dropping a damaged iron sword. This sword has a 50% chance of being enchanted.

Trading


$$, an apprentice-level weaponsmith villagers sells enchanted iron swords for at least 7-21 emeralds, and a master-level weaponsmith sells enchanted diamond swords for at least 13-27 emeralds.

$$, a novice-level weaponsmith villager has a $2/3$ chance of selling an enchanted iron sword for at least 7-22 emeralds. A master-level weaponsmith offers to sell an enchanted diamond sword for at least 11–27 emeralds.

The enchantments of the swords offered by villagers are the same as the ones obtained from an enchantment table at levels 5–19.

Attacking
Pressing while holding a sword inflicts damage on both mobs and other players. Upon damaging a mob or player, the sword's durability decreases by 1.

Attacking a boat or a minecart with a sword instantly destroys it (JE only), without decreasing the sword's durability.

Sweep attack
If the attack recharge meter is 84.8% or above, and the player is standing or moving no faster than walking speed, the sword performs a "sweeping" attack that hits nearby enemies for and knocks them back. All enemies within 1 block horizontally and 0.25 blocks vertically of any part of the attacked mob and whose feet are less than 3 blocks away from player's feet are affected. The Sweeping Edge enchantment increases the damage dealt by 50% of the normal hit damage for level I, 67% for level II, and 75% for level III. The amount of knockback is 80% that of the knockback due to Knockback I (in other words, 2.8 blocks), and does not benefit from that enchantment. It is impossible to perform a sweep attack at the same time as a critical hit or sprint-knockback attack or while riding something.

Java Edition
Swords have an attack speed of 1.6 and take 0.625 seconds to recover. This can cause some players who attack without letting the sword cool down to perceive mobs as having excess health.

Bedrock Edition
$$, swords have no attack cooldown or sweep attack and deal the following damage:

The most amount of damage that a sword enchanted with Sharpness V can do is 11 $$ and 15.25 $$, without critical hits.

Sword breaking times
A sword can also be used to destroy certain blocks 50% quicker, sometimes much quicker than with fists. Using a sword to destroy any block that doesn't break instantly decreases its durability by 2.

If a sword is enchanted with Silk Touch, either using Creative or commands, it can collect cobwebs rather than getting the string drop. This is due to the sword being classified as the proper tool for cobwebs.

The following table shows the time it takes to break blocks on which swords have any effect. Colors indicate what gets dropped:
 * White: an original block.
 * Blue: block's normal drop (e.g. seeds, sapling, apple).
 * Red: nothing.

Swords can also be used for instant breaking of bamboo.

Safety around constructions
In Creative mode, swords are unable to break blocks. However, care must still be taken around minecarts, paintings, item frames and armor stands; these are entities, thus can be broken with swords in Creative.

Enchantments
Swords can receive, or be found in an End City's loot chests with the following enchantments:

Fuel
Wooden swords can be used as fuel in furnaces, smelting 1 item per sword.

Piglins
are attracted to golden swords and run toward any golden swords on the ground, and inspect it for 6 to 8 seconds before putting it in their inventory.

ID




Blocking
Previously, since the Adventure Update, all types of swords could be used to parry to block some forms of damage. If the player is blocking with a sword when attacked, the sword deflects 50% of incoming damage from melee, non-magical projectiles like arrows, and explosions, along with minimizing knockback. The sword is held in front of the player and its durability is not reduced by blocking. The player moves at a slower rate than sneaking if blocking with a sword. Sword blocks could be engaged and disengaged instantly, with no delay between the input and damage mitigation nor cooldown between lowering a block and raising a new one. After the Combat Update, the sword blocking functionality was replaced by blocking with shields and to accommodate the dual wield system. Shields negates more damage and knockback than sword blocking from "blockable" attacks (they block 100% damage and knockback after Java Edition 1.11), but, unlike swords, they have a 0.25 second startup period before damage can be mitigated and can be temporarily disabled by attacks with an axe.

Knockback
The knockback dealt by swords used to be higher than while the players are using another melee items, like an axe or with the hands. This feature was removed in Java Edition 1.9 and is also no longer used in Bedrock Edition.

Historical changes per version
{{History||Combat Tests|snap=1.14.3 - Combat Test|The attack speed for all swords has been increased to 3.
 * The base damage is now {{Hp|2}}, meaning that all swords now do more damage than before}.
 * The attack reach of swords has been increased to 3.5 blocks.}}

{{History|||snap=Combat Test 5|Weapons have been nerfed. All material tiers have been nerfed by except wood and gold, and the sword tier have been nerfed by {{Hp|1}}. This means that the wooden/stone/golden sword now does damage, the iron sword now does  damage and the diamond sword now does  damage.}}

Trivia

 * The sword's texture came from Notch's abandoned RPG, Legend of the Chambered. The iron sword's texture was created first, as it was from the game, and the other swords followed.
 * With the introduction of netherite swords, it is possible to one-hit kill undead mobs in the game (except withers and zombies/skeletons with random armor) using a sword with the Smite V enchantment, without the need to perform a critical hit (this was previously possible only with a Smite V stone, iron, or diamond axe).
 * Plastic diamond and enchanted swords are official Minecraft merchandise.