Tutorials/Dual wielding

This tutorial will help you become familiar with Dual Wielding, a mechanic added in 15w31a. For this tutorial, keep in mind that in the 1.9 snapshots, there will be an option to switch your main hand. Before 1.9, it was always your right hand.

What is it?
Dual wielding is when you hold two things, one in each hand. In the inventory, there is a new slot. It is called the off-hand slot, and looks like a shield. When you put something in it, you are now holding two things. For easy equipping to the off-hand slot, press by default. It is changeable in the settings. Using this, you can put something in the off-hand slot, switch the items in your hands, and put something in the main hand from the off-hand. You can see what is in your off-hand by a little box that pops up beside the hotbar. It will be on the opposite side from the main hand

Limitations
The main hand always takes priority when trying to use an item. This means that the main hand will be the only thing to be able to break/attack, which defaults to left click. This means that you cannot use weapons in the offhand. This even goes for bows, even though they use right-click to draw back. If the item in the main hand lacks a use item (defaults to right click) use, the offhand will use right click. For example, if you had a Pickaxe in your main hand and a torch in your offhand, you could mine with the pickaxe and place torches when needed, without switching.

Things to note

 * You cannot use two swords at a time
 * If you have multiple arrows, you can put the type you wan to shoot in the off-hand
 * If there is multiple arrows in the inventory and none in the off-hand, the arrow closest to slot 0 will be fired.
 * The second arm is not visible to the player in first person when not in use