Skip To...
To keep yourself out of danger in Minecraft, especially early on, you should always have a bow and not just any bow, but one with the best enchantments. It doesn’t have as many enchantments as a sword, but most of the enchantments for the bow are actually pretty darn good. You can never go wrong with the Punch or Mending Enchantments. What’s great is that you can have five enchantments on a single bow, so make sure they’re the best ones!
Mending Enchantment
Mending is arguably the most useful bow enchantment in Minecraft, in addition to being one of the best. With the experience orbs you pick up, you can repair your bow. If you have an experience farm set up at your base, that means your bow is virtually unbreakable.
It can be fickle, though. Mending doesn’t discriminate if you have multiple items with the Mending Enchantment, like a pickaxe or chest piece. It’ll be one of those items randomly to repair. Annoying for sure, but still incredibly useful.
With or without an experience farm, I’d pair Mending with the Unbreaking Enchantment. That’ll at least reduce the frequency in which your bow pulls from your experience pool.
Infinity Enchantment
If you find the process of crafting stacks and stacks of arrows tedious in Minecraft, then the best bow enchantment for you is the Infinity Enchantment. As long as you have a single arrow in your inventory, you can shoot as many arrows as you want (or until the bow breaks).
The Infinity Enchantment pairs beautifully with the Unbreaking Enchantment as you’ll most likely shoot arrows with reckless abandon. It’d be even better with the Mending Enchantment, but unfortunately you can’t have Infinity and Mending on the same bow.
Unbreaking Enchantment
The Unbreaking Enchantment tends to confuse players, so let’s clear something up: Unbreaking does not increase your bow’s durability. Instead, there’s a chance your bow won’t lose durability whenever it’s used.
Luckily, the Unbreaking Enchantment procs often enough that it makes it one of the best enchantments in Minecraft. You always want the Unbreaking Enchantment because at the end of the day, who wants to be visiting the crafting bench every time a bow breaks?
One excellent combo is enchanting a bow with Unbreaking and Mending, drastically prolonging the life of your bow!
Power Enchantment
Power is the simplest enchantment there is in Minecraft. All it does is increase the amount of damage an arrow does. It also scales with the draw of your bow, meaning you’ll deal even more damage if you draw the string back as far as possible.
Because of its damage potential, you always want a bow with the Power Enchantment, regardless if you’re playing single-player or PVP. It’s especially deadly if you pair it with a bow that has the Fire Enchantment!
Punch Enchantment
Being able to deal damage from a safe distance is one of the many benefits of using a bow in Minecraft, but eventually your target closes the gap. That’s where the Punch Enchantment comes in handy. Whenever you hit your target with an arrow, they’ll get knocked back a few blocks.
You can probably already imagine how useful that is in Minecraft, especially in PVP situations. In the right setting, you could potentially knock a player (or mob) off the cliff or just to buy you some time to escape. With Punch II, you can knock a target back four blocks away!
Flame Enchantment
As its name suggests, the Flame Enchantment lights your targets on fire, making it an excellent choice in both PVE and PVP situations. For example, automatically cooking food when an animal dies while on fire or chipping away at another player’s health.
The Flame Enchantment does have its drawbacks. It won’t light wooden blocks on fire, nor does it work underwater or while it’s raining. It can be used to ignite TNT blocks, though. Also keep in mind if a zombie is only fire, they can spread it to you.
One killer combo in Minecraft is having a flame-enchanted bow with poison arrows. There’s a good chance enemy players will have water on them, but few carry milk!
