How to Repair a Crossbow in Minecraft
Your crossbow just snapped in the middle of a skeleton fight. Great timing, right? Don’t panic though – crossbows break, but they’re also fixable. Unlike some other weapons in Minecraft, you’ve got a few different ways to get your trusty ranged weapon back in working order.
Crossbows are pretty sturdy compared to regular bows, but when you’re firing hundreds of shots at mobs, even the toughest gear starts showing wear. I’ve learned this the hard way after countless mining trips where my crossbow gave up just when I needed it most.
Quick Repair Using a Crafting Table
The fastest way to fix a broken crossbow is right in your inventory. Open up your crafting grid and place two damaged crossbows anywhere in the slots. The game will combine their remaining durability and give you back one crossbow with better condition than either of the originals.
Here’s what happens: both crossbows’ durability gets added together, plus you get a bonus 5% of the maximum durability on top. So if you have two crossbows that are nearly broken, combining them might give you one that’s about half-repaired.
The downside? Any enchantments on those crossbows disappear completely. If you’ve got a crossbow with Piercing or Multishot, this method will strip those enchantments away. Sometimes that’s worth it if you just need a working weapon quickly, but usually you’ll want to preserve those valuable enchantments.
Anvil Repair for Enchanted Crossbows
When your enchanted crossbow needs fixing, head to an anvil. This is honestly the best method if you care about keeping your enchantments intact.
Place your damaged crossbow in the first slot of the anvil interface. Then grab another crossbow – it can be damaged or fully repaired – and put it in the second slot. The anvil will combine them and transfer all the durability from the second crossbow to the first one.
What makes anvil repair special is that it keeps all enchantments from the first crossbow. Even better, if both crossbows have the same enchantment, the anvil might combine them into a higher level. Two crossbows with Unbreaking I could become one crossbow with Unbreaking II.
The catch is that anvil repairs cost experience points. The more damaged your crossbow is, the more XP you’ll need to pay. Early in the game when XP is scarce, this can hurt. But once you have a good XP farm or lots of levels, it’s usually worth the cost to keep your enchantments.
Grindstone Repair Method
Grindstones work similarly to crafting tables for crossbow repair. Put two crossbows in the grindstone slots and you’ll get one repaired crossbow back. The durability calculation is the same – both crossbows’ remaining durability plus a 5% bonus.
The big difference is that grindstones strip away all enchantments, just like crafting table repair. But they also give you some experience points back based on the enchantments that got removed. It’s like a consolation prize for losing your enchantments.
I rarely use grindstones for crossbow repair unless I specifically want to remove enchantments. Maybe you found a crossbow with terrible enchantments like Curse of Vanishing, and you want to clean it up before re-enchanting.
Check Out Also: Can You Play Fortnite on Virtual Reality (VR)?
The Mending Enchantment
Here’s where crossbow maintenance gets really interesting. If you can get a Mending enchantment on your crossbow, you might never need to manually repair it again.
Mending automatically fixes your crossbow using experience orbs you collect. Every time you pick up XP – from killing mobs, mining, or any other activity – some of that experience goes toward repairing your equipped items instead of increasing your level.
The tricky part is getting Mending in the first place. You can’t get it from an enchanting table. Instead, you need to find Mending enchantment books from fishing, trading with librarian villagers, or finding them in loot chests. Once you have a Mending book, use an anvil to apply it to your crossbow.
With Mending, your crossbow repairs itself as you play. Kill a few zombies and watch the durability bar fill back up. It’s incredibly convenient, especially for players who use crossbows as their main weapon.
When Not to Bother Repairing?
Sometimes it’s not worth repairing a crossbow. If you have multiple crossbows with similar or better enchantments, don’t waste resources fixing inferior ones. Early game crossbows without enchantments are often cheaper to replace than repair, especially if you have plenty of wood and iron.
Cursed crossbows might not be worth saving either. If you’ve got a crossbow with Curse of Vanishing, you might want to let it break naturally rather than investing materials in repairs.
