Anyone who’s spent time in Minecraft survival knows the panic of running out of arrows mid-fight. You could be 10 seconds away from taking down an ender dragon, or fending off a horde of creepers at your base entrance, when your bow clicks empty and you’re stuck fumbling for a backup weapon. For many players, that frustration ends once they get their hands on the infinity enchantment. If you’ve ever asked what does infinity do in Minecraft, you’re in the right place: this guide covers everything from its core functionality to how to get it, and whether it’s the right fit for your playstyle.
What Does Infinity Do in Minecraft, Exactly?
At its core, infinity is a bow-exclusive enchantment that removes the need to carry stacks of regular arrows for combat. When you apply infinity to any bow, you only need one single regular arrow in your inventory to shoot as many times as you want, for as long as the bow holds up. Regular arrows are never consumed when using an infinity bow, even if you pick up arrows you’ve shot off the ground later – you’ll always keep that one base arrow in your inventory.
There are a few key exceptions to this rule, though, that a lot of new players miss. Tipped arrows and spectral arrows are not affected by the infinity enchantment – every shot with these special arrow types will consume one from your inventory, same as a normal bow. That means if you rely on poison, weakness, or slowness arrows for boss fights or PvP, infinity won’t give you unlimited uses of those. I learned this the hard way on my first hardcore world: I brought a stack of harming arrows to fight the wither, assumed infinity would cover them, and ran out halfway through the fight. Let’s just say that base didn’t last very long.
Another common misconception is that infinity works on crossbows. That’s not the case. Infinity only applies to standard bows, not crossbows, so you’ll need to use other enchantments like quick charge or multishot if you want to upgrade your crossbow loadout.
How to Get the Infinity Enchantment for Your Bow
Infinity is considered a mid-to-high tier enchantment, so you won’t get it from low-level enchanting table rolls. There are a few reliable ways to get it, depending on how far along you are in your world and what resources you have access to. I’ve tested all of these methods across dozens of survival worlds, and these are the most efficient, ranked from easiest to most time-consuming:
- Librarian villager trading: This is by far the most consistent way to get infinity. Find a librarian villager, place a lectern to reset their trades until they offer an infinity enchanted book, then lock the trade in. If you cure the villager after they turn into a zombie, you can get the book for as little as 1 emerald, no XP required beyond what you spend trading.
- Level 30 enchanting table: If you have a fully upgraded enchanting table with 15 bookshelves placed around it, you have a small chance to roll infinity when enchanting a bow at level 30. You’ll need 3 lapis lazuli and 30 XP levels per roll, so this is best if you have a steady XP farm like a mob spawner or smelting setup.
- Fishing: Infinity counts as a treasure enchantment, so you can pull it from fishing loot if you use a rod with the Luck of the Sea enchantment. This is a good option if you’re already farming fish for food, or if you’re playing a skyblock world where villager trading is harder to set up.
- Structure chest looting: You can find pre-enchanted infinity bows or enchanted infinity books in chests in end cities, strongholds, woodland mansions, and ancient cities. This is the least consistent method, but it’s a nice bonus if you’re already exploring these structures for other loot.
One quick tip if you’re using the enchanting table method: always enchant unenchanted bows, not books, if you’re chasing infinity. Bows have fewer possible enchantment rolls than books, so you’re slightly more likely to get infinity on a bow than you are to get it on a book at level 30. If you roll other good enchantments like Power V or Flame first, you can combine those with an infinity book later using an anvil.
Best Use Cases for an Infinity Enchanted Bow
Infinity isn’t just a fun novelty – it’s a game-changing upgrade for a lot of common Minecraft activities. The most popular use case by far is boss fights, especially against the ender dragon or the wither. Boss fights with infinity are far less stressful because you don’t have to waste inventory slots on 3-4 stacks of arrows, and you don’t have to pause mid-fight to grab more arrows from your hotbar. I’ve beaten the ender dragon with nothing but an infinity bow, a stack of building blocks, and a single arrow in my inventory, and it’s by far the most low-effort way to take her down.
It’s also perfect for general day-to-day survival. If you spend a lot of time exploring the overworld, you can fend off creepers, skeletons, and pillagers without ever having to stop to craft more arrows. That saves you a ton of time gathering flint, feathers, and sticks for arrow crafting, especially if you play on a world where flint is hard to find. You can free up 2-3 inventory slots that would otherwise be filled with arrow stacks, so you have more room for loot, building materials, or food.
Infinity is also a great pick for custom map creators and PvP players. If you’re building an adventure map, you can give players infinity bows so they don’t have to stop and loot arrows every few minutes, which keeps the gameplay flow smooth. On PvP servers, infinity lets you carry more potions, golden apples, or building blocks instead of arrows, which gives you a big edge in 1v1 fights or team battles.
That said, it’s not the right pick for every playstyle. If you mostly use tipped arrows for mob farming or boss fights, you won’t get much value out of infinity, since it doesn’t work with those arrow types. It’s also a bad pick if you prefer to only carry one bow for all use cases, since you can’t pair it with mending.
Limitations and Ideal Enchantment Pairings for Infinity
Before you rush out to get an infinity bow, there are a few key limitations you need to know about first. The biggest one is that infinity and mending are mutually exclusive – you can never have both enchantments on the same bow, no matter how you combine them with anvils or commands. That’s a huge tradeoff for a lot of players. Mending lets your bow repair itself automatically when you collect XP, so it lasts forever. Infinity gives you unlimited regular arrows, but you’ll have to repair the bow manually with other bows or an anvil once it takes damage.
The good news is that you can pair infinity with almost every other bow enchantment to make it even more powerful. Unbreaking III is a non-negotiable pairing for infinity bows – it triples the lifespan of your bow, so you won’t have to repair it nearly as often. If you pair Unbreaking III with infinity, your bow can last for thousands of shots before it needs repairs, which is more than enough for most casual players.
Other great pairings include Power V, which increases the damage of every shot by 150%, making it easy to take down most mobs in one or two hits. Punch II knocks mobs back 6 blocks per shot, which is perfect for keeping creepers away from your base or knocking players off cliffs in PvP. Flame + Infinity is the perfect combo for passive mob farming – every shot sets mobs on fire, so you don’t have to use a sword to finish them off, and you never run out of ammo. I use this combo for my cow and sheep farm, and I can get a full stack of leather and wool in 10 minutes without ever using a sword.
If you want the best of both worlds, keep two bows in your inventory: one infinity bow for regular combat and boss fights, and one mending bow for when you need to use tipped arrows. That way you don’t have to choose between unlimited arrows and self-repairing gear. I keep both in my hotbar at all times, and I rarely run into a situation where I don’t have the right bow for the job.
At the end of the day, whether infinity is worth the effort to get depends entirely on how you play Minecraft. If you hate spending hours crafting arrows, or you regularly take on boss fights or explore dangerous areas, it’s one of the most valuable enchantments you can add to your gear loadout. Knowing what does infinity do in Minecraft helps you make the right call about whether to prioritize it over other enchantments like mending, and how to use it to make your playthroughs easier and more fun. I still have my first ever infinity bow hanging on an item frame in my main base, even after I upgraded to a netherite version, as a reminder of how much it changed my first survival playthrough. If you haven’t tried it yet, spend an afternoon setting up a librarian trading hall to get your first infinity book – I promise you won’t regret it.