Taking Inventory: Tipped Arrow

Tipped arrows are variants of regular arrows that can apply potion effects to your friends and your foes. They’re created by surrounding a lingering potion of any kind with eight arrows in a crafting grid, which will create eight tipped arrows that can be shot in exactly the same way you’d shoot a regular arrow, and will apply that potion on hit – as well as the original arrow damage.

This opens up all kinds of fun combat tactics. Shoot a fast-moving mob with an arrow of slowness to even the odds, or hit a strong enemy with an arrow of weakness to reduce the melee damage it inflicts (though be aware that Withers and Ender dragons are immune). Need to do more damage? Try an arrow of poison. Being bothered in PvP? An arrow of blindness or nausea should do the trick.

Shooting your enemies is one strategy, but you can also shoot your friends. They’ll take a little bit of damage, but you can apply helpful combat effects like regeneration, resistance, speed, strength, and absorption from the other side of the battlefield. Just make sure that they’re not on the brink of death, or your arrow shot might push them over it.

Three more tipped-arrow-tips. First, in Bedrock Edition, you can create tipped arrows by using arrows on cauldrons that contain potions – a more efficient approach than using lingering potions. Second, don’t expect that your infinity-enchanted bow will shoot infinite tipped arrows. For some reason, the potions seem to interfere with the enchantment and they’ll shoot as normal. Finally, you can use dispensers to shoot tipped arrows, just like regular arrows – making it easy to set up poisonous traps.

Tipped arrows in Minecraft are inspired by the real-world practice of applying poison to arrowheads. Historically, poisoned arrows were used by many cultures including the Romans, the Gauls, the Scythians, the Chinese, the Ancient Greeks and the Soanes. In fact, poisoned arrows are so much of a part of our history that the modern English words “toxic” and “toxin” come from the Greek word for bow – “toxon”. 

While arrows aren’t used very much in warfare any more, they are used in hunting – and indigenous peoples in many different parts of the world still apply poison to their arrows. Sometimes these poisons come from plants, and sometimes from animals – including the poison dart frog which was named after the practice (pictured above).

Minecraft’s various poisons come from a variety of different plant and animal ingredients. You’ll need to get experimental with your brewing stand to discover them all. Or just look them up on the wiki. Either way, good luck!