How to make explosive arrows in Minecraft

In Minecraft, weapons are crucial to surviving in the game since players must defend themselves against hostile creatures that can attack at any time. To do this, you need to craft weapons like swords, axes, and bows to protect yourself. Each weapon has its unique properties that make them useful in different situations.

Long-range weapons are essential for beginner and some intermediate players to survive, as they allow them to attack hostile creatures from a distance. This is particularly important when facing powerful enemies like Endermen or the Wither. In the game, you can use bows and arrows to attack from a distance, allowing you to keep your distance from enemies while dealing damage.

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Everything to know about explosive arrows in Minecraft

Since explosive arrows do not exist in the game, you will have to use command blocks and commands to make the regular arrows explode upon impact. You should note that command block can only be acquired through commands, and the "Allow cheats" setting must be enabled to use commands.

Enable cheats and acquire command blocks

You can enable cheats while creating a new world, or you can temporarily enable it in an existing singleplayer world by following these steps:

Step 1: Load up the singleplayer world.

Step 2: Press Escape to enter the pause menu.

Step 3: Click on the Open to LAN option.

Step 4: Enable cheats from there and press on the Start LAN World option.

With that out of the way, let's look at the Minecraft command that can provide a command block to the player. You can type "/give @p minecraft:command_block" in the chat window to get a command block.

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Get exploding arrows

Here are the rest of the steps that need to be followed to acquire exploding arrows in Minecraft:

Step 1: Place down a command block and press the use button to open its GUI.

Step 2: Click the impulse button to cycle through the options and select Repeat and click on the Need Redstone button to change it to Always active.

Step 3: In the top box, paste this command: "execute at @e[type=minecraft:arrow,nbt={inGround:1b}] run summon minecraft:tnt"

It is important to place the command blocks this way (Image via Mojang)

Step 4: Put down three more command blocks, as shown in the image above. Place a lever in front of the bottom command block as well.

Step 5: Select the Repeat and Always active options on the bottom command block and leave the other two at the default settings.

Step 6: Enter the following commands in the specified command blocks:

• Bottom block: "execute if entity @e[type=minecraft:arrow,nbt={inGround:1b}] run setblock ~ ~1 ~ minecraft:redstone_block"
• Middle block: "kill @e[type=minecraft:arrow]"
• Top block: "setblock ~ ~-1 ~ air"

After following these steps, any arrows used in this world will explode upon impact. If you want to revert these changes later on, you can flip the lever to stop the arrows from exploding.

A primed TNT summoned at the impact point of an arrow shot upwards (Image via Mojang)

The above commands make it so that when an arrow touches a solid block, a primed TNT is summoned at those coordinates, which explodes instantly. This significantly increases the damage caused upon impact, which can greatly help you deal with strong mobs from a distance.