Can You Put Infinity on a Crossbow in Minecraft?

Accept the Red Anvil Cross as an Intended Game Rule

You place your crossbow in the first slot of an anvil (the weapon upgrade block used to repair and combine tools). You drop an Infinity book into the second slot. Instead of showing an experience cost and letting you pull out an upgraded weapon, a bright red cross appears over the arrow in the center. Your weapon remains unchanged, and your enchanted book stays sitting in the box.

This is not a glitch, a broken game file, or a lag spike on your server. In survival mode (the standard gameplay mode where you must gather resources, manage hunger, and fight monsters), the game code strictly forbids the Infinity upgrade on crossbows. The anvil will reject the combination every single time, no matter how many experience levels you have stored up.

The Infinity magical gear upgrade is hard-coded to work exclusively on standard wooden bows. You will never see an enchanting table offer Infinity for a crossbow, and you will never find an Infinity crossbow inside dungeon chests, Nether fortresses, or End cities. If you have an Infinity book in your inventory, do not waste time resetting your anvil or crafting a new weapon upgrade block. Put that book into a chest to save it for a regular bow, or trade it to another player.

Understand Why Mojang Blocks Infinite Fireworks and Special Ammo

Game developers build rules around balance, and the crossbow was designed from the start to behave very differently from a standard bow. A standard bow is a direct damage weapon with a simple draw-and-release mechanic. The crossbow is a heavy utility launcher with unique ammunition options that would completely break combat balance if infinite shots were allowed.

The biggest reason involves firework rockets. If you hold firework rockets in your off-hand slot, your crossbow loads and shoots those fireworks instead of arrows. When you craft firework rockets packed with multiple firework stars, each rocket creates a massive explosion that deals severe area damage to groups of mobs or players. If Infinity worked on crossbows, a single crafted rocket would give you an endless supply of high-damage explosive shells. You could clear out entire woodland mansions or win player-versus-player fights without ever needing to gather more gunpowder and paper.

Crossbows also have a mechanical feature called pre-loading. Unlike a bow, which resets if you switch hotbar slots while aiming, a crossbow stays loaded even when you put it in your backpack or swap items. A player can pre-load an entire row of crossbows in their hotbar and fire nine shots in two seconds without pausing to reload. Handing players infinite ammunition on a weapon capable of that much instant burst damage would make survival combat trivial.

Standard bows already place heavy limits on special ammunition. Even on a regular bow, Infinity only applies to basic wooden arrows. If you shoot spectral arrows (arrows that highlight targets through walls) or tipped arrows (arrows dipped in status effect potions), a regular bow consumes them from your inventory one by one. Crossbows rely heavily on these specialized projectiles, so Mojang decided to keep ammunition management as a core part of using the weapon.

Choose Piercing Over Multishot to Save Your Arrows

Since the game does not give you an infinite ammo upgrade, you have to build your weapon to conserve arrows naturally. When enchanting a crossbow, you must make a choice between two upgrades that cannot be used together: Multishot (the three-arrow spread upgrade) and Piercing (the shoot-through upgrade that allows arrow recovery). If your main goal is saving ammunition, one of these options is far superior.

Multishot sounds appealing at first glance because it launches three arrows at once while only taking a single arrow from your inventory. But none of those three fired arrows can ever be picked back up. Once you pull the trigger, the arrows vanish from the game world as soon as they hit a monster, a wall, or the ground. On top of that, Multishot damages your crossbow three times faster because the weapon loses durability for every individual projectile fired.

Piercing solves the ammunition problem in a completely different way. When you shoot an arrow from a crossbow with Piercing, the arrow punches straight through enemies and keeps traveling. At Piercing IV, a single shot can pass through four targets and hit a fifth. Because the arrow punches completely through the hitboxes of those mobs, it drops onto the ground behind them as a physical, reusable item. You can walk right over, pick your arrow up, and put it straight back into your inventory.

Arrow recovery works with tipped arrows and spectral arrows as well. If you craft a batch of expensive arrows dipped in instant damage or weakness potions, you can fire them into a swarm of zombies or pillagers, collect the dropped bolts after the fight, and reuse them indefinitely. As long as you recover your shots after battle, Piercing acts as a practical replacement for the Infinity upgrade.

Stack Quick Charge, Unbreaking, and Mending for the Best Build

Building the most reliable crossbow in survival mode comes down to selecting four upgrades that work together without conflicts. Instead of worrying about missing out on infinite shots, apply this specific set of magical gear upgrades at your anvil to make an unstoppable ranged weapon:

• Quick Charge III: By default, reloading a crossbow takes about 1.25 seconds of holding down the use button. Quick Charge III cuts that reload time down to roughly 0.5 seconds. This makes your crossbow reload faster than a standard bow can be drawn back to full power, giving you rapid follow-up shots in tight spaces.
• Piercing IV: As covered above, Piercing IV lets your shots travel through up to four mobs, pierces through wooden shields held by defenders, and leaves your arrows sitting on the ground ready for pickup after the fight.
• Unbreaking III: A standard crossbow has 465 points of durability. Unbreaking III gives your weapon a 43 percent chance on every shot to avoid losing durability points. This effectively quadruples the lifespan of your weapon, letting you fire nearly 1,800 shots before it needs maintenance.
• Mending: This is where the crossbow beats a regular bow. On a standard bow, the game forces you to choose between Mending and Infinity because they are mutually exclusive. Bow users must constantly decide between infinite ammo or a bow that never breaks. Crossbows do not have this restriction. Mending absorbs small experience orbs from defeated mobs or mined ores to instantly repair your crossbow, meaning your weapon will literally never break as long as you use it.

To combine these without hitting high anvil costs, merge your books in pairs first. Combine Quick Charge with Piercing on the anvil, then combine Unbreaking with Mending on a second book. Finally, apply both pairs to your crossbow. This keeps your anvil combination penalties low and prevents the game from locking you out with an expensive level penalty.

Use Console Commands If You Want Infinite Shots in Sandbox Play

If you are playing in creative mode (the sandbox mode with flying and unlimited items) or running a custom single-player world with cheats turned on, you can bypass survival rules using text commands. The game engine allows you to force conflicting tags onto items, though the results come with an important technical catch.

To give yourself an enchanted crossbow directly using the game console, follow these steps:

1. Check your world settings to confirm cheats are enabled. In single-player Java edition, you can pause the game, select "Open to LAN", set "Allow Cheats" to ON, and click "Start LAN World". In Bedrock edition, toggle the "Activate Cheats" switch in your game settings menu.
2. Place a standard crossbow in your character's main hand slot.
3. Press the chat key (the default key is "T" or the forward slash "/") to bring up the text console box.
4. Type the command /enchant @p infinity and hit Enter. The game will force the Infinity upgrade onto your held weapon, displaying the glowing purple text on your weapon card.
5. If you want to spawn a brand new crossbow with the upgrade already attached in modern Java editions, type /give @p crossbow[enchantments={levels:{infinity:1}}] 1 and press Enter.

Before you celebrate having an infinite crossbow, observe how the weapon actually fires. The underlying code of the game handles crossbow ammunition differently than standard bows. When you pull a regular bow, the code checks for the Infinity tag, and if present, cancels the command that subtracts an arrow from your inventory. The crossbow firing code does not share that line of logic. Even with the word "Infinity" written on your crossbow, firing it in survival mode will often still consume your loaded arrow. The only way to fire endless crossbow shots without losing arrows is to stay in creative mode, where all ammunition is naturally infinite anyway.

FAQs

Why does an anvil reject an Infinity book on a crossbow?

The anvil rejects the book because Mojang deliberately restricted the Infinity upgrade to standard bows in the game code. When an item cannot accept a specific magical upgrade, the anvil displays a red cross to prevent you from wasting your experience levels on an incompatible combination.

Can a crossbow have both Mending and Infinity?

In standard survival gameplay, a crossbow can never have Infinity under any circumstances, so having both is impossible without custom mods or commands. However, the crossbow can freely take Mending, which allows your weapon to repair itself permanently whenever you collect experience orbs.

Is an Infinity bow better than a fully upgraded crossbow?

A bow with Infinity is better for long-distance sniping and inventory management, since you only need to carry a single arrow. A fully upgraded crossbow with Piercing and Quick Charge is better for close-range crowds, clearing underground caves, and reusing expensive tipped arrows that pass through enemies.

Do tipped arrows work with the Piercing arrow recovery trick?

Yes, arrows dipped in potions keep their magical status effects after punching through mobs with the Piercing upgrade. Once the arrow hits the floor or a wall behind your target, you can pick it up and fire that exact same tipped arrow again in your next fight.

How do I get endless arrows for my crossbow in survival mode?

The easiest way to get practically endless arrows without cheats is to build a basic fletcher trading setup. Cure a zombie villager and turn them into a fletcher by placing a fletching table near their bed, which lets you buy sixteen arrows for a single emerald, or set up a simple skeleton mob farm to gather chests full of dropped arrows automatically.