Minecraft is a rather popular adventure-survival sandbox game that lets players discover vast worlds, mine for elements, fight monsters and eventually make their place in the Minecraft world.
There are a lot of tools the game gives players to make their job easier, especially fighting. In this article, we’re talking about an enchantment called piercing.
Also read: How to make a ladder in Minecraft?
What’s Piercing in Minecraft?
Piercing is an enchantment you can put on your crossbow that causes any arrows shot from that specific crossbow to go through the target. The enchantment has four levels.
Arrows shot through a piercing crossbow can go through one higher than the number of entities equal to the enchantment level. For example, if you have a level four enchanted crossbow, an arrow shot through that crossbow will go through five entities.
These arrows can also be retrieved once shot, which means you can use them infinite times. The retrieval includes spectral and tipped arrows as well. Piercing arrows also ignore shields regardless of whether they’re blocking them or not.
Do keep in mind, though, that Piercing and Multishot are mutually exclusive enchantments, meaning one will not work with another. However, if you combine them using commands (requires cheats to be enabled in the server or world), both will function as normal, with both arrows from Multishot getting the Piercing effect.
The enchantment is available in the following versions of Minecraft
| Platform | Piercing support | Version |
|---|---|---|
| Java Edition | Yes | 1.14 or higher |
| Bedrock Edition (Pocket Edition) | Yes | 1.10.0 or higher |
| Xbox 360 | No | – |
| Xbox One | Yes | 1.10.0 or higher |
| PS3 | No | – |
| PS4 | Yes | 1.90 or higher |
| Wii U | No | – |
| Nintendo Switch | Yes | 1.10.0 or higher |
| Windows 10 Edition | Yes | 1.10.0 or higher |
| Education Edition | Yes | 1.12.0 or higher |
Also read: How big is a chunk in Minecraft?
