Infinity

What Infinity does

Book cost is the anvil cost of putting that book on a fresh item. However, already-used items add their prior work penalty: work it out in the calculator.

How Infinity works

With Infinity, the bow fires normal arrows without using them up. You still need at least one arrow in your inventory, but that single arrow lasts forever.

Arrows fired with Infinity can't be picked up again in survival. So you can't use an Infinity bow to farm arrows, and a stray shot never fills your inventory.

Infinity or Mending?

They exclude each other, so a bow carries one of them. This is the biggest choice in a bow build.

• Infinity saves arrows and inventory space. You never run out mid-fight, and you only ever carry one arrow.
• Mending keeps the bow repaired with experience. The bow never breaks as long as you pick up XP.

Arrows are cheap to make, and skeleton farms and fletcher villagers give plenty. So many long-term players pick Mending. Infinity still wins on new worlds, on long trips and anywhere you can't farm arrows. The Mending vs Infinity page compares them in detail, and Mending and Infinity on a bow explains why they can't share one.

Keeping an Infinity bow alive

Without Mending, your bow wears down with every shot. A plain bow lasts 384 shots, and Unbreaking III stretches that to about 1536 on average. After that, repair it on an anvil with another bow.

Every anvil repair raises the bow's prior work penalty. So repair it rarely and fully, not after every few shots. Once a repair would cost 40 levels or more, the anvil says Too Expensive and the bow is done.

The Infinity bow build

The usual Infinity bow is Power V, Infinity, Flame, Unbreaking III and Punch II, with Punch often left off. That is the Infinity variant on the best bow enchantments page, and the bow enchant order lists the cheapest steps.

Getting arrows if you choose Mending

If you skip Infinity, you need a steady arrow supply. These are the easy ways:

• A skeleton farm or spawner gives arrows and bones, and its XP feeds Mending at the same time.
• Fletcher villagers sell arrows and buy sticks, so a fletcher gives arrows and emeralds.
• Crafting: flint, a stick and a feather make four arrows. A Fortune III shovel makes gravel drop flint every time.

When Infinity is the better pick

• Early in a world, when you have a table but no farms.
• Long trips, where an arrow stack takes up space you need for loot.
• Boss fights with lots of shooting, like the end crystals around the Ender Dragon.

Later, when you have farms and XP, many players switch to a Mending bow and keep the Infinity bow as a spare.

Infinity on the anvil

Infinity has a ×8 multiplier from an item and ×4 from a book. That makes it one of the most expensive books for a bow, along with Flame. Add it early, while the bow's prior work penalty is low. Power and Unbreaking are cheap and can go on last.

Infinity and skeletons

Skeletons drop bows, sometimes enchanted. A dropped bow with Power or Unbreaking is a good base for an Infinity bow, since you only need to add the missing books. Check the tooltip before you throw a dropped bow away.

Is Infinity worth it?

For many players, yes. It costs only one book, it never runs out, and it frees a slot that a stack of arrows would fill. However, once you have good XP farms, Mending often wins, since it keeps the whole bow alive.

Infinity and the Ender Dragon

The dragon fight needs a lot of arrows. You shoot the end crystals, some of them inside iron cages, and then the dragon itself. So an Infinity bow with Power V means you never run out mid-fight.

Infinity and mob farms

A skeleton farm gives a steady stream of arrows. So if you have one, Infinity saves less. Then the case for a Mending bow gets stronger, because the farm also gives you the XP to repair it.

Common mistakes

• Carrying no arrows at all. Infinity needs at least one normal arrow in your inventory.
• Trying it on a crossbow. Infinity only goes on bows. See Infinity on a crossbow.

Which items take Infinity

Infinity goes on 1 kind of gear in the calculator: bow. An enchanting table can roll it on the bow.

It can't share an item with Mending. If an item already has one of those, the anvil skips the Infinity book.

Anvil cost of Infinity

Infinity has an anvil multiplier of 8 from another item and 4 from a book. So the book costs 4 levels on a fresh item. That is one of the most expensive books. So put it on early, while the prior work penalty is still low.

Bedrock only charges for the levels a book adds. So upgrading a lower level costs only the difference. Every step also adds the prior work penalty of both items. The enchantment calculator finds the cheapest order for your whole set of books.

Builds, questions and guides

Infinity can go on 1 item: best bow enchantments. To put it on in the cheapest order, see the bow enchant order.

Common questions: can you put Mending and Infinity on a bow?, can you put Infinity on a crossbow?

More reading: Getting books from librarians, How to enchant in Minecraft, Every max enchantment level. You can make an Infinity book with the command generator. The librarian price list shows what villagers charge for it.

How to get Infinity

• Enchanting table It can appear when you enchant a supported item at an enchanting table. However, higher levels need more bookshelves and a level 30 enchant.
• Librarian villagers Librarians can sell it as an enchanted book.
• Random enchanted books It is also in the pool for the random enchanted books and gear in many chests and in fishing loot.

Infinity is a very rare roll at the enchanting table, but only bows can get it there. It is not a treasure enchantment, so librarians sell it at the normal price.

Since it has one level, there is nothing to merge. It is a ×4 book, though, so it costs 4 levels on a fresh bow.

Tips

• In Java 26.3 Infinity and Mending exclude each other: you must pick one.
• Infinity is cheap to keep; Mending is better if you have an arrow farm.

Commands

Hold the item and run this command in Bedrock 26.60 with cheats on. Bedrock's /enchant only goes up to the max level. Its /give command can't add enchantments.

Goes well with

• Curse of Vanishing
• Flame
• Power
• Punch
• Unbreaking