While researching and playing around with many of Minecraft’s enchantments, you may notice that enchantments for melee weapons have their counterparts for bows.
One such enchantment is Flame. Keep reading to learn which enchantment Flame acts similarly to and how it can be used to help you in your gameplay.
How to obtain the Flame enchantment
As we previously implied, the Flame enchantment is a bow enchantment in Minecraft. It cannot be applied to any other item in the game unless you use commands or third-party game editors.
You can enchant a bow with Flame by either using an enchantment table or by combining it with an enchanted book on an anvil. Such enchanted books can be found in the outside world randomly in a chest or as a loot dorp.
What does the Flame enchantment do?
Similarly to Fire Aspect for swords, the Flame enchantment deals additional fire damage when you hit an enemy. More specifically, it deals 2.5 hearts of damage over 5 seconds. This damage is only applied after the initial hit of the weapon.
Bows enchanted with Flame have some interesting interactions with different parts of the game. For example, mobs killed with Flame do not drop XP if they haven’t been hit with another non-fire source of damage.
Additionally, flaming arrows created with Flame can only affect mobs, players, campfires, TNT, and candles. This means that you can’t use Flame to burn down a house or tree.
One small thing that many people don’t know is that if you use flaming arrows when it’s raining, they simply become normal arrows. The same thing happens if you shoot them through the water.
There is only one level for the Flame enchantment. Using commands to upgrade the weapon beyond that gives no benefits.
Where can you use the Flame enchantment?
This is a particularly useful enchantment in PVP, since it can be used both to bypass Protection enchantments gained from armor (with fire damage) and as a utility tool. Hypothetically, you could set a TNT trap that you can detonate from afar simply by hitting it with an arrow with Flame.
Sadly, the Flame enchantment isn’t very effective if you use it in the Nether, as most mobs that reside there are already immune to all types of fire damage.
Key Takeaways
For such a useful combat enchantment, you only need to remember the following things:
- Flame can only be applied to bows.
- The enchantment turns your arrows into flaming arrows, dealing 2.5 additional hearts of damage over 5 seconds.
- Mobs killed only with these arrows cannot drop XP.
- You can use these arrows to light campfires or detonate TNT. However, you can’t use it to set solid blocks on fire.
- There is only one level for this enchantment.
- It is a useful enchantment in PVP, as the only thing that can prevent the additional damage is a Fire Protection enchantment on armor.
- It is not very useful in the Nether, as mobs there are immune to fire damage.