Swords are perhaps the simplest yet most essential weapon to aid your journey in Minecraft. A wooden sword helps you get through the first night in the game, while the Netherite sword marks your triumph against the Ender Dragon. With the right enchantments, you and your swords will be literally unstoppable.

Speaking of enchantments for swords, what do you know about Minecraft Bane of Arthropods? This enchantment is one of the few in the game that specializes in a particular type of mob. So, what does Bane Of Arthropods do? Let's find out together.

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What exactly does Bane of Arthropods do in Minecraft?

1. What is Bane Of Arthropods in Minecraft?

To put it simply, Bane of Arthropods is a weapon enchantment that increases damage to arthropod mobs. Once reforge with this enchantment, your weapon will deal extra damage against spiders, cave spiders, bees, silverfish, and endermites. Basically, any that crawls or resembles an insect will take bonus damage from Bane of Arthropods.

You can get the Bane of Arthropods enchantment using an Enchanting Table. Crafting an Enchanting Table requires four Obsidian, two Diamonds, and a Book. Surround the table with bookshelves to increase the level of enchantments. However, this isn't the best method to get Bane of Arthropods as you may get other enchantments as well.

Your best bet would be acquiring Bane of Arthropods Enchanted Book from fishing, trading, or looting.
Bane of Arthropods is spider's worst nightmare.

2. What does Bane Of Arthropods do in Minecraft?

Bane of Arthropods will increase your damage output on arthropod mobs in Minecraft. The bonus damage scales with the level of the enchantment. Like Sharpness or Smite, the Bane of Arthropods enchantment also has 5 levels.

When applied to a weapon, more specifically a sword or axe, Bane of Arthropods adds 2.5 damage or 1.25 hearts to the base damage of your sword. It won't scale with the sword level, though. The bonus damage is flat. At level 5, you're looking at 6.25 extra damage per hit on to each hit on spiders, cave spiders, bees, silverfish, and endermites.

What's more, Minecraft Bane of Arthropods also applies Slowness IV on an arthropod when hit. The slow duration triggers randomly between 1 and 1.5 seconds at level I, increasing the maximum duration by 0.5 seconds each level, up to 3.5 seconds at level V.

3. Minecraft Bane Of Arthropods enchantment vs. Sharpness vs. Smite

If you don't know, Sharpness, Smite, and Bane of Arthropods in Minecraft are mutually exclusive. That means you cannot have two or more of these enchantments on the same item. So, what are the differences between them?

Sharpness Enchantment In Minecraft 

Sharpness is an enchantment that increases melee weapons' damage. The bonus damage scales with the level of the enchantment.

  • In Java Edition, Sharpness adds 0.5* level + 0.5 extra damage.
  • In Bedrock Edition, each level of Sharpness adds 1.25 extra damage.
  • That means at level 5, Sharpness adds 3 damage (1.5 hearts) per hit in the Java Edition and 6.25 damage (3.125 hearts) damage per hit in the Bedrock Edition.
Sharpness applies to all enemies.

To apply Sharpness to wooden, stone, iron, diamond, or netherite weapon, you will need an anvil. If you're lucky, you may find iron and diamond swords with this enchantment in End City and Bastion Remnant chests. Only Golden weapons can get Sharpness V through the enchanting table.

Smite Enchantment In Minecraft

Like Bane of Arthropods, Smite is an enchantment that increases damage towards a particular type of mob only. When applied to a sword or axe, it increases the damage inflicted to undead mobs. That includes skeletons, zombies, zombie villagers, withers, wither skeletons, zombified piglins, skeleton horses, zombie horses, strays, husks, phantoms, drowned, and zoglins.

Pretty much anything that rises from death will take extra damage by Smite. Each level of this enchantment increases the bonus damage by 2.5 points (1.25 hearts). At level 5, Smite deals an extra 12.5 damage (6.25 hearts) to any undead mobs.

Smite actually applies on quite a number of mobs in Minecraft.

Verdict: Which One Should You Choose?

In most cases, you should choose Sharpness. It's one of the best enchantments for swords. Of course, its bonus damage is much lower than that of Bane of Arthropods and Smite. However, that damage applies to all mobs in the game, not just specific ones.

But that doesn't mean Bane of Arthropods and Smite are useless. If you know for sure the enemies you're fighting are exclusive arthropod mobs or undead mobs, pick up these two enchantments. Otherwise, stick with Sharpness.

The other two enchantments seem to be more useful than Bane of Arthropods.

That's everything you need to know about Minecraft Bane of Arthropods. This enchantment is only good against arthropod mobs, so be careful when you use it! For more fun Minecraft guides, tips, and tricks, visit our website at GuruGamer.com.

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