Arrow Smithing: Beyond Flint

Why limit yourself to flint? You've smelted iron, mined diamonds, and braved the Nether — your arrows should keep up. Arrow Smithing: Beyond Flint adds element-headed arrows — Iron, Copper, Gold, Diamond, and Netherite — each with its own damage and personality. Enter the metal ages, one arrowhead at a time.

Despite the mod name, this does not change or remove vanilla Tipped Arrows (minecraft:tipped_arrow) or vanilla Spectral Arrows (minecraft:spectral_arrow) — those items and their default recipes stay as in vanilla.

This mod adds separate asbf metal arrow items. Spectral metal arrows use glowstone dust with a metal arrow to produce arrows that apply the Glowing effect on hit — recipe type asbf:spectral_metal_arrow.

Arrow Stats

Arrow	Damage	Special
Iron	2.5	—
Copper	2.0	—
Gold	1.0	—
Diamond	3.0	—
Netherite	3.5	—

Vanilla arrow damage is 2.0 for comparison. Piercing is a crossbow enchantment: a Piercing crossbow applies extra pierce to any arrow it fires, including all asbf metal arrows.

Crafting Recipes

All shaped metal-arrow JSON files live under data/asbf/recipe/. Recipes yield 4 arrows with stick middle-center and feather bottom-center.

Iron Arrow

Uses 3 iron nuggets across the top row (like flint in the vanilla recipe):

┌────────────┬────────────┬────────────┐
│ Iron Nugget│ Iron Nugget│ Iron Nugget│
├────────────┼────────────┼────────────┤
│            │   Stick    │            │
├────────────┼────────────┼────────────┤
│            │  Feather   │            │
└────────────┴────────────┴────────────┘
→ 4× Iron Arrow

Copper Arrow

Same grid as iron (stick center, feather bottom), but the top row depends on your game version:

• 1.21.9+ — 3× copper nuggets (minecraft:copper_nugget exists).
• 1.21 through 1.21.8 — 3× copper ingots on the top row (same shape; higher cost — copper nuggets do not exist on those versions). Use the JAR built for that patch.

Diagram shows the 1.21.9+ nugget layout; on 1.21–1.21.8 jars, put copper ingots in those three top slots instead.

┌────────────┬────────────┬────────────┐
│ Copper Nug.│ Copper Nug.│ Copper Nug.│
├────────────┼────────────┼────────────┤
│            │   Stick    │            │
├────────────┼────────────┼────────────┤
│            │  Feather   │            │
└────────────┴────────────┴────────────┘
→ 4× Copper Arrow

Gold Arrow

3× gold nuggets across the top row (same layout as iron):

┌────────────┬────────────┬────────────┐
│ Gold Nugget│ Gold Nugget│ Gold Nugget│
├────────────┼────────────┼────────────┤
│            │   Stick    │            │
├────────────┼────────────┼────────────┤
│            │  Feather   │            │
└────────────┴────────────┴────────────┘
→ 4× Gold Arrow

Diamond Arrow

1× diamond in the top-center slot:

┌────────────┬────────────┬────────────┐
│            │  Diamond   │            │
├────────────┼────────────┼────────────┤
│            │   Stick    │            │
├────────────┼────────────┼────────────┤
│            │  Feather   │            │
└────────────┴────────────┴────────────┘
→ 4× Diamond Arrow

Netherite Arrow

Uses 3× Netherite Scrap across the top row (netherite ingots are not used — vanilla has no netherite nuggets):

┌────────────┬────────────┬────────────┐
│Neth. Scrap │Neth. Scrap │Neth. Scrap │
├────────────┼────────────┼────────────┤
│            │   Stick    │            │
├────────────┼────────────┼────────────┤
│            │  Feather   │            │
└────────────┴────────────┴────────────┘
→ 4× Netherite Arrow

Spectral metal arrows (glowstone dust)

Mirrors vanilla spectral arrow crafting: 4 glowstone dust in a cross around 1 metal arrow in the center. Output: 2 spectral arrows of that metal. On hit, applies the Glowing effect for 10 seconds (200 ticks), same as vanilla spectral arrows. The spectral arrow retains its metal's base damage. Recipe type: asbf:spectral_metal_arrow (datapack: data/asbf/recipe/spectral_metal_arrow.json).

┌────────────┬────────────┬────────────┐
│            │ Glowstone  │            │
├────────────┼────────────┼────────────┤
│ Glowstone  │Metal Arrow │ Glowstone  │
├────────────┼────────────┼────────────┤
│            │ Glowstone  │            │
└────────────┴────────────┴────────────┘
→ 2× Spectral [Metal] Arrow

All spectral metal arrows share the same yellow spectral texture (item and entity) regardless of metal type — matching vanilla spectral arrow visuals.

Compatibility & installation

Use a JAR built for your exact Minecraft patch (1.21, 1.21.1, 1.21.4–1.21.11, or 26.1–26.2). Which versions exist and how they are validated: docs/VERSION_MATRIX.md.

Requirements: Fabric Loader 0.18.6+, Fabric API for that game version, Java 21.

Build or grab a JAR: docs/BUILD.md. Maintainer-facing versioning, layout, and backlog: docs/DEV_NOTES.md.

Potential Improvements

• Potion-based tipped metal arrows
• Fletcher villagers selling metal arrows (and the aforementioned tipped metal arrows)
• Metal arrows wielded by hostile mobs

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A LOREal Mod