Quick Charge Enchantment: Crossbow Reload Speed

Quick Charge makes a crossbow load faster: 0.25 seconds quicker per level. A plain crossbow takes 1.25 seconds to load, so Quick Charge III gets it down to 0.5 seconds. It’s crossbow-only, has three levels and conflicts with nothing.

Level	Load time
None	1.25 s
I	1.0 s
II	0.75 s
III	0.5 s

At III, loading takes half as long as fully drawing a bow (1 second), and every shot still lands at full power because a crossbow has no partial charge.

Getting Quick Charge III

This is the awkward part. The enchanting table can only roll Quick Charge I or II, never III, and even II only shows up on high-level enchants near the top of a full table. Your options:

• Combine two Quick Charge II crossbows, or a II crossbow and a II book, on an anvil. Two level I books only make II.
• Look in mineshaft and desert pyramid chests, which can hold a III book. Monster room and stronghold library chests only have I or II.
• Buy one from a librarian in the default trading system. A librarian book costs 2 + 3 × level to 6 + 13 × level emeralds, so a Quick Charge III book runs 11 to 45 emeralds. If a librarian doesn’t offer it, trading with villagers explains how to reroll their trades.

The experimental Villager Trade Rebalance removes crossbow enchantments from librarian trades entirely, but it makes Quick Charge books (levels I to III) more common in pillager outpost chests to make up for it.

Pillagers also drop their crossbows sometimes, occasionally with enchantments, and mobs that spawn in a raid can drop enchanted gear.

Java and Bedrock

Both editions use the same load times for levels I to III, and survival players can’t go higher. On Java, a Quick Charge V crossbow made with commands loads instantly; that doesn’t carry over to Bedrock.

Building a crossbow around it

Quick Charge goes on every crossbow. The real choice is what to pair it with:

• Multishot for three projectiles per shot, great with fireworks.
• Piercing for shooting through lines of mobs and reusing arrows.

Multishot and Piercing conflict, so pick one. Add Unbreaking III and Mending and you’re done. Our best crossbow enchantments page compares the two builds, and the crossbow recipe covers making the weapon.

Using it well

A loaded crossbow stays loaded until you fire it, even if you switch items. Before a fight, load two or three crossbows in your hotbar and fire them one after another, then reload. Quick Charge III makes the reload between volleys short enough that a single crossbow keeps up with most mobs.

Don’t wait for Quick Charge III to start using the crossbow. Quick Charge II from the table is already a big improvement, and you can upgrade it on the anvil later with a second II book.