How to Use the Mace in Minecraft

If you want to know how to use the Mace in Minecraft, the short version is this: jump first, swing second. The Mace is the slowest melee weapon in the game on a normal swing, but it has a hidden mechanic called the smash attack that turns every block you fall into bonus damage — and negates your own fall damage when you land the hit. Used right, it's the strongest single-hit weapon in vanilla.

This guide covers how to get a Mace, how the smash attack actually works, and which enchantments are worth chasing. Everything below was checked against the official Minecraft Wiki and applies to Java and Bedrock 1.21 and later.

What the Mace is

The Mace was added in the 1.21 Tricky Trials update. Stat-wise it looks unimpressive at first glance:

Stat	Java Edition	Bedrock Edition
Normal attack damage	6 HP	6 HP
Attack speed	0.6 (1.667s cooldown)	No cooldown
Attack range	3 blocks	3 blocks
Durability	500	501
Enchantability	15	15

In Java, that 0.6 attack speed is the lowest in the game — slower than even a netherite axe. The Mace is not a weapon you spam-click. It's a weapon you set up.

How to craft a Mace

The recipe is simple, but the ingredients are the hard part:

1. Open a crafting table.
2. Place a Heavy Core in the top slot.
3. Place a Breeze Rod in the slot directly below it.

That's it — one Heavy Core plus one Breeze Rod gives you a Mace. Both ingredients only come from Trial Chambers, the new structure added in 1.21, so you'll need to find one before you can craft anything.

Getting a Breeze Rod

Breeze Rods are the easy ingredient. Every Breeze you kill drops one or two rods, guaranteed. Breezes spawn from blue Trial Spawners inside Trial Chambers. Bring a bow or crossbow — Breezes hop around constantly and shoot wind charges that knock you back, so melee fights against them are miserable. A few wins and you'll have plenty of rods.

Getting a Heavy Core

This is the part that takes a while. Heavy Cores only drop from Ominous Vaults, and only at a 7.5% chance per vault. To get an Ominous Vault, you need to do this:

1. Find or make a Bad Omen potion, or trigger Bad Omen by killing a raid captain.
2. Walk up to a Trial Spawner inside a Trial Chamber while you have Bad Omen — it converts to a Trial Omen effect, and the spawner becomes an Ominous Trial Spawner.
3. Defeat the harder ominous waves, which drop Ominous Trial Keys.
4. Use those keys on Ominous Vaults (the orange-flamed ones) to roll for loot. Each vault has a 7.5% chance of giving you a Heavy Core.

Plan on burning through several keys before you see one. It's worth keeping a chest at the chamber and looting every ominous vault in the structure on a single Bad Omen run.

How the smash attack works

This is the whole reason to use a Mace. If you swing the Mace after falling 1.5 blocks or more without touching the ground, the hit becomes a smash attack. The official damage formula on the wiki is:

• +4 HP for each of the first 3 blocks fallen
• +2 HP for each of the next 5 blocks fallen
• +1 HP for every block fallen after that

That's on top of the 6 HP normal damage. Smash attacks also count as critical hits, which adds another 50% on top of the total.

Two things that make this a lot more usable than it sounds:

• You take no fall damage if the smash lands. The hit resets your fall distance from however high you were down to where you struck — so jumping off a cliff and one-shotting a mob also saves your life.
• The Mace doesn't have to be charged. The smash attack ignores attack-speed cooldown, so you can spam it the moment you're in the air.

A few rules to keep in mind:

• The Slow Falling effect disables smash attacks. Drink your potion after the kill, not before.
• In Java, you can't smash while wearing an active elytra — you have to unequip it before swinging. In Bedrock, smash attacks work mid-flight.
• A successful smash also pushes nearby entities outward in a 2.5-block radius, similar to a wind charge.

A practical setup

The simplest way to land smash attacks in survival:

1. Pillar up 4–5 blocks of dirt or cobble next to your target.
2. Look down, jump off, and swing the Mace before you land.

That's enough fall to fully kill most overworld mobs in one hit. For tougher enemies — players in netherite, the Warden, or the Wither — you want way more height, plus enchantments.

Best Mace enchantments

Three enchantments are unique to the Mace and only work on it:

• Density (max level V): adds 0.5 HP per level per block fallen. At Density V, you're getting +2.5 HP of bonus smash damage for every block you drop. This is the damage king — a Density V Mace one-shots a Protection IV netherite player after only a 10-block fall.
• Breach (max level IV): cuts through 15% of the target's armor and toughness per level. With Breach IV, the Mace's normal attack hits harder against diamond and netherite armor than any other melee weapon in Java.
• Wind Burst (max level III): launches you 8 blocks straight up per level after a successful smash. With Wind Burst III, you can chain smash attacks back-to-back without a building. Note that Wind Burst does not save you from fall damage on the way down — only the smash itself does that.

Density and Breach are mutually exclusive, so you have to pick: Density for raw damage against unarmored or boss-tier mobs, Breach for fights against geared players. Wind Burst pairs with either.

The Mace also accepts Smite, Bane of Arthropods, Fire Aspect, Mending, Unbreaking, and Curse of Vanishing. Notably, Sharpness does not work on a Mace. If you're farming damage against undead (Wither skeletons, the Wither itself), Smite V is excellent.

When to actually use a Mace

The Mace shines in three situations:

• Boss fights with vertical setup. The Warden, the Wither, and the Ender Dragon all sit still long enough for you to pillar up and drop. According to the wiki's damage charts, a Density V Mace can one-shot a Warden after a 95-block fall.
• PvP from above. On servers that allow it, dropping in on an opponent is a finisher.
• The "Over-Overkill" advancement. Dealing 50 hearts of damage in one hit is much easier than it sounds — fall about 30 blocks with a Density V crit and you're there.

For day-to-day mob clearing and cave runs, a netherite sword or axe is still faster. The Mace is a specialist, not a replacement.

Quick recap

To get a working Mace in Minecraft 1.21+: find a Trial Chamber, kill Breezes for Breeze Rods, run Ominous Trial Chambers with Bad Omen until a vault drops a Heavy Core, then craft the two together. To use it well: get above your target, swing on the way down, and put Density V plus Wind Burst III on it the moment you have the levels. That's the whole loop.

The tools to verify any of this for yourself are linked above — the Mace, Breeze, and Heavy Core pages on the official Minecraft Wiki are the cleanest sources.