Longshot
Ranged combat in Minecraft has always been a game of patience and precision. You line up your shot, account for gravity, and hope your arrow finds its mark before the skeleton closes the gap. The Longshot mod flips that dynamic on its head by introducing a brand-new potion effect that supercharges the speed and damage of everything you fire. If you have ever wanted your bow to hit like a truck or your tridents to fly like ballistic missiles, this add-on deserves a permanent spot in your mod folder.
What Does Longshot Do?
At its core, Longshot is a velocity multiplier. Drink the right brew, and every projectile you launch travels faster and hits harder. The mod describes itself as the ranged counterpart to Strength, and that comparison is spot on. Where Strength boosts melee damage, Longshot boosts the entire category of ranged and thrown attacks.
The effect applies to a surprisingly wide range of projectiles:
- Arrows fired from bows and crossbows
- Tridents, whether thrown or launched from a channeling setup
- Firework rockets fired from crossbows
- Ender pearls for faster teleportation
- Fishing bobbers that reach further than ever
- Any other thrown item in the game
That utility angle is what separates Longshot from a simple damage mod. Faster ender pearls mean quicker escapes and snappier traversal. Longer fishing casts save time on every trip to the ocean. Even snowballs and eggs benefit, which opens up some creative possibilities in minigames and PvP arenas.
Brewing the Longshot Potion
By default, the potion is brewed with a Nautilus Shell and an Awkward Potion. That recipe choice fits the theme nicely, since nautilus shells are already tied to the ocean and the Conduit, and they give players a reason to hunt drowned mobs beyond crafting conduits.
Once brewed, the effect scales with amplifier level just like any other potion. Each level adds a flat velocity increase, which in turn raises the damage dealt by the projectile. A Longshot II arrow does not just fly straighter and further, it lands with noticeably more punch.
Configuration Options
Not every player wants the same balance, and the mod respects that. Everything lives in a single file at config/longshot.json, and the options are refreshingly straightforward:
- color: the hex color of the potion effect, defaulting to FF664F, a warm orange
- duration: length of the normal potion in ticks, default 3600
- long_duration: length of the extended potion, default 9600
- strong_duration: length of the amplified potion, default 1800
- ingredient: the brewing item as a resource location, default minecraft:nautilus_shell
- increase: velocity added per amplifier level, default 0.5
Because the ingredient is a resource location, modpack authors can swap in anything from another mod. Want to brew Longshot with amethyst shards or a custom item from your favorite tech mod? Change one line and you are done. Servers running competitive PvP can dial the increase value down, while exploration-focused packs can crank it up for absurd trick shots.
Version Support and Loaders
Longshot is built for modern Minecraft and targets the Fabric loader, which keeps it lightweight and compatible with the wider Fabric ecosystem. It runs cleanly on recent 1.20.x releases and pairs well with performance mods and other combat tweaks. Before you download Longshot, double-check that your game version matches the file you grab, since mixing versions is the most common cause of a mod refusing to load.
If you would rather skip manual file juggling, the foxygame.net launcher handles the whole process in a single click, and its built-in catalog keeps Longshot updated automatically whenever a new build drops, so version compatibility is never something you have to chase down yourself.
How to Install Longshot
Getting the mod running takes only a few minutes:
- Install Fabric Loader for your Minecraft version
- Place the Fabric API jar in your mods folder, since Longshot depends on it
- Download Longshot for Minecraft and drop the jar into the same mods folder
- Launch the game once to generate the config file, then tweak it to taste
On a server, the mod must be present on both client and server for the effect to behave correctly, so share the jar with your players before opening the world.
Final Thoughts
Longshot fills a gap that vanilla Minecraft has always had. Melee fighters get Strength, but archers and throwers have never had a dedicated power spike of their own. With flexible brewing, deep configuration, and support for nearly every projectile in the game, this mod rewards players who prefer to fight at range. Whether you are sniping skeletons from a tower or launching ender pearls across a ravine, Longshot makes every shot count.