Block of the Month: Fletching Table

Wander around a village for a while, and you’ll see all kinds of interesting things; iron golems patrolling the perimeter, cats sunning themselves, or a wandering trader strolling about aimlessly, without purpose – much like my Minecraft.net editor, Per Landin! If you’re particularly unlucky, you might even see an illager raid.

But most of all, you’ll see villagers working hard – as farmers, blacksmiths, armourers, cartographers, butchers, clerics, fishermen, leatherworkers, masons, shepherds, toolsmiths, librarians, weaponsmiths, and fletchers. It’s this last profession that we’re most interested in today, because our block of the month is the fletching table!

Fletching tables became a part of Minecraft in the Village & Pillage Update, which added the concept of job site blocks that unemployed villagers can use to become specialists of different kinds.

The fletching table, to no one’s great surprise, is the block that turns unemployed villagers into fletchers. These specialists sell various ranged weapon-related goods, including flint, bows, crossbows, and even tipped arrows.

Fletching tables can also be used as fuel in a furnace, smelting 1.5 items per block, and under note blocks to produce the “bass” sound. For the time being, that’s all – though they might gain additional functionality in the future. When they were added in 2019, Adrian Östergård from our development team wrote:

No rush, Adrian. Take your time and don't let me bother you!

In the real world, people who make arrows are known as fletchers too – and it’s a common last name in English-speaking countries. Fletchers have been around for a very long time – the earliest evidence of arrow-making dates all the way back to Africa in the midst of the Stone Age – about 70,000 years ago. 

Archery was used in hunting and warfare all the way up to the late medieval period, when it was made obsolete by the spread of firearms. However, it’s still practiced today as an Olympic sport and by hunters, and new materials and engineering techniques give modern bows great power with relatively little effort.

In Minecraft, archery remains one of the best ways to take down your foes from a distance. If that’s not a reason to get friendly with your neighborhood fletcher, then what is?