Set up Moar Bows on your Minecraft server

Moar Bows is a plugin that adds over 25 special bows, each with its own ability: an Ice Bow that slows enemies in an area, a Void Bow that teleports you to where the arrow lands, a Meteor Bow and more. It runs on Paper and Purpur.

Checked against Moar Bows 2.7 (Spigot, updated September 2025), whose page lists Minecraft 1.14 to 1.21 as tested, October 2026.

What you need

• A Paper or Purpur server. Moar Bows is a Spigot plugin, so both run it. WorldGuard is optional, and gives you the mb-bows flag to switch the bows off in a region.
• A way to download the jar from the plugin's Spigot page, Moar Bows on SpigotMC. The Plugins tab does not search Spigot, which is where this plugin is published, so you add it by hand.
• Take care with Modrinth. A project there called Moar Bows is a datapack by a different author, not this plugin.

The page lists tested versions up to 1.21 only. On a Paper 26.3 test server the plugin loaded and mb list worked, but the Console logged a version-reading error at start and said it could not register the crafting recipes for seven bows. Read the Console on the first start.

Install it

1. Download the plugin's jar from its Spigot page.
2. Open the File Manager and double-click the plugins folder. If it is not there, start the server once to create it.
3. Click Upload and pick the jar, or drag it onto the file list.
4. Restart from the Console tab.
5. Type plugins in the Console. MoarBows should appear in the list.

Install Minecraft plugins on Paper or Purpur covers the upload step in more detail.

Give out a bow

In the Console, run mb list to see every bow. Then give one to an online player:

mb get snow-bow <player>

The full form is mb get <bow> (player) (level). The level is optional, and it scales statistics such as damage, cooldown and effect duration. From the console you must name a player. In game, /mb getall gives you every bow, and /mb gui opens a menu of them.

Permissions

The plugin's plugin.yml sets moarbows.use.*, moarbows.gui and moarbows.admin to operators by default. That means players who are not operators cannot fire the special bows until you give them moarbows.use.*, or a single bow such as moarbows.use.snow-bow. Use a permissions plugin for that, or see Whitelist players and set operators for operator status.

Players also need moarbows.repair, moarbows.enchant and moarbows.anvil to repair, enchant or craft a special bow by renaming a normal one in an anvil.

Change how the bows work

The plugin keeps its files in plugins/MoarBows. Open these in the File Manager, ideally with the server stopped:

• config.yml has full-pull-restriction, bow-crafting-recipes and arrow-particles.
• bows.yml has one block per bow with its name, lore, cooldown, particle and crafting recipe. The Earthquake Bow, for example, is crafted with dirt around a bow.

Save, then start the server again to load the new files. If you would rather edit with the server running, save and run mb reload in the Console instead. The disable options in config.yml need a full restart either way.

Common problems

• Nothing fires and the player sees a no-permission message. The player is missing the moarbows.use.<bow> permission.
• A player cannot repair or enchant a bow. The config blocks both unless they hold moarbows.repair or moarbows.enchant.
• No bow recipes. Check that bow-crafting-recipes is true and that the bow's own craft-enabled is true in bows.yml.
• The plugin did not load. The Console log names the reason. If it mentions a YAML error, correct the config file it reports.