Minecraft Mace Explained: How to Get and Use the Smash-Attack Weapon

Minecraft's mace has been one of the game's most distinctive weapons since it arrived in the Tricky Trials update, and it still trips players up because it doesn't work anything like a sword or axe. Instead of relying on quick swings, the mace rewards you for falling on your enemies from a height, turning verticality into your best offensive tool. Here's exactly how to get one, how its damage actually works, and which enchantments are worth chasing.

1. What Is the Mace in Minecraft?

The mace is a melee weapon added in the Tricky Trials update, which released for Java and Bedrock Edition on June 13, 2024 alongside trial chambers, the Breeze mob, and the new "ominous" difficulty system. Mojang's own description of the weapon, published in its "Taking Inventory" column, sums up its identity well: it's built for when you "need to flatten your foes like a pancake."

Unlike swords, axes, or tridents, the mace isn't crafted from common materials at a crafting table. You can't just mine some iron and knock one out — getting your hands on a mace means engaging with Minecraft's trial chamber structures first.

2. How to Get a Mace: Breeze Rods and Heavy Cores

A mace is crafted from two ingredients, and both are gated behind trial chamber content:

• Breeze Rod — dropped by the Breeze, a wind-based hostile mob found inside trial chambers and summoned by breeze spawners during trial chamber combat challenges.
• Heavy Core — a rare item that only drops from ominous vaults, the upgraded vault variant found in trial chambers affected by the "Bad Omen" status effect (now called Raid Omen/Trial Omen depending on how it was triggered).

Combine one breeze rod with one heavy core on a crafting grid and you'll get a mace. Since heavy cores only come from ominous vaults — not regular ones — you'll need to trigger an ominous trial first, which means fighting through a trial chamber while under the Bad Omen effect obtained from defeating a raid captain or pillager outpost.

3. Mace Damage and Combat Feel

On a basic swing, the mace deals 6 damage, which is roughly equivalent to an iron sword. That alone wouldn't make it worth the effort to craft. The catch is weight: the mace is slow, with nearly a two-second recovery period after each swing before you can attack again at full strength. Spam-clicking with a mace the way you would with a sword is a bad idea — you'll get punished for the attack speed.

The mace is not meant to replace your sword for standard combat. It's a specialist tool built around a single mechanic that changes everything about how it performs.

4. The Smash Attack: Minecraft's Fall-Damage Weapon

The mace's entire design revolves around the smash attack: hitting an enemy while you are falling. Land a hit on something below you while you're still in the air, and you trigger bonus damage scaled to how far you fell — and you take zero fall damage yourself in the process.

According to Mojang's official breakdown, the numbers scale dramatically with height:

• Falling 2 blocks before impact deals 14 damage.
• Falling 9 blocks deals 29 damage.
• Falling 100 blocks deals a massive 120 damage — more than enough to one-shot almost anything in the game.

This is why mace builds revolve around gaining height before a fight: towers, elytra flight, or simply building upward with blocks mid-combat all become viable openers when your weapon turns a fall into a weapon.

5. Mace-Exclusive Enchantments: Density, Breach and Wind Burst

Three enchantments were added specifically for the mace, and none of them work on other weapons:

• Density — increases the damage dealt per block fallen during a smash attack, making your height investment pay off even more.
• Breach — reduces how effective the target's armor is against your hit, which matters a lot against heavily armored players or armored mobs like piglins.
• Wind Burst — launches you upward after you land a successful smash attack, letting you chain fall damage over and over without needing to climb back up manually.

Wind Burst is notable because you cannot get it from an enchanting table or a regular villager trade — it only appears as a pre-enchanted book reward from ominous vaults. If you want the full "infinite smash attack" loop, you'll need to keep running ominous trials even after you've already crafted your mace.

6. Where to Find Trial Chambers, Ominous Vaults and Breezes

Trial chambers are underground structures built from copper and tuff blocks, generated deep underground and packed with spawners, vaults, and crafter blocks. They don't appear on the surface, so finding one usually means exploring caves or using a structure locator. Inside, you'll find:

• Regular vaults, which can be opened once per player with a normal trial key earned from spawner-triggered combat trials.
• Ominous vaults, which replace regular vaults when the trial chamber is affected by the Bad Omen/Trial Omen effect, and require an ominous trial key instead.
• Breeze spawners, which summon the wind mobs you need for breeze rods.

Since trial chambers scale with the number of players present, they're a good excuse to team up — if you're playing on a Realms server with friends, bring everyone along so you can cycle through combat trials faster and stockpile breeze rods and trial keys together.

7. Mace vs Sword vs Axe: Choosing Your Weapon

The mace isn't a strict upgrade over your other weapons — it's situational. A sword is still faster and more reliable for straightforward fights on flat ground, and an axe still hits harder per swing and disables shields. The mace wins when you can set up a fall: ambushing from a tower, diving off an elytra flight, or using Wind Burst to keep yourself airborne through a whole fight.

If you're building a PvP or boss-fighting loadout, it's worth keeping both a sword and a mace in your hotbar rather than committing fully to one. Enchant your gear accordingly if you're also investing in villager trading for armor and books — a librarian stocked with useful enchantments will speed up outfitting a mace build considerably.

8. Quick Tips Recap

• You need a breeze rod (from the Breeze mob) and a heavy core (from an ominous vault) to craft a mace.
• Base damage is 6, similar to an iron sword, with a slow roughly two-second recovery between swings.
• Smash attacks scale with fall distance: 14 damage from 2 blocks, 29 from 9 blocks, up to 120 from 100 blocks, with no fall damage taken by you.
• Density, Breach, and Wind Burst are mace-exclusive enchantments; Wind Burst only comes from ominous vault loot.
• Trial chambers generate underground and are the only source of everything you need — bring friends to clear them faster.

Official Resources

• Minecraft.net — Taking Inventory: Mace
• Minecraft.net — Tricky Trials Update Release Date
• Minecraft.net — Official Site

Looking for more on Minecraft's recent updates? Check out our breakdown of the basics of redstone circuits, or browse the full walkthroughs.net game guide archive for more Minecraft coverage.