Weakness

Overview

Weakness subtracts a flat amount from every melee hit, which at the level a potion gives is enough to make a stone sword useless and a fist genuinely comical. Witches throw it, and a witch fight where you have taken a splash bottle turns from a two-minute job into a stalemate. But the interesting fact about Weakness is that its most important use has nothing to do with combat at all: it is the first half of curing a zombie villager. Splash the zombie villager with Weakness, feed it a golden apple, and after a few minutes you have a villager with permanently discounted trades. That single procedure is the backbone of every cheap-Mending setup in the game, and the potion it needs is the simplest brew there is — a fermented spider eye dropped straight into a water bottle, with no Nether wart involved. It is the only useful potion you can make before ever visiting the Nether. Bows and thrown tridents are unaffected, so a player under Weakness can still fight at range, and milk or a honey bottle removes it. For the curing recipe you also want gunpowder, since only a splash bottle reaches a trapped zombie.

Curing zombie villagers, which is how you get a librarian selling Mending for a single emerald; and, defensively, understanding why your sword suddenly stopped killing anything.

Reduces melee damage by 4 per level. It is also the first half of curing a zombie villager.

The game files Weakness as a harmful status effect. A standard potion holds it for 90 seconds.

You will see it as an inventory icon in the top-right corner with a countdown, plus a trail of particles in the effect's colour — faint rather than absent when a beacon or a conduit applied it. There is no beacon version, so it always runs out.

How to get it

Brew 1 fermented spider eye directly into a water bottle for a 1:30 Potion of Weakness — no Nether wart needed — then add gunpowder to splash it. Redstone extends it to 4:00, and witches throw it at you for free.

Tips

• This is the only potion worth brewing before your first Nether trip, because it needs no Nether wart at all.
• Splash it on a trapped zombie villager, then feed a golden apple; the cure takes 3 to 5 minutes.
• Iron bars and beds placed near the converting villager shorten the cure considerably; the discount itself is a fixed gossip value and does not change.
• The full procedure is in villager trading and cheap Mending, including how to reroll the librarian first.

What each level does

Levels are shown one-based in the inventory and zero-based in commands, so Weakness II is written amplifier 1. Per level:

Levels above I exist but cannot be obtained in survival — a command can go up to 255.

Properties

Straight from the stand it lasts 90 seconds, 240 with redstone dust added, or if you spend the duration on level II with glowstone instead. Splash versions land at three quarters of the time. A honey bottle takes it off and keeps your other effects; milk works too, but strips everything. Bows and thrown tridents are unaffected. It is also how you cure a zombie villager.

Potion durations

Brewing is where most players meet Weakness. The base potion runs 90 seconds; adding redstone dust extends it to 240, and glowstone dust raises the level instead, which costs duration and leaves seconds. You cannot have both on one potion.

Where it comes from

Weakness comes from Potion of Weakness and Witch.

• Potion of Weakness
• Witch

Command

With cheats enabled it hands you Weakness I for thirty seconds; raise the last number to raise the level, since 1 is II.

Guides and tools that cover this

• GuidesHow to Brew Every Potion in Minecraft→
• ToolsPotion Brewing Planner→

Frequently asked questions

Related pages

StrengthPoisonSlownessBlindnessHungerBad OmenDarknessFire Resistance