Skeletons not dropping bows

I am experiencing the same issue and I have found that drowned will not drop tridents as well.

Same here. I have a skeleton farm built and it used to drop tons of bows and some armor as well. The 1.12 update stopped that. I tested building a zombie farm and they are not dropping armor as well.

Any way to fix this mojang?

Same issue on a private LAN game, all the same as reported here. I have skin abrasions from my wife chewing on my arm on how armor and bows are not dropping. I had to look this bug up to save my arm from further damage. 😞

Problem also on xbox one. Skeleton spawner farm drops only bones, arrows and XP. Problem started after 1.12 update. Zombie spawner drowned farm also drops way less loot than before.

My skeleton spawner still drops bows but I'm not getting any enchanted bows and it looks like the bows are all full health, no damage.
My zombie spawner now drops nothing but rotten meat.

some stats:

I got 2 dropped bows from my double skeleton spawner after gaining 30 lvl exp. (from 0, after I died) And some more before that. That is minimum 200 mobs killed. And the game was on Hard difficulty.

I used to trash a couple of full inventory of bows before to update to 1.12 (I am on Win10, bedrock edition)

And 0 armor drop. I did not count the bones and arrows, I was not expecting a bug.

Loot table are broken!

Yes, this is happening all over. The mobs in my world are not spawning with armor/gear at all. So, all I get from spawners are rotten meat and sometimes veggies. Bows are inconsistently dropping from skeletons, and they are always at full health, never enchanted.

This bug is listed as fixed in the 1.13.0.5 Beta changelog.

https://feedback.minecraft.net/hc/en-us/articles/360031774332-Minecraft-Beta-1-13-0-5-Xbox-One-Windows-10-Android-

I tested the effect of Looting 3 on 1250 skeletons in my skeleton farm. Here are the results:

The pickaxe and swords were all diamond. The "Additional Weapon" column shows that during some of my tests, slot 1 of my hotbar held a Looting 3 diamond sword that I wasn't using for that test. Normally I would have assumed its presence in my hotbar was irrelevant, but in preliminary tests I kept noticing that it seemed to have an effect (see conclusions) so I tested both with and without it.

From the chart I draw the following conclusions:

1. Skeletons virtually never drop bows without the Looting enchantment.

2. Skeletons almost never drop armor at all. During preliminary tests, I did get 3 armor drops, but the 1250 skeletons in my formal tests didn't drop a single piece. This is most likely because they almost never spawn with armor. I did see armor once or twice per test (I did 25 tests with 50 skeletons per test), so armor was being spawned about 2-4% of the time. This low generation rate coupled with the low chance of an armor drop suggests that the lack of any armor drops in my results might not meet a significance test.

3. Arrow and bone drops (common drops) are quite clearly affected by Looting 3, which they should be.

4. Bow drops are affected by Looting 3, which they should be, but the number of bows dropped is much lower than it should be. The wiki says the base rate is 8.5%, and with Looting 3 it should be 11.5%. In the tests, the corresponding percentages are 0% and 2%.

5. Killing skeletons with your hand yields more arrow drops than killing them with a pickaxe. This seems like a bug.

6. Killing skeletons with either your hand or a pickaxe yields about the same number of bone drops, but the number may be slightly increased if you have a Looting 3 diamond sword on your hotbar. This also seems like a bug.

Nice work on the stats, Auldrick! 👍

Now, time to try it again with the 1.13.0.5 Beta ? 😃 

(I would have like to try it myself but I am not part of the "beta program")

Auldrick's post blew my mind. This is how a bug report should be compiled, by a professional.

I am still experiencing this bug with 1.13.0. I have a trident killer attached to a skeleton spawner, and although they spawn with bows and armor, I got 0 armor or bow drops in 2 hours of it running. They are dropping bows when killed by hand though. Not sure about armor, as I have not tested that enough yet.

Since 1.13.1 was released, I am finding that everything seems to have gone back to normal. I just repaired a mending diamond pickaxe that had half durability, and got 3 armor pieces. I then repaired a diamond shovel and got 1 armor piece. And finally I killed the leftovers with my hand and got 1 armor piece. Plenty of bows were dropped as well.

1.13.1, skeletons killed with a trident killer still don't drop anything but arrows and bones.

Just made a new skeleton dungeon farm in 1.14.1 and drops look good, getting armor and bows with no sword in hotbar. I think this bug is resolved.

I am in the 1.14.1 version and I just ran a four hour AFK test at my skeleton spawner with a trident killer while holding a looting three sword. All the drops I got were bones and arrows. I then let the skeletons build up in the kill chamber with trident killer off, and then used said looting sword to kill the skeletons and received bones, arrows, bows, enchanted bows, and armor. Seems to me that when using a trident killer you will only get the basic drops from the mobs, and you must use a sword to get the other drops. I have also noticed this with my raid farm, no longer getting crossbows. I still get all the other drops from raid farms just not crossbows.

@Christopher Warr the issue with trident killers is specifically an issue with thrown tridents. I tested on my skeleton spawned farm and found that I got all the drops when I used trident as mele, but no bows and armor when I threw the trident. Trident killers use the throwing mechanic. For that reason, I’ve never gotten crossbows from my raid farm since I built in in 1.12 last summer.

Drops from thrown tridents should be a separate bug report. This one specific to skeletons is resolved.

Hi @GoldenHelmet.

I agree with the observation that the issue might be related to thrown weapons (e.g. including arrows shot from a bow?).

I wanted to ask: is there any working automated mob grinder that meets all the following condition:

• spawn mobs, sometimes wearing equipment, sometimes enchanted

• player can AFK (i.e. no need to kill the mobs manually)

• when killed, mobs drop the equipment they were wearing at non-zero rate

My understanding (and please kindly correct me if I'm wrong): I think trident killers are trying to mimic "killed by player". This type of kills will allow exp plus drops of worn equipments and some more loot I think. And these are the only reason I went with trident killers. This type of kill is different from other types like fall damage, or burnt by magna block, which are not considered "killed by player". I'd appreciate to learn if there are other type of killers which allow the above drops.

@Roy Shi
Yes! Find a zombie spawner and set up the room so that the zombies get funneled into a pool where they can drown. They will drop all of their equipment with full durablilty when they convert to drowned. Then you can set up a kill area to kill the drowned however you wish. By hand/sword for more drops including gold bars, by trident killer for auto-exp, or by fall/magma/etc. for just getting rid of them. This isn't the place to lay out an exact design, but you'll need some redstone mechanisms to stop them in a pool for drowning, then to kill the drowned and collect the equipment.

Hi @GoldenHelmet,

I'm glad to see your reply. Great idea there. I will give it a try when I have the luck to find a zombie spawner in my world.

> They will drop all of their equipment with full durablilty when they convert to drowned.

Seems this only applies to weapons and tools, according to this wiki page. https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Zombie#Drowned

Maybe the wiki page has a mistake.

Nevertheless, this is a great idea where I can get enchanted items. Plus the converted drowned has a chance to hold (thus drop) tridents, which is a plus. 🙂 

Thank you again for your reply. You have a good day~!

Thanks,

Roy

This is marked as 'resolved', but it is not. In 1.14.1, mobs are not dropping items/armor when killed with ranged/thrown weapons. Using a sword, I get expected drops. Using a bow and arrow I get no item drops. So unless that is the new expected behavior then this is not resolved in 1.14.1

This bug affecting all skeleton drops regardless of how killed has been fixed. There is a separate bug report, MCPE-44408, for kills of any mob with ranged weapons (arrows or thrown tridents). That bug causes trident killers to never produce drops of weapons/equipment worn by mobs. It is a much older bug and needs attention; please give it a vote!