Piercing

Piercing is a common ranged enchantment in Minecraft 1.21. Piercing lets a crossbow's arrows punch straight through enemies and shields, hitting everything lined up behind the first target instead of stopping on impact.

Its opening level already delivers a noticeable boost — Arrows pass through 1 extra entity — and it climbs from there to a maximum of level 4 (IV) on your crossbow.

Piercing tops out at level 4, shown as IV on the crossbow, and the gap between the levels is where the enchantment's character really lives.

Four levels, each adding one more entity the arrow can pass through, so Piercing IV skewers up to five targets in a row. The same arrow can be recovered after the shot, and at any level Piercing also lets arrows bypass a raised shield.

Piercing fits exactly one item — the crossbow — and nothing else will accept it, so it is a dedicated crossbow enchantment through and through.

Piercing cannot share a crossbow with Multishot. Because of that single conflict you have to pick either Piercing or Multishot for any given crossbow — never both.

Piercing can be rolled directly at an enchanting table, where reaching its top level of IV on a crossbow generally wants a fully bookshelf-powered table at roughly level 11. Players who would rather not gamble for Piercing can hunt the book down through loot chest and villager trading and apply it at an anvil.

Its selection weight of 10 makes Piercing a common roll: it shows up frequently among the options when you enchant a crossbow, so building one rarely takes many tries.