Skyrim:Archery

Archery (also referred to as Marksman) is the skill governing the use of bows and crossbows . Each skill point grants a +0.5% bonus to the damage dealt with bows and crossbows. The Archery tree has a total of 9 perks, requiring 16 perk points to fill.

In-game Description: An archer is trained in the use of bows and arrows. The greater the skill, the more deadly the shot.    

Skill Perks
  
 

 
 

Skill Usage
Arrow damage is the sum of the quality and material of the bow and the arrow being used, augmented by the bow's draw length. Misfired arrows launched before fully drawing the bow result in a damage penalty. Drawn bows can be cancelled by pressing the 'Sheath Weapon' button.

The trajectory and speed of arrows are independent of a character's skill level in Archery; only damage increases with skill level. When shooting an arrow, you will discover that arrows have significant 'loft', or upwards movement, particularly at medium ranges (See Notes). To compensate, you should aim just below the intended target. If the target is moving, aim where they are going to be, as arrows are a rather slow projectile. The Steady Hand perk affects neither the speed of the arrow, nor the enemy, so lead your target the same as if time was not slowed. If the target is farther away, then aim slightly above it, as gravity has an influence on trajectory. The Eagle Eye perk decreases the influence of gravity, so do not aim as high as you would normally. Since there is no hit location recognition in Skyrim, trying to achieve headshots will not cause increased damage, but rather may cause your shot to miss if you do not properly account for the arrow's trajectory.

While you have a bow equipped you cannot block attacks; however, you can perform a melee strike with the bow by pressing the 'Block' button. Doing so costs a small amount of Stamina but will stagger the foe, giving you time to set up a shot, flee to a safer distance, or switch to a melee weapon. Additionally, having high skill in Block and the Deadly Bash perk will cause the strike to inflict significant damage. (5.5 * 5 = 27.5 at 100 skill and Deadly Bash 5x damage perk.)

Most bows and crossbows can be upgraded at a grindstone based on perks invested in Smithing. Arrows and bolts can be crafted if you have the Dawnguard add-on. You should always be on the lookout for better arrows, as the damage difference between iron and Daedric arrows is significantly larger than between any other iron and Daedric weapon.

There are places where NPCs can sometimes be found doing target practice, and their arrows and bolts may be retrieved from the target dummy; for example in Dragonsreach, Great Porch, in the courtyard of Castle Dour or in the cistern area of The Ragged Flagon.

Arrows and bolts shot by you that hit your opponent can sometimes be recovered from their corpse; the Hunter's Discipline perk increases this chance of recovery. Enemy missiles that strike you may also be added to your inventory. If an arrow or bolt fired by you or an enemy misses its intended target, it can almost always be recovered from the ground or a nearby object, if you can find it. Missiles that strike non-flesh enemies, such as skeletons and mudcrabs, will often bounce back toward you. Enemies that break apart upon death (such as skeletons) will drop all the arrows you have shot them with when they die.

Eagle Eye and Steady Hand
With the Eagle Eye perk, you can press the Block control to zoom in on your target. However, doing so slowly drains your Stamina, and cannot be maintained indefinitely. With the Steady Hand perk, using Eagle Eye also slows time by a 25% (50% with the second rank), making everything appear to move in slow-motion. This effect allows you more time to think through and set up the shot. Although the action of drawing the bow will occur in slow-motion if you have not nocked the arrow before pressing the Block control, there is an exploit around this that can significantly increase DPS (See Bugs). You cannot zoom in while under the effect of the Slow Time dragon shout, regardless of whether you have perks in Steady Hand or not.

For differences in Skyrim VR, see the Skyrim VR section of this article.

Draw Speed
Firing a bow has three stages:
# Nock the arrow.
# Draw the bow.
# Release the arrow and rest.

The nock stage appears to take about 0.4 seconds and the rest stage about 0.6 seconds regardless of bow or perks. The time required for a full draw depends on the bow. Heavier bows tend to take longer to draw.

 full draw time = Nock + Draw + rest = 0.4s + (1.66s / (weapon speed * (1 + Quick Shot perk))) + 0.6s 
  example: Long Bow (without Quick Shot perk) = 0.4s + (1.66s / (1* (1 + 0))) + 0.6s = 2.66s

Detailed Bow Comparison


Note that the base damage and DPS does not include any damage added from the enchantments that exist on some of the unique bows listed.

The equation to easily work out your potential dps is 
 (bow damage + arrow damage) / time

As you can see above, bound bows are among the best in the game based on base damage, but they cannot be tempered, so other bows will eventually overtake them. You can also see that early in the game, the higher damage-dealing bows do the most damage, but as the damage outputs increase, it is the speed of the bow that becomes more important. In the table above, with quick shot and the best arrows, a long bow does more dps than a daedric bow. Your choice of arrow can also have a significant impact on dps early on, but the damage from arrows is static, so they will be less influential on overall dps (iron arrows result in a dps of 6.14 for the long bow and 7.61).  

A tempered long bow will eventually do more dps than all other bows except Zephyr, Auriel's Bow, and Froki's Bow, due to the nature of the formula. Despite the daedric bow's high damage, its very slow speed is a severe limitation because of how the formula works. Auriel's Bow is the best bow in the game for dps, though at a huge cost of maximum damage. Karliah's Bow is the best in the game for maximum damage in one shot, and has the third best dps rating. However, the slow speed of Karliah's Bow will quickly see it slip behind the other best bows. The dragonbone bow is a good compromise between speed and damage, and it is more than sufficient at higher levels. It has the high base damage that is used for sneak attack calculations (the low base damage of Auriel's may not be enough to one-shot-kill many enemies). The dragonbone bow has the added benefit over Zephyr and Auriel's Bow of being enchantable, allowing you your own custom enchantments that, with sufficient skill in enchanting, can push its dps well above the others.

Range and Trajectory

The primary factor affecting your maximum range is the global game setting  ; past this distance, your arrows will "phase through" targets without doing any damage.  The default value is 4096 distance units (for reference, a weapon with a reach of "1" has a reach of 141 distance units, by default).     The second most important factor is the projectile; it has a maximum range (which is typically not relevant, but can matter for the Riekling Spear , which has a maximum range of 4000 - most projectiles have ranges measured in the tens of thousands), a speed, which determines how quickly the projectile travels, and a gravity value, which determines how quickly the projectile drops (higher is faster, for both).  Gravity tends to be the same for all of your arrows and bolts, but bolts travel significantly faster - the ammunition page covers these values.

The primary factor affecting your trajectory is the set of global game settings:

 ; default  .
 ; default  .
 ; default  .
 .

These set the angle your projectiles fire at from bows (the   settings) and crossbows  ( ) in the first-person ( ) and third-person ( ) perspectives. A value of   is initially flat, along the bottom of the targeting reticle.  Positive values tilt the projectile up.  See the Notes section below for optimization.

Range and Trajectory are also affected by bow speed. On a full draw, slower bows will shoot arrows higher and with less drop, while faster bows will shoot arrows lower with more drop. This means that at short ranges, arrows shot from faster bows will be more accurate to the crosshairs, while slower bows will shoot high. At long ranges, arrows shot from faster bows will drop considerably, requiring you to aim higher to compensate. Slower bows will hit the target much closer to the crosshairs—though you may still need to compensate for drop depending on the range. Also, slower bows have a flatter ballistic trajectory, which means they will travel further than arrows shot from a faster bow. This effect comes solely from weapon speed—other factors such as weight and damage do not play a role. You can see a comparison of the weapon speeds of many bows here. Of further note, the perk Quick Shot has no effect on range and trajectory, but Eagle Eye does, as it effectively decreases the gravity value of the projectile.

Skyrim VR
thumb|left|VR Archery
In Skyrim VR, equipping a bow will place the bow in the off-hand and the weakest available arrows in the main hand, though a different set of arrows can be selected. Bring the arrow to the bow string, then press and hold Right Attack/Block on the controller to nock the arrow. Draw the bow back and release Right Attack/Block to fire. To cancel a shot, bring the arrow back to its original position and release Right Attack/Block.

In VR Settings you can choose Realistic Bow Aiming. With this option turned on, you can aim with both hands instead of just one. After you've nocked your arrow you can move it around with your arrow hand to change the direction the arrow will fire. When you do, this will rotate the bow as well. You can also still position your bow by moving your bow hand, but your arrow hand will ultimately determine the direction the arrow flies when you release Right Attack/Block. With Realistic Bow Aiming turned off, your arrow will shoot straight forward in the direction you're aiming with your bow hand.

You can perform a weak bash attack by punching the target with the equipped bow. Like in non-VR versions of the game, a partially drawn bow does less damage and doesn't travel as far.

Crossbows are held in the main hand, and are fired by pressing Right Attack/Block. Unlike bows, bolts cannot be held in the off-hand and are reloaded automatically once fired. 

The Eagle Eye perk behaves differently in VR. Its description is changed to read "Pressing Block (or Trigger on your offhand Motion Controller) while aiming will activate Eagle Eye." Activating Eagle Eye displays a trajectory line and crosshair, showing you precisely where your arrow will land. Note that crossbows will need the fire button to be held down as well before Eagle Eye will trigger for them.

An archery range is present in the main menu Playroom area for practicing VR archery before starting the game.
 

Skill Increases
Character Creation
The following races have an initial skill bonus to Archery:
+10 bonus: Bosmer
+5 bonus: Khajiit, Redguard

Trainers
Faendal in Riverwood (Common)
Aela the Huntress of the Companions in Whiterun (Expert)
Niruin of the Thieves Guild in Riften (Master)
Sorine Jurard  in Fort Dawnguard (Master)

Skill Books
The Black Arrow, v2
Father Of The Niben
The Gold Ribbon of Merit
The Marksmanship Lesson
Vernaccus and Bourlor

Free Skill Boosts
+1 Archery (and other combat skills) from Giraud Gemane (Bards College) for completing the quest Rjorn's Drum.
+1 Archery (and Block, Heavy Armor, and One-handed) from Wulf Wild-Blood  for finding his brother during Filial Bonds .
+5 Archery (and other combat skills) by selecting "The Path of Might" from the Oghma Infinium after completing the quest Discerning the Transmundane.
+6 Archery in total from Angi for completing a series of archery challenges. There are four challenges; the first one gives three points and all the others one point each.

Gaining Skill Experience
Weapon skill gains are based on damage dealt against valid targets (those whose health can be damaged). You can increase your skill level faster by choosing the best available ammunition and best available bow that has the highest DPS.

The equation governing skill gain in Archery is thought to resemble something like this:

Bwd = Base weapon damage

Bad = Base ammunition damage

lm = Leveling Multiplier (rest, stone, etc.)

x = Damage Translator

bool(DamagingHit) = 1 or 0, true or false

skillXP += bool(DamagingHit) * (lm(Bwd + Bad) / x)

Dialogue
If your Archery skill is over level 30, guards will occasionally say: ''"Favor the bow, eh? I'm a sword man myself..."
If you have a bow and arrows equipped, guards may also say "Keep your arrows in your quiver, archer"''.

Notes
 
The movement speed with a drawn bow (shot ready) is reduced in comparison to Oblivion, making archers less mobile. A perk is available to compensate for this.
Arrows will remain equipped (and appear on the back of your character accordingly) even if you have unequipped the bow. This will enable you to pin your bow of choice and melee weapon or spell of choice to your favorites menu, and swap between them on the fly, without having to re-equip your arrows.
Arrows are not accurate to the center pointer. The arrow shoots slightly above the crosshair. Use the archery practice targets to see the exact dynamics for different ranges.
 Arrows can be forced to shoot through the center point by modifying (or adding, if they don't exist) a few lines in Skyrim.ini, in the My Documents folder. Also, setting   to a high value (above ~10000) allows you to hit targets with arrows as far as the arrow can fly, rather than passing through targets (without causing damage) at long distances:
:Skyrim.ini
: 
: 
: 
: 
: 
Alternatively, if Dawnguard is installed:
:Skyrim.ini
: 
: 
: 
: 
: 
: 
: 
Note: apparently the draw distance of the game is initialized badly, because if you keep it at the default from the very start of the game of a fresh install, then setting   to a higher value doesn't have any effect. If you max out the draw distances, then it will have an effect. If afterwards you move draw distance to minimum again,   will continue to have an effect.
Arrows can be used as distractions. If you have not been spotted by an enemy, shooting an arrow will make them investigate the point of impact.
Be aware, however, that after checking out where the arrow hit they may investigate where it was shot from. Make sure to either kill them quickly, distract them again, or move to safety.
Archery is one of two skills which has a different Console ID than the name, the other being Speech. The actual Console ID for Archery is  . For example, the Console code for improving Archery is  AdvancePCskill Marksman   .  The term "Marksman" also appears in a few other contexts, e.g. Fortify Marksman.
Having high skill in Block in conjunction with the Deadly Bash perk can be useful for an archer. At 0 Block skill, bow bashing only does 1.1 damage, but at 100 Block skill a bow bash does 5.5 damage. With Deadly Bash perk, the 5x damage multiplier brings the bash damage up to 27.5. Bow type does not affect the damage magnitude.
Another perk exists in the Creation Kit but was removed from the game before release. It is called "Trick Shot", and would have been available at 80 Archery skill if the "Quick Shot" perk has already been unlocked. The description for Trick Shot is: "25% chance to disarm an opponent."
You can give yourself the perk using the Console command  . It won't appear in your skills menu, but it does work.
Using the Secret of Strength  power will allow you to be able to use zoom ability gained from the Eagle Eye and Steady Hand perk, without using your stamina, for the duration of the power's effect.

Bugs
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Apply the changes to Skyrim.ini mentioned in the Notes section.
 
 
 
 
 
Saving and reloading the game will cause the arrow to behave normally.