Bound Bow
School	Conjuration
Skill Level	Adept (50)
Magicka Cost	206[1]
Effect	Equips an ethereal Daedric Bow and 100 ethereal Daedric Arrows for 120 seconds
Spell Tome	Hidden under a lantern in a bucket in the NNW corner of Fort Amol Prison
Tome ID	000A26F1
Spell ID	000211ED

For other uses, see Bound Bow.

Bound Bow is an Adept-level Conjuration spell in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. When cast, it equips an ethereal version of the Daedric Bow and 100 ethereal Daedric Arrows for 120 seconds. It does not, however, begin with the same statistics as the Daedric Bow . More information about this is found in the next section below.

Spell tome

Attributes

• Weight: 1
• Value: 335
• See Spell Tome for a complete table of spell tomes, their descriptions, and their values.

Acquisition

Loot

• Hidden under a lantern in a bucket in the NNW corner of Fort Amol Prison.

Merchants

• Calcelmo in Understone Keep, in Markarth.
• Phinis Gestor at The College of Winterhold.
• Farengar Secret-Fire in Dragonsreach, inside of Whiterun.

Level required

• A conjuration skill of 50 or higher is required before this spell tome becomes available for purchase.
• The tome can be found as randomized loot at any level.

Base damage

• This weapon has a base damage of 18 that increases to a base damage of 24 after the Conjuration level 20 perk and Mystic Binding is applied.
• The Bound Arrows have damage rating of 24, equal to their Daedric counterparts.

Skills

Casting the spell Bound Bow (in the presence of enemies) increases the Conjuration skill, and landing shots with the weapon increases the Archery skill. Thus, the Conjuration skill governs the magicka cost of the spell, and the Archery skill governs the damage ability of the weapon.

Perks

• Soul Stealer: automatically inflicts targets of bound weapons with Soul Trap.
• Oblivion Binding: conjured daedra attacked with bound weapons are banished. Reanimated Dead will flee upon hit.
• Mystic Binding: Increases the base damage of all Bound Weapons.
• The Bound Bow is also affected by all Archery Perks.

Usefulness

Advantages

• The spell to summon the bound bow can be held in one hand, allowing for a weapon or spell to be equipped in the other before summoning the bow. This may be useful for situations in which one does not want to break combat by entering their magic menu or inventory to switch from one-handed or magic to archery.
  • This may be useful to assassins who wish to switch between long-range archery attacks, and devastating close range backstabs.
  • This also works with Bound Battleaxe, which works well in conjunction with cloak spells.
• Can be useful for mage characters who wish to deploy poisons at range. For example, when fighting other mages, poisoning the bound arrows with a magicka draining poison can be an effective method for utilizing poisons that would be otherwise useless for magic-based characters.
• One-hundred bound arrows that have the strength of Daedric arrows.
• Stealth based mages can find usefulness in using Bound Bow in conjunction with Muffle (Bound Bow in the left hand, Muffle in the right) Cast muffle and cast Bound Bow immediately after to ensure a successful long range sneak attack.
• The bound arrows glow when fired, so create greater situations for accuracy on targets such as falmer in dark areas.
• It would also be nice to note, with the correct perks in the Conjuration tree, including Mystic Binding, this bow is considerably better than the non-upgraded Daedric Bow itself.
• Soul Stealer allows the weapon to cast soul trap on the target. This is useful if the player does not wish to halt combat to equip and cast soul trap in the place of a weapon.

Disadvantages

• Summoning the Bound Bow creates noise, so it is not advisable to do so in a room inhabited by enemies if one wishes to remain undetected. This can however be avoided with the Quiet Casting perk in the Illusion skill tree.
• The bow is not considerably powerful until the perk Mystic Binding is acquired.
• The bow cannot be used while riding a horse.

Bugs

• Once the player shoots a Bound Arrow with the Bound Bow, the arrow does not disappear and its blue glow is quite visible. The arrows disappear if too many of them are lying around.
•  PC    PS3   Sometimes, if the player tries to double-cast a bound bow, the result will be a quiver with arrows on the player's back but no bow. Conjuring another bow (single-casting) will supply the conjured bow. When rapidly in need of a bound bow it is best to conjure one with single-casting. This is also true for the console version of the game.
• If the conjuration duration ends while the player is in the process of recovering from being knocked down by an Unrelenting Force Shout, the player's hands will be stuck in the position they were before being hit. The best way to recover is to sheath the weapon and recast.
• Sometimes when crouching and conjuring the bow, the player will not be able to use it until changing to a standing position, and the bow falls into the player's hands.
• If the player tries to cast bound bow with both hands simultaneously (but not dual-casting) the bound bow will not manifest even though the sound and appearances indicate that it will be.
•  PC    360  Sometimes, casting a bound bow while carrying arrows in the inventory causes the corresponding quiver type to flash up right before the bound bow appears.
• Sometimes you may lose your ability to get bound arrows with your bow. Instead no matter how many times you conjure the bow again you will be stuck using your own arrows from your inventory. This can be fixed by rebooting your system.

See also

• Bound Items - The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
• Bound Battleaxe
• Bound Sword

Gallery

A player shooting a bear with a Bound Bow

Appearances

• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (First appearance)
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

References