Ranged weaponry is one of the most important upgrades you can make in hardcore survival game Valheim. Getting your first bow will completely change your hunting game, especially if you are planning on hunting deer. From your very first bow in Valheim to the most powerful bow in the game, this guide will go through how to unlock and get every single bow in the game.
As Valheim is in early access content and mechanics are subject to change in future updates. Things may be added and taken away from the game and when that happen’s I’ll do my best to update the guide.
Unlocking Bows in Valheim
Earlier I wrote a post on how to actually unlock new items to craft in Valheim. In short, in order to learn new crafting recipes in the game, you will have to pick up at least one of each of the items required to craft them. For example to craft a copper sword you will need wood, leather scraps and copper. If you have at least one of each of these items for the sword the recipe will be unlocked. This is the same for the bow.
The very first bow that you will be able to craft is the Crude Bow. In order to craft this bow, you will need to have the following items:
- 10 Wood
- 8 Leather Scraps
- Workbench
Crafting A Bow in Valheim
If you manage to acquire at least one of each of these items you will see the crafting recipe for the Crude Bow appear in the crafting menu of the Workbench. Cutting down trees and interacting with fallen branches will net you some wood. Hunting down boars is your journey to collecting leather scraps. Once you have all these items, head back to your workbench and go to the Crude Bow item to craft it. Press the Craft button at the bottom of the workbench UI and after a short wait you have your very first bow!
To equip the Crude Bow, find it in your inventory and right-click it. Alternatively, you can assign it to your quick-bar to easily access it whenever you want. Simply drag the bow to one of the numbered slots at the top of your character’s inventory to assign the Crude Bow to a hotkey. That’s it! You have your very first bow.
How to Use the Bow in Valheim
The controls for the bow follow an easy to learn, difficult to master approach. As in real life, when you launch an arrow from a bow in Valheim, it will eventually drop. Arrows are affected by gravity in the game. The further your target is in the distance, the higher above the target you will have to aim. But before we can get into the aiming of the bow, we will go over the controls for the bow.
The controls when using a bow in Valheim are:
- Draw an arrow: Hold Left-Mouse button
- Shoot arrow: Release left-mouse button
- Block: Right-mouse button
- Dodge-roll: Space while blocking
- Aim: Mouse movement
The power of the arrow shot is determined by how long your character draws the bow for. When you start to draw the arrow you will notice a circle appear over the aiming reticle which will slowly get smaller. Once the circle has stopped getting smaller you have drawn the arrow back as much as possible. This is the most powerful of a shot that you can release. The longer you hold the arrow back for, the more accurate the shot will be as well.
Leveling up the bows skill will allow your character to draw back arrows even quicker than before and improve the amount of damage your character is able to do with each hit of the arrow. The arrow will fly off pretty low to begin with, but once you improve your bow skill, you will see a great improvement in your accuracy and reload speed. Hitting enemies and other objects with arrows will give your character experience and levels in the bow skill.
Check out this guide to all skills and leveling for more information.
Crafting and Using Arrows
Of course where would bows be without arrows? You will need to craft some ammunition if you plan on using bows in Valheim. There are many different types of arrows in Valheim. For now, we are just going to start with the first basic arrow, the wood arrow. Wood arrows are crafted in stacks of 20. to craft 20 wood arrows, bring 8 units of regular wood to any workbench.
Once crafted, the arrows will automatically appear in your inventory, if you have the space. The base damage for the wood arrow is 22, but this can be larger or smaller depending on your level in the bows skill. For the real damage output of the arrow, refer to the yellow numbers in brackets as this tells you how much damage you do at your character’s current level.
How to Equip Arrows in Valheim
If the player has a bow equipped and arrows in their inventory, the arrows will be automatically equipped. If for some reason you don’t have any arrows equipped, or you want to change the type of arrows you are using open up your inventory. Now, find the type of arrow you want to use and right-click on it. This will equip the arrow to your bow and allow you to shoot with this type. This is a good lesson to learn as some arrows are hard to craft and you don’t want to accidentally waste them.
For example, I want to go out hunting deer with my bow. I have some Flinthead arrows which I found in a loot chest. Because I didn’t have any wood arrows on me at the time, the flint arrows were automatically equipped. Wood arrows are good enough to defeat basically any deer in one hit, so I want to save the flint arrows for a larger target. To swap the equipped arrows, I go into my inventory and right-click on the stack of wood arrows. Be aware that when one stack of arrows runs out, your character will automatically equip any other arrows available.
Valheim All Bows List
Now that you’re an expert in everything bow combat thanks to this guide, it’s time to learn about some of the other bows that are available in the game. There are currently 4 different bows available in Valheim. This is subject to change, as the game is in early access. I will go through the 4 bows in the game, talk about them a little and tell you what you need in order to unlock their crafting blueprint and craft them.
Crude Bow
The Crude Bow is the first bow that you are able to craft in Valheim. This bow will become available once you have defeated a boar and picked up their leather scraps, collected some wood and built your first workbench. Even though it is the weakest of all of the bows, it is a significant upgrade to the melee weapons you will start the game with and a great tool for hunting for food early on in the game.
Crafting Requirements:
- 10 Wood
- 8 Leather Scraps
- Level 1 Workbench
Finewood Bow
The second tier of ranged weaponry comes in the form of the Finewood Bow. This bow is a great improvement on the first. As you can see from the tool-tips in the images above, the Finewood Bow has a base damage value 10 damage higher than that of the Crude Bow. The other stats for the bow remain the same. This one required two completely different types of wood from the first bow however.
Crafting Requirements:
You can select the links for each wood type above to learn more about how to aquire these types of wood in Valheim.
Huntsman Bow
The third bow in the line is the Huntsman Bow. This is the first bow that you will actually need some type of metal for. This is a formidable now indeed. You can even see a significant beefy size upgrade from the other two bows before it. This bow is so large that will even impede your character’s movement speed when you have it equipped. Then again, you can always sheath the bow when you aren’t using it.
As the bow is partly made from Iron, you will have to have beaten the second forsaken, The Elder, in order to access the sunken crypts in the swamp and get your hands on some Iron to craft it. Everything else is fairly straight-forward.
Crafting Requirements:
- 10 Fine Wood
- 20 Iron
- 10 Feathers
- 2 Deer Hide
- Level 1 Forge
Draugr Fang – The Best Bow in Valheim
The Draugr Fang is currently the best bow that can be obtained in Valheim. This is expected to change as the game develops and more content is added but for now, this is the best. Draugr Fang is one of the end-game items although you don’t use the best metal in the game to craft it. In fact there is no bow in the game that is crafted with the best metal, Blackmetal. The Draugr Fang has a base damage value of 47 but also does 5 Poison damage on hit. This makes it the only elemental ranged weapon in the game.
The poison damage isn’t even dependent on what arrow you choose. Whether you launch a wood arrow or a fire arrow, you will always do 5 extra poison damage on-hit. Like the Huntsman Bow, the Draugr Fang will impede your players movement speed by 5% when equipped. This is the only bow that you will need to upgrade one of the workstations for in order to craft it. Once the player has reached the swamps mountains biome and defeated Bonemass they will be able to craft this bow.
Crafting Requirements:
- 10 Ancient Bark
- 20 Silver
- 2 Deer Hide
- 10 Guck
- Level 2 Forge
That was every bow available in the game! Now you know exactly what you have to work towards in order to become your crew’s dedicated ranged weapon expert. As new content is added to the game you can expect this guide to change and stay up to date so you can bookmark this page if you want to come back from time to time to check out if there is anything new.
For now, we eagerly await the Hearth and Home update which will add more things to do around the base in Valheim. After that, the Mistlands update will add a new usable biome to the game with new weapons, enemies, materials and a new forsaken boss! Stay tuned for more Valheim content.
