Skyrim: How To Find And Use The Bound Bow

While there are a number of different types of weapons in Skyrim, not all of them start out at the same level of effectiveness. Bows, in particular, are severely underpowered during the first ten or so hours of the game, especially if you don’t invest a significant amount of time, effort and money into crafting a powerful one for yourself.

Players can find themselves launching arrow after arrow at armored enemies, only for them to close the gap and kill you in one hit quickly. It’s an incredible hassle to use bows in open combat, and the game makes it abundantly clear that the archery skill is suited more for stealth during the opening hours.

But that doesn’t always have to be the case. If players don’t want to spend hours grinding for a great bow, they can turn their attention to a more magical alternative.

I’m talking about Skyrim’s Bound Bow spell here, and this guide will show you how to find and use it effectively.

Skyrim’s Bound Bow Guide

The Skyrim Bound Bow spell is an advantageous ability that allows the player to conjure up an ethereal version of one of the best bows in the entire game. This is the Daedric Bow, and alongside it, we also get 100 ethereal Daedric Arrows.

For the 120 seconds that the spell lasts, you can use this magical bow and arrow combo at your leisure and temporarily enjoy the stats of an extremely powerful weapon. The only downside is that the Magicka needed to perform this spell is relatively high, and merely having the spell in your possession does not mean that you can use it.

So we recommend that you either buy a set of Novice Robes of Conjuration from a merchant first to reduce the cost of the spell or focus on investing points into your Magicka meter until you have a large enough pool. If you’re willing, you can even try and enchant some gear that reduces the cost of such spells.

How To Find The Spell

The Bound Bow spell tome is hidden in such an unexpected place that most players will gloss over it without even knowing it’s there.

To the southwest of the city of Windhelm, there is a stronghold known as Fort Amol. It seems fairly run down, but it is in fact, occupied by a bunch of rogue mages that will attack you on sight. If players are not strong enough to directly take these enemies, then archery and stealth are good alternatives.

Once you enter the fort’s courtyard, there should be a door to your left that leads to the Fort Amol Prison sub-area. There are two more mages inside, both of whom will spot you as soon as you enter through the area.

After they are dead, look in the northwestern corner of the room, next to some shelves.

There should be a bucket here with a lantern inside it. You can lift it up to reveal the spell tome hidden underneath it.

Bound Bow Stealth Build

Skyrim’s Bound Bow may be a physical manifestation of Magicka, but it functions more or less like a regular bow. And for this exact reason, all perks from the Archery skill tree that affect other bows also have the same effect on this spell.

Investing in perks like Overdraw, which increases damage dealt by bows by 20%, and Steady Hand, which allows you to zoom in and slow down time, also effects the Bound Bow. And if players intend to main this weapon, we recommend that you invest in these abilities.

For a stealth build, we also highly recommend starting the ‘Dark Brotherhood’ questline because doing so lets you gain access to the phenomenal Shrouded Armor set pretty early on. It’s given to you free of charge when you enter the Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary for the first time.

This armor set gives you the following bonuses:

• Shrouded Armor: Poison resistance is increased by 50%.
• Shrouded Boots: The player is automatically muffled and moves silently.
• Shrouded Cowl: 20% more damage is dealt by bows and crossbows.
• Shrouded Gloves: Doubles the damage from backstabbing attacks.

The chest piece and the gloves are great, but the boots and cowl are the real stars of the show for bow users. Being automatically muffled lets players tiptoe around enemies without making a sound, and the extra 20% damage makes it a bit easier to take them down.

But the last piece of this puzzle is the rank 40 sneak perks called Deadly Aim. It allows stealth attacks with bows to do three times as much damage as normal, turning this build into one that can kill most enemies in the game with one shot. Larger enemies like dragons or giants are not going to go down in one hit, of course, but it will still shave off a significant amount of their health.

This has been our Skyrim Bound Bow Guide. With this, you can get an extremely powerful ability in your hands within the first few hours of the game.