Breath of the Wild Best Bows: Stats and Where to Get Them

The Great Eagle Bow draws 1.8 times as fast as a Royal Bow. The Ancient Bow draws at 0.7, and its arrows fall under less than a third of the gravity that pulls on an ordinary bow's arrows. Neither number is on the inventory card. Both sit in the weapon parameter data that Zelda Wiki reproduces on each bow's page, next to the durability figure Breath of the Wild also keeps to itself.

The game has 25 bows in the Hyrule Compendium, a 26th that only an amiibo drops, and one of the 26 exists for a single fight. This is all of them: attack, arrows per shot, durability, range, draw speed, where each one comes from, what the arrows you load into them actually add, and which of them are worth the slots in a pouch that tops out at 13.

The numbers the inventory never prints

Every bow page on Zelda Wiki carries a parameter block lifted from the game's data. Six of its fields decide how a bow plays:

• Power — attack per arrow. This is the number the menu shows you.
• Life — durability, counted in uses. Zelda Wiki's durability entry puts bows under the same limited-uses rule as swords and shields; the weapon durability guide covers how that counter behaves on melee gear.
• Arrows per shot — three on five bows, two on one, one on the rest.
• Range — 20 on most bows, more on a handful.
• ArrowChargeRate — draw speed. The Ancient Bow's page reads its 0.7 as 70% of a typical bow's draw speed, so 1.0 is the baseline.
• ArrowGravity — how hard the arrow drops. The default is -9.8.

Attack is the one you see first, and it is the one that misleads you most, because on six bows it is a per-arrow figure multiplied at the string.

All 26 bows in one table

Sorted by damage per shot. Attack, durability, range and draw speed are the Power, Life, Range and ArrowChargeRate values from each bow's parameter block; "per shot" is attack times arrows.

Three footnotes before you use that table to pick anything.

The Bow of Light is not a bow you keep. Zelda gives it to you for the Dark Beast Ganon fight, and Zelda Wiki's Hestu entry notes that the pouch slot it takes up arrives with it and cannot be unlocked permanently. The Calamity Ganon guide covers that fight.

The Twilight Bow and the Bow of Light fire only Light Arrows, which they supply themselves — Zelda Wiki's Light Arrow page says both shoot an unlimited amount, and its Arrow page says regular arrows cannot be loaded into either. The Twilight Bow is the one amiibo-exclusive bow; the drop odds are in the amiibo guide.

The Ancient Bow's range is printed as 50 on Zelda Wiki's bow list and as 40 in its own parameter block. The table uses the parameter value, the same rule our durability guide applied to its one mismatched sword.

Three arrows in the air, one out of the quiver

Five bows fire three arrows per shot: the Great Eagle Bow, the Forest Dweller's Bow, and all three Lynel bows. The Duplex Bow, the Yiga Clan's bow, fires two. Zelda Wiki's Bow page is explicit on the part that matters for your quiver: multi-shot bows do not consume multiple arrows. One arrow leaves the pouch; three leave the string.

The catch in that column is the spread. The Lynel Bow's own description calls its volley a spread of arrows, and the three-arrow bows fan out rather than stacking on one point, so the per-shot figure is what lands on a target big enough, or close enough, to catch all three.

Then there is the bonus that makes four of these bows better than their table row. Five-Shot Burst is a yellow Weapon Bonus that turns three arrows into five, and Zelda Wiki's Weapon Bonus table grants it to four bows only: the Forest Dweller's Bow and the three Lynel bows. On those four, a yellow roll splits like this:

A Savage Lynel Bow that lands Five-Shot Burst is 160 per shot (32 x 5). One that lands Attack Up+ instead, at +10 to +18 per arrow, is 126 to 150. A bow carries one bonus, not both, and how the yellow tier unlocks with World Level is in the weapon durability guide.

The Great Eagle Bow has no such ceiling to chase. It is on Zelda Wiki's list of unique equipment that never receives a Weapon Bonus, so 84 is where it starts and where it stays.

Draw speed is the hidden stat

Draw speed is the column that separates the Rito bows from everything else. All but six bows sit at the 1.0 baseline:

Four of those six descriptions hint at speed. The Forest Dweller's Bow's fast draw and the Ancient Bow's slow one go unmentioned in their own text.

Why a faster draw matters more than it sounds: aiming a bow in midair slows time, and Zelda Wiki's Bow page notes that Link's stamina drains quickly for as long as he holds that aim. A bow that reaches full draw sooner spends less of the wheel per shot, which is the whole economy of the glide-and-shoot technique the combat tips guide builds on.

The Quick Shot bonus stacks on top, multiplying draw speed by a random 1.1 to 1.3. Per the table above, it is the most likely single outcome of a yellow roll on every bow that can roll one.

Range, gravity, and the two zoom bows

Range comes in five values. Sixteen bows sit at 20. The Royal Guard's Bow is 30. Seven reach 40: the Ancient, Duplex, Falcon, Golden, Great Eagle, Phrenic and Swallow Bows. The Bow of Light is 500 and the Twilight Bow is 8,000.

Gravity is where the Ancient Bow separates from the pack. Twenty-two bows pull their arrows down at the default -9.8. The Silver Bow, originally a Zora fishing bow, is -7.0. The Bow of Light and the Twilight Bow are -5.0. The Ancient Bow is -2.8, and its page describes the result: arrows fly in a straight line for quite some distance before gravity takes over. That is the long-range sniper in this game, and it has nothing to do with a scope.

The scope belongs to two other bows. Zelda Wiki's Bow page names the Phrenic Bow and the Golden Bow as the two that zoom the view when drawn, which also extends how far you can land a shot:

• Phrenic Bow — the Sheikah bow. Concentrate before drawing and you drop into a first-person view. Found in chests around Lake Hylia and West Necluda, carried by a Lizalfos at the skull rock north of Sahasra Slope, and possible from the Super Smash Bros. Sheik amiibo. Cado, Impa's bodyguard in Kakariko Village, carries one, so you can photograph it for the Compendium before you own it.
• Golden Bow — the Gerudo bow, commonly found around Gerudo Town, the Gerudo Desert and the Gerudo Highlands. The camera zooms in much further than normal.

At 10 and 14 attack, both are for spotting and picking off, not for fights. One piece of trivia from the Weapon Bonus page: the game files hold an unused bow bonus that would have given any bow this zoom.

The Ancient Bow is the long game

The Ancient Bow's 120 base durability is the most of any bow that can break — the Twilight Bow is next at 100, and the Great Eagle, Royal and Golden Bows share 60. Multiply attack by durability, treating each point of durability as one shot, and the Ancient Bow's lifetime figure is 5,280, the highest of any breakable bow at base stats. The Great Eagle Bow's 5,040 is the runner-up, and that one assumes all three arrows land on every shot. Weapon bonuses can move other bows past both numbers — a Savage Lynel Bow with Five-Shot Burst is 160 per shot across 45 uses — but the Ancient Bow gets to 5,280 without needing a lucky roll.

It also hits harder than its number against the things you most need it for. Its parameter block carries a 1.5x special-hit multiplier against every actor tagged for Ancient Arrows, which Zelda Wiki lists as all Guardians, Guardian Scouts, Sentries, the four Blights, Calamity Ganon, Dark Beast Ganon's weak points, and Guardian legs and propellers. That is 66 per arrow on a Guardian, before the arrow type.

The price:

• 1,000 rupees, 15 Ancient Springs, 10 Ancient Gears and one Giant Ancient Core from the Ancient Oven, Cherry, at the Akkala Ancient Tech Lab, available once the Ancient Furnace has been relit with Blue Flame. The Giant Ancient Core is the bottleneck, and the Guardian guide covers which Guardians drop it and the rest of Cherry's price list.
• A 0.7 draw. It is the slowest pull of the 26 bows in the table above.
• No bonus, ever. Shop weapons are on Zelda Wiki's never-receives-a-bonus list, the Ancient Bow among them.

The quiet advantage is the material. As Ancient Technology it will not burn in fire or a scorching climate, will not attract lightning during a storm, and floats if you drop it in water. No other bow in the material table further down has all three of those properties.

The Rito bows: one free, one gifted, one rebuilt

The Rito make the fast bows: the Great Eagle Bow has the quickest base draw in the game and the Falcon Bow ties for second. All three are worth knowing about for different reasons.

Swallow Bow — 9 attack, 30 durability, range 40, draw 1.3. One sits on the table next to Harth, the village bow craftsman. Pick it up and he scolds you; apologise and he lets you keep it. It is weak, but it is free, it reaches range 40, and it is the base ingredient for the bow below.

Falcon Bow — 20 attack, 50 durability, range 40, draw 1.6. Found in the Hebra Mountains and Tabantha Frontier, and a possible drop from the Link (Archer) and Revali amiibo. The stronger of the two single-arrow Rito bows.

Great Eagle Bow — 28 x 3, 60 durability, range 40, draw 1.8. Kaneli gives you Revali's bow for calming Divine Beast Vah Medoh; it waits in a stone chest in his house. If it breaks or is lost for good, Harth rebuilds it for a Swallow Bow, five bundles of wood and a Diamond. If it is merely dropped somewhere you can still reach, he tells you to go and find it instead. The Final Trial in The Champions' Ballad holds a Swallow Bow and a Diamond among its chests, which covers two of the three ingredients.

That rebuild, plus the 1.8 draw and the 60 durability, is why it gets the everyday slot over a Savage Lynel Bow: losing a Savage Lynel Bow means another Lynel fight, while losing the Great Eagle Bow means a trip to Harth.

All three are wooden, though. Each one's Zelda Wiki page says the same thing: it burns if it touches fire or is equipped in a scorching climate.

Royal Guard's Bow: 50 an arrow, 20 shots

The Royal Guard's Bow has the highest single-arrow attack of any bow you can carry around Hyrule, at 50, and the same 20 durability as a Wooden Bow. Its in-game description admits the trade in one breath: high rate of fire, high firepower, low durability. Its 1.5 draw speed is the fourth-fastest base draw in the game.

The ceiling is higher than the base. Its white Attack Up bonus adds 5 to 11; the yellow Attack Up+ adds 12 to 20, for 62 to 70 per arrow. Going through the bonus ranges of every bow that can actually roll a bonus, no other one reaches that attack figure — a maxed Royal Bow reaches 53 and a maxed Savage Lynel Bow 50.

Where the fixed ones are, per Zelda Wiki: above the fireplace in Princess Zelda's Room and inside the Square Spiral Staircase, both in Hyrule Castle. It is metal, so it attracts lightning in a storm.

There is also a trade loop. Show one to Parcy at Riverside Stable during "The Royal Guard's Gear" side quest and she pays a Gold Rupee; after that she offers a topaz, a ruby or a sapphire for each Royal Guard's Bow you bring her. The Calamity Ganon guide covers the same quest from the sword side.

Lynel bows thin out as Hyrule levels up

Lynel bows come off Lynels, which bow you meet depends on the colour of the mane, and Lynels tier up as your save's World Level climbs. Two of Zelda Wiki's three Lynel bow pages name the Lynel that stays behind when the rest have upgraded:

Master Mode shifts the ladder by a rung: Blue-Maned Lynels carry Lynel Bows and White-Maned Lynels carry Mighty ones. The fight itself — mounting, headshots and the free-durability window — is in the Lynel guide, and the World Level thresholds are in the durability guide.

All three are metal: they conduct electricity and attract lightning during a thunderstorm.

Wood, metal, or neither

Zelda Wiki's bow pages record what each bow is made of, and the material decides where it turns on you.

The Strengthened Lizal Bow is the odd entry: it has a metal-reinforced grip, but Zelda Wiki notes the game treats it as wooden.

The practical version. In the Eldin heat, the three Rito bows are a liability and a metal bow or the Ancient Bow is the safe draw. When the sky turns, swap the other way. The Ancient Bow is the one bow in that table that does not need swapping in either.

What each arrow adds

A bow sets the base damage; the arrow decides what happens on impact. From each arrow's Zelda Wiki page:

Two rules from the Bomb Arrow page are worth carrying around. It cannot be fired in the scorching climate around Death Mountain — the arrow explodes as soon as you draw and damages you. And because the 50-point splash ignores the bow, a cheap bow delivers the same explosion as an expensive one; the bow only adds its attack on a direct hit. Teba and Riju each give you 20 Bomb Arrows before their Divine Beasts, which is a start.

Shock Arrows have one job the story forces on you: the Vah Ruta approach needs them, and Muzu points you to the Lynel's territory on Ploymus Mountain to collect at least twenty. The Ancient Arrow's Hyrule Castle chests and Beedle's one-off gift are laid out in the combat tips guide.

The loadout worth carrying

Hestu's upgrades take the bow pouch from 5 slots to 13 for 73 Korok Seeds in total — the cheapest of the three pouches, per the Korok seed guide. What goes in it, based on the numbers above:

1. Great Eagle Bow, as the daily driver. 84 per shot, 60 durability, range 40, a 1.8 draw, and Harth will rebuild it. Its two weaknesses are that it never takes a bonus and that it burns in the Eldin heat.
2. A Savage Lynel Bow, for burst. 96 per shot is the most of any bow you keep, and it is one of four that can roll Five-Shot Burst for 160. Bench it when a storm rolls in.
3. The Ancient Bow, for Guardians and anything far away. 1.5x against the whole Guardian family and every Ganon form, arrows that fly flat, the highest base durability of any bow that breaks, and no weather or climate that can hurt it.
4. A Royal Guard's Bow, held back. Twenty shots at 50 or more per arrow, spent in one boss window rather than on the walk there.
5. Something cheap for Bomb Arrows. The splash is 50 whatever you fire it from.

That leaves room for a Falcon Bow as a spare fast drawer and a Phrenic or Golden Bow if you want the zoom. If you are playing the sequel instead, the Tears of the Kingdom bow guide runs the same numbers for its 30 bows.

More Hyrule breakdowns are on the Breath of the Wild coverage hub, and the rest of our coverage is on the Mythras blog.

Quick Action Checklist

• Read attack as per arrow: the three Lynel bows, the Great Eagle Bow and the Forest Dweller's Bow fire three, and the Duplex Bow fires two, for one arrow from the quiver.
• Rank bows by draw speed as well as damage. The Great Eagle Bow is 1.8, the Falcon and Forest Dweller's 1.6, the Royal Guard's 1.5, the Swallow 1.3 — and the Ancient Bow a slow 0.7.
• Grab the free Swallow Bow off Harth's table in Rito Village; it is also what Harth needs to rebuild a broken Great Eagle Bow, along with five bundles of wood and a Diamond.
• Build an Ancient Bow at Cherry's for 1,000 rupees, 15 Ancient Springs, 10 Ancient Gears and a Giant Ancient Core: 120 durability, flat arrows, 1.5x against Guardians and Ganon.
• Loot the two fixed Royal Guard's Bows in Hyrule Castle — Princess Zelda's Room and the Square Spiral Staircase — and save them for a boss.
• Hunt Lynel bows early. The Ploymus Mountain Lynel and the First Gatehouse Blue-Maned Lynel are the late-game fallbacks for Lynel and Mighty Lynel Bows.
• Hope for Five-Shot Burst on a Savage Lynel Bow (29.17% of yellow rolls on the four spread bows): 160 per shot.
• Swap bows by climate: no wooden bows in the Eldin heat, no metal bows in a thunderstorm, and the Ancient Bow is safe in both.
• Never draw a Bomb Arrow in Death Mountain's scorching climate — it explodes on the draw and damages you.
• Fire Bomb Arrows from a cheap bow; the 50 splash does not care which bow launched it.