I posted in another thread about archery issues after patch 1.5, because my archery character's damage increased from 36 to 88 after the patch was installed (my second archer had a damage increase from 120 to 221). One post there referred to arrow damage, and I decided to take a closer look at this.

My archer has a daedric bow, no enchants, that does 41 base damage without arrows selected.

Damage with iron arrows (8 damage) selected: 59 (+18)
Damage with steel arrows (10 damage) selected: 63 (+22)
Damage with daedric arrows (24 damage) selected: 94 (+53)

Notes:
1. She only has 41 base damage on her bow which is low, but she is a permanent level one, so no skills and/or perks are used to boost damage. Obviously, adding skills and perks would increase the damage on a larger scale (along the numbers for my other archer, see above).

2. The 88 damage after patch 1.5 increased over the past several weeks because she leveled archery to 100 - even though no skills/perks are used, you'll still level up the basic skill.

3. The increase from 36 to 88 happened while using the same type arrows and no changes in skills/perks or otherwise that could account for an increase in damage - so it was something patch-related. It wasn't until a few days ago when I changed to daedric arrows that the damage increased to 94 (and an increase in skill level to 100).

4. The plus + damage number listed is the increase from the 41 base damage to the damage increase after a specific type arrow was selected. Note that the plus numbers are higher than the actual arrow damage.

The increase when using daedric arrows - a +53 point increase - is not what I would have expected. That's more than double the base damage, and doesn't make any sense - at least not to me.

I'm more than ever convinced that the math (running in the background) is not adding up correctly.

I guess another option could be that the math (and therefore the DPS) had been wrong all along, and the unexpected increases are the corrections resulting from patch 1.5. However, I would have thought that all archers would have noticed something similar before and after 1.5. But I've only seen similar inputs from 8-9 other archers/players on this and the Steam forum who had unexpected/unexplained damage increases.

Are you sure it's actually doing more damage and not just a display bug (though a bug, nonetheless)?

And how does a perm. lvl-1 get a daedric bow?

How does one come across a daedric bow in that manner? But, I m interested in the answer to this too. I haven't seen anything different in my bows or arrows though.

Yes, it does more damage. I can see the difference when targets are hit by arrows that do lower damage, i.e., takes longer to kill a target.

As far as the daedric bow is concerned - I ordered one from a local company. Cheap, and delivery is free lol.

Actually, I'm on the PC, and the ebony bow wasn't doing it anymore - battles with tough draugr turned into long, drawn out affairs.

So, I used the console and got the bow and some daedric arrows.

There are drawbacks to playing a level one character. There are several quests you can't do (Boethia, and the one where you have to get the Elder Scroll for the mage won't go into it's final conclusion, leaving that quest hanging for the time being). I also don't get very good drops (bows and arrows). My character is actually a level 40, if I level her up, but the game doesn't see her that way. I've not seen any arrows above those that do 14 damage, although I've completed close to 90 or more dungeons/caves, and check every arrow and bow that's dropped.

That's another thing I forgot to mention, any bow that's dropped also reflects the higher damage. Draugr dropping nord bows, those bows are right around 70 damage - maybe because they draugr have arrows? Don't know.

Maybe there's a hidden multiplier I'm not seeing. I don't have the latest patch but I suppose I'll give it a try. (xbox)

After reading this I noticed my bow went from a 119 to a 242.

I have heard rumblings of arrows displaying their damage twice, and that it is a display bug. But, your 8 damage iron arrows increase damage by 18, not 16. And the better the arrows, the farther from 'double' the damage seems to be (i.e. for iron arrows the difference between 'double' and 'actual' is 2 (16 v 18) while for daedric it is 5 (48 v 53)). Not sure what it could be now

I also play a permanent level 1 character (see link in my sig) and i don't have the problem with the 1.5 patch. Are you running any mods?

The best Bows i have found so far are Forsworn Bows. I can improve them with smithing and enchant them, which gives me a pretty decent base damage.

Custom Forsworn Bow:
- Bow base damage = 28
- Ancient Nord Arrows base damage = 10
- Displayed Bow damage with above arrows = 41

My Archery skill level is at 71 ...

Screenshot:
http://sirandy.org/skyrim/ScreenShot607.png

You're misreading it. You do not have the bow equipped during that screenshot. Which is why the readout at the bottom says 0 (+41). That '0' means you have no weapon currently equipped, and the +41 means if you equipped the bow you are hovering your cursor over, it would then replace the '0' with its base damage of 41. Nothing in that screenshot indicates anything about what any arrow type would add to its damage count.

Once you actually equip a bow and select an arrow type, that's when the numbers and readouts start doing weird things.

Here's what I noticed my bow does 119 base damage when I equip daedric arrows (24 damage) my bows BASE damage increased to 191 (+72 damage) then it adds the +24 damage from the daedric arrows for a overall damage of 215. Werid it seems after 1.5 the arrows are some how adding a 3 times as much damage to the base damage of the bow.

Aha, i see. When i equipped the bow, it adds another 10 points to the final damage, to a displayed total of 51 (bow damage stays at 41).

So, it does look like the arrow damage is added twice. The first time the arrow damage is somehow multiplied with your archery skill and the second time, it's just the base damage of the arrow.