Im having fun with the bow so far. One thing I noticed right away was that the bodies don't go flying 50 feet in the air(rag doll)when being hit from a distance. They seem to take less flight and I also like how they drop to a knee when they are about finished.

I'v only been using bows so far. Currenlty level 10 with 45 archery and 36 sneak. All I can say is that i'm 1-shotting most npc's when i hit them from sneak. It's awesome! As for arrows, I'm still using iron arrows but I almost always have 80-100 on me and I'm starting to build a stock pile of steel arrows so i'll probably be switching to those soon.

Only time I have problems is when a bunch of guys rush me at once because you backpeddle so slow but i'm hoping once I get some of the later archery/light armor perks that it'll change. I know there's a perk in light armor that makes light armor not slow you down at all and there's an archery perk that lets you run faster with bow drawn.

The bow is awesome, I'm a little disappointed that there isn't a headshot multiplier though. I picked the bow class just to be a sniper type player but oh well, i'm sure there'll be a mod for that sooner or later.

If the arrow drop rate being less than Oblivion makes it a bit challenging to use pure archery, can you not just buy arrows from a vendor? Or is it just that having to carry around tons of arrows because you lose them faster makes it harder/less fun to only use a bow?

I'm playing on Master, and it's fine. Bows & melee scale ridiculously well with skills, perks, complementary sneak perks, alchemy, enchantment, and smithing. I'm only level 18 so far, but I suspect you can break the game if you stack all that stuff to the fullest extent.

I dont know if any1 answered this or not. I haven't started playing yet but I am reading through he materials first. (I realize how crazy that sounds.). If you are playing on a ps3 the cancel arrow is to press the square button.

I am normally a stealth/archer type, so this sounds promising.

Yeah, the command is sheath weapon, if you press it while you have an arrow knocked you will take it out.

Yeah, no kidding. That was all I heard about archery before release. "Bows are much more powerful than Oblivion, but arrows are more scarce to balance it." I had 200+ arrows within an hour, and my character currently has hundreds of arrows of all kinds at level 17. Not that I mind, but arrows are NOT scarce. At all.

See above. You can buy arrows from merchants, find them in chests, loot them from bandits, etc. And even without the perk, my arrow recovery rate is probably about 1 out of 3. All I use is the bow, and I have never come anywhere close to running out of arrows.

So did I! I always use bows because I'm always an archer. Did you do the practice with her?

wow no kidding. After a couple hours of play I had about 150 iron arrows...complainers

drawing an arrow back takes more time but it is more powerful. also absolutely impossible to back up and fire arrows as in oblivion. you move very slow when moving with an arrow notched. this is frustrating but much more realistic and a welcome challenge

at level 5 i did at one point run down to only 5 arrows. had to buy some from a vendor but for the most part arrows are plentiful. you just wont have 200 by the time you leave the first dungeon like you did inoblivion. also cant pick arrows up as much

I've been to plenty areas where no arrows were to be found. Not all dungeons are populated by bandit archers you know.

I'm surprised at how good archery is in this game, I was going to use it as a complimentary skill but I'm killing everything before it gets to me (sneaking)

Haha. We haven't been clearing the same dungeons then. I've yet to clear a dungeon that didn't have several archers, even the undead have been accommodating by having nice big quivers of arrows.

Dude, I don't even sneak while using archery. Unrelenting force+bow bash then sprint away equals win...