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Bow Enchants

Ancient bows are a real damage weapon in Season 2 — arrows now pierce most of a target's armour, so a well-drawn shot actually hurts. Vanilla draw and Power (Bow) scaling still apply (against an unarmoured target nothing changed), and like wands a bow now works on all PvE content. Against players it stays PvE-only, so you can't fire on someone in open-world combat — see PvP Basics.

How bows fire now

  • Hold to fire. Hold right-click and the bow streams arrows at its fire rate. Rapid Fire shortens the gap between shots; the base time between shots is 0.3s.
  • Every arrow lands once. The old throttling double-hit is gone — one arrow, one hit, no free second tick.
  • Arrows fly a little slower by default. Add Velocity (or any +arrow-speed source) to restore the snappy draw, and note that stray arrows force-despawn so the world stays clean.

Holding a bow is a glass-cannon tradeoff: you take +15% damage from all sources while it's in your main hand. That's the same deal wands strike — read Wands, Bows & the Glass-Cannon Tradeoff before you commit to a bow build.

Power (Bow)

Power is the core damage scaler for bows, and it was rebalanced for Season 2. It now grants 5% more damage per level (up to 25% at L5), down from the old 12%/60%. To compensate, bow base damage was raised ~25%, so a maxed bow lands in a similar place — just with the headroom spread differently.

Bow-only enchants

These roll only on bows:

Enchant Rarity What it does
Piercing Shot Elite Arrow passes through +1 extra enemy per level
Rapid Fire Elite +12% fire rate per level (shorter gap between shots)
Caltrops Elite Drops slowing ground spikes where the arrow lands
Crippling Shot Elite Slows and weakens the enemy you hit
Trueshot Uncommon Your arrows fly flat — no gravity drop
Splinter Legendary The arrow shatters for 15% per level around the target
Hunter's Mark Legendary A marked enemy takes +10% per level from your shots
Split Arrow Legendary The shot forks into 2 arrows, each at 60%
Plague Arrow Legendary Leaves a lingering poison cloud
Hemorrhage Legendary Bleeding enemies take +12% per level

Shared enchants bows can roll

Bows can also pull from a slate of enchants you'll recognise from wands and melee weapons: Venom, Shock, Catalyst, Combustion, Executioner, Ambush, Long Shot, Surge, Soul Eater, Lifesteal, Detonate and Bleed, plus the utility trio Velocity, Reduced Cost and Knockback. See Sword & Axe Enchants and Wand Enchants for how those behave.

Lucky can now be socketed on bows too. It boosts the proc rate of the bow's own ailments — Ignite, Venom, Shock, Frostbite, Bleed — up to 60% more at L4.

Volley & Split Arrow rules

Multi-arrow shots (from Split Arrow and similar volleys) follow a few rules so they're punchy without being abusable:

  • One unit for crits and procs. The lead arrow rolls the crit and the proc once, and the whole volley shares that roll — so it crits or procs together, not arrow-by-arrow.
  • Fans into a cone. The extra arrows spread out in a cone in front of you.
  • No shotgunning. Only one arrow's damage lands on any single target. Extra arrows let you hit more targets — they can't pile onto the same one twice.

Where bows fit

Version history

v2.0.0

  • Bows reworked into a real weapon — arrows pierce most armour and now land in Skywars with knockback.
  • Bows can now be held to fire, and every arrow lands exactly once (base 0.3s between shots).
  • Power (Bow) rebalanced down to 5% more per level, with bow base damage raised ~25% to compensate.
  • Added bow enchants Piercing Shot, Splinter, Trueshot, Hunter's Mark, Split Arrow, Plague Arrow, Caltrops, Rapid Fire, Hemorrhage and Crippling Shot, and opened a slate of wand/melee enchants to bows.
  • Volley shots now crit and proc as one unit, fan into a cone, and can't shotgun a single target; Lucky now works on bows; holding a bow adds +15% damage taken.