Yes. Most battles are easy. If you can take two or three or six shots to kill some easy opponents instead of one shot, then why not take the opportunity to level up a bit quicker? If that's what you are looking for.

Ah, then it won't help if I'm an Assassin and one shotting most things. svcky. Looks like I'll be visiting trainers.

It is because your leveling happens on each arrow attack on an enemy. If you use a weaker bow (arrows don't matter that much) then it will take more shots to kill something. More shots, more leveling.

No, practice dummies do not count, it has to be an NPC/Critter/Enemie

Just find a longbow with iron arrows and take stealth shots at the Greybeards. It levels up your archery and your stealth.

Using Bound Bow will also level Conjuration at the same time.

Sounds accurate, one idea might be to bring an tempered bow with enchants and an untempered one for leveling, use the leveling bow against single non boss targets. The stagger will mostly stop the enemy while you fire away.

For serious power leveling find some giants and mammoths, find some place where they can not reach you, shoot at them to get them to chase you to the standoff area.
Make sure you don't use any fortify bow damage armor and turn the difficulty up to master, this will have you do four time more damage to kill them giving four time the experience.

ARCHERY LEVELS WITH THE THIEF STONE.

Flaming doesn't make you right and neither does your test. If you were going to kill that deer in one hit anyway, your test proves....nothing.

Fortify potions do count towards skill.

Nothing to add, just wanted to say thanks as theirs some great info here, didn't know archery was under the thief stone.

Fortify potions do not count towards skill. Goddam milk drinker. Stop spreading your misinformation.

Any idiot can test this out. Take a bunch of weapons to sharpen, sharpen them, see how much your skill goes up, take a fortify smithing potion, skill goes up faster.

Carry a bunch of poisons and fortify marksman potions, use them constantly, then see how fast your archery skill foes up.

Ok, wolf-lifts-her-tail.

If any idiot can test this out, why don't you test it? I have. Please, stop spreading your ignorance. Take a moment and test it yourself.

I just wanted to say, your Khajiit profile pic looks really cool.

The reason why your testing is wrong is simple: If you are going to kill target A with 2 shots anyway (no enchantments), then the fortify marksman potion doesn't matter.

Fortify potions DO count towards skill.


Thank you

I have expanded explanation for slow people like you who have yet to comprehend the simple concept of how archery experience works in Skyrim.

You get x amount of experience point each time you shoot an effective shot into a target. That x is base damage of the bow. You get 6 experience points for shooting and killing a skeever with a Longbow. You get 19 experience points for shooting and killing a skeever with a Daedric Bow. You get 6 experience points for shooting and slightly damaging a mammoth with your longbow, you get 19 experience points for shooting and damaging a mammoth with a Daedric Bow with iron arrow, or a Daedric Bow with a Daedric Arrow. All this can be measured quite easily. Take a moment to test this out yourself if you do not believe me.

Let's take an extreme example. Let's say you have a tricked out Legendary Daedric Bow enchanted with awesome +70 Fire and +70 Lightning Damage. You wear all your fortify archery gear for 200% damage improvement. You drink your 100% Fortify Marksman potion, and killing an Ancient Dragon with one awesome 6x damage sneak shot, doing 3000 damage. Awesome. What is your experience gain from that awesome shot?

19. It is the same 19 points that you get for killing a skeever with your vanilla daedric bow.

Smithing improves damage, but does not change the experience gain.
Enchanting with fortify archery improves damage, but does not change the experience gain.
Poisoning your bow with damage health potion improves damage, but does not change the experience gain.
Drinking fortify marksman potion improves damage, but does not change the experience gain.

Screenshots or it didn't happen.

Do it yourself, you lazy milk drinker.

Give your screen shots or it didn't happen.

I went out tested it with my mage who had never fired a bow, no difference in xp gain. The XP gained is only calulated on the base damage of the weapon not the end damage. If fortify marksman potions effected xp gain it could be exploited to level archery to 100 in a single shot. Such as if you make a powerful enough potion of fortify smithing tempering one iron dagger at the grined stone could take you to 100.

I use the bow as my primary weapon with most of my character creations. This is what I have found to be true in game.

Potions: posion, magicka damage, paralize, marksman, stamina damage etc... do not advance marksman skill. They only increase damage potential.

Smithing a bow only increase damage potential.

Arrow types only increase damage potential.

Bow types only increase damage potential.

Stealth only increases damage potential.

Bow enchantments, and/or armor only increase damage potential.

All marksman perks only increase damage potential.



Thing that do increase marksmans skill
Using a bow
lessons (Training) and this is optional


I use stealth mode 99% on the time while using the bow. Why? Because it advances two seperate skills at the same time that favor damage potential with a bow. The stealth skill itself does not advance marksman in any way. This is why I spend the first dozen level focusing on really nothing more than hunting. Hunting is all about stealth, and marksman.

The Theif stone just speeds up skill increase.

I may be wrong, but this is my experience.

Abacus I am a little confused with your testing here.

You are saying that with a long bow you get 6 exp. for killing a skeever and with a daedric bow you get 19 exp. for killing a skeever,right?
If a skeever has an "x" amount of health,lets say 15 as an example.
Then a long bow and a daedric bow both kill the skeever in one shot.

Aren't both bows doing the same amount of dameage to the skeever,wich is 15 health points.

In the example you used for the mamoths everything you said makes sence.
But a skeever has the same amount of health weather you shoot it with a long bow or a daedric bow.

I'm just trying to understand this,maybe the game calculates total damage done differant than total health damage done,seems strange to me though.


Also isn't damage over time just as affective as damage over a single shot?
Would this mean that a long bow,wich fires considerably faster than a daedric bow,make the same amount of experience over say 20 seconds as a daedric bow.
This doesn't even consider the elemental fury shout,wich may or may not affect leveling,I'm not sure.

By the way I had always thought that fortify potions also helped your leveling but had no accurate way of testing,or the patience for testing.
Thanks for the time you put in to that testing.

Yes they are, but that is not how the game calculates XP. For purposes of calculating XP the game uses, as abacus707 said, your weapon's base damage.

The base damage of a bow is its damage before enchants or other buffs. And this base damage is the only number the game uses to calculate XP. It replaces the more primitive "per-hit" system used by earlier games but it is still very simple. If your bow does X base damage that is the number the game uses to calculate XP. If your bow does Y base damage the game uses that number to calculate XP. It does not matter whether the Skeever is killed or not, or by how much. The game adds the same percentage onto your Marksman XP with each shot.

This is correct.

Therefore, the best way to level marksman skill is to get the highest base dmg bow you can find, put on the thief stone, put it on master, and go farm kite giants.

Thanks for clairifying that.

But I'm still confused with the damage over time.
Wouldn't a long bow wich fires probably more than twice as fast as a daedric bow be just as effective at leveling as the daedric bow.


Just trying to understand the best bow for me as I have never been a fan of the slow fireing heavier bows.
I mostly prefer Glass because it has a nice balance between heavy hitting sniper damage and the faster rate of fire for the quick agile fire fights I sometimes get into against multiple enemies when traveling.

Best way to test is probably to use an untempered bow and weak arrows, then find an safe spot and shoot up some mamoots with an without an powerful crafted potion like +100% bow damage.
If potions don't help leveling you should just raise archery around half of that without potions as you do double damage.

I might test this out. Personally I doubt it, I guess enchant, potions and spells/ blessings are calculated together, I'm actually more surprised tempered weapons don't level you faster as tempering change the weapon properties.

First, a long bow may have twice the draw speed of a daedric bow, but a daedric bow has more than three times the base damage of a long bow. Thus, its raw DPS is vastly superior. And, in the case of calculating most effecient exp. gain, raw DPS is the key. However, in a standup fight requiring multiple shots (whether multiple enemies or not), a weaker but faster bow *may* yield an advantage with the Power Shot perk as it'll provide more opportunities to stagger the enemy or enemies (at the risk, of course, of prolonging the battle).

Secondly, and most importantly -- in my eyes -- use whichever type of bow that best fits your style and abilities regardless of the above. If your character is going to "train" in the wilds, might as well train the player too, right? And if you train with a significantly faster/slower bow than your primary bow, the switch back could be uncomfortable and the training less than helpful. Jmo ...