You can make a bow out of metal. They used steel bows in the Medieval ages all the time.

While the iron bow did look to actually mostly consist of wood, many of the bows in Oblivion did in fact appear to be made of metal, which always did strike me as a little odd, so hopefully, bows being wooden is a common trend and not just limited to some low level items. Bows don't need to follow the same progression as melee weapons, we can also them be divided by the kind of wood they're made of, and following the system of going from weaker materials to stronger ones. The system of material-based progression in quality for weapons and armor is something that has always been traditional for the Elder Scrolls, but I don't think all item types need to have the same list of materials available.



I'm not sure how those were made, but I'd assume that they probably weren't just a solid piece of melal in the shape of a bow with a string attached, which is what the Dwemer bow in Oblivion klooked like for example.

*GASP* Metal bows can't exist! Flexible metal is impossible!





Wait, yes it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaf_spring.

I'm going to have to ask you to source that comment, as I'm pretty sure it's [censored].




And no, arbalests and other such crossbows don't count.

Maby we will have different types of wood bows? Laminated bows like the mongolian bow.(massive range and power untill 1800's no small gun could match it.) Or like a yew or oak long or shortbow? Along with a few types of the bows we had before like glass bows or elven bows. But having an ebony or steel bow is retarted. I am glad it is geting realistic.

Plain jane weapons , one of the reasons I like low fantasy.

Not everything looks rediculous with crazy designs!

@Madcatt:

;)

Yew is a start
Wood and bone forv a composite edue bow.
And some magic ent wood or something.

Anyone notice the snake slaying statue behind it?

I smell basilisk.

That sounds like it certainly would be reasonable, but we probablly shouldn't assume too much from just one bow, because I think we've only seen one bow, I could be mistaken, but I suspect the bow the archer in the fall forest is using may be the same one as what the Khajiit has, and it's too early to assume that all bows are made out of wood just because this one bow appears to be.



Meh, I like my fantasy to be "ridiculous" and "crazy", that's the appeal of fantasy comes from the fact that it's free to break real life rules as much as it wants, and when fantasy tries too hard to be realistic, it often just becomes boring, if I want historical accuracy, I look for history books, still, I don't mind a bit of logic to my unrealistic fantasy, ornately designed swords look good and can still have logic, bows made out of glass, on the other hand, just make no sense.

And Skyrim is not low fantasy, it's still pure high fantasy, just a somewhat more rugged take on it than Oblivion. Like in past games, the low level items look more simple, while we can safely assume that the higher level ones are a lot fancier, just look at the elven armor, or what may or may not be a glass sword, those don't look very plain to me.



I think by now you can assume that people would have seen that, and it's been discussed before, it's just that people haven't been bringing it up here because this is about the bow, not the statue. And I believe that statue is a shrine of Talos since it looks like one depicted in concept art labeled as such. Though there's been speculation as to what the snake is, and for all we know, it may be that it's not a creature that exists in the game at all.

The Mongols would make bows out of layers of wood and bone then they would put metal strips over it to give it even more flex power. And yes crossbows do count. Crossbows are nothing more then a bow attacted to a stock. The piont of them was so that you could use someting like a wench to tighen a bow that normally would be impossable for a human to draw. Crossbow bows where made of metal because metal can flex, and has a higher restoring force then wood. They also made bows out of solid steel, but these tended to be short bows because a steel long bow would be to hard to pull.

http://www.paleodirect.com/pgset2/ne007.htm



India had steel bows too.

Metals used were mostly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulat_steel and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus_steel

The Elven Bow was a simple wooden bow, I wouldn't pretend to be Legolas with anything else.

Point taken, I take back my previous comment.



None the less, I would still like to point out that "glass bow" sounds absolutely [censored] and that bows shouldn't follow the same categories weapons and armor are classified in.

I think having a mix is good. There should be realistic bows and over-the-top bows. And the realistic looking ones shouldn't necessarily be the weakest always.


I really didn't like the Elven bow in Oblivion at all. Call me boring, but I just want a plain wooden bow.

Nice. I always felt odd finding an IRON bow (never heard of a bow made from iron), instead of the most common type... Wood. It's nice, and I'm sure I'll enjoy it. Archery FTW.
Random sidenote: You guys think crossbows'll be in? They are really more "viking-like" than longbows themselves. I think that anyone trying to make a game based off of vikings will put them in.... Now I just want throwing wepaons back. It adds plenty of flavor to the assassin character I used to play in Morrowind.

There is a prooflink two posts above. With a metal bow. As in "made entirely of it".

Weird..... I'd rather have a wooden bow anyway. :shrug:

Sure, just don't claim they don't exist.

Yes sir. I'm sure they DO, but I was refferring to STEEL bows. Iron is weaker, more prone to rust, and heavier. Not ideal material. That was the point in saying so.

That's why they are lowest tier bows :T

Touché.....

I'd rather the bows were mostly wooden also. Would be much more quality-for-cost than metal bows. Added to the fact that the metal bows in OB were not all metal either.

Not all, but a good portion of them were completely made of metal (Steel, silver, dwemer, daedric and madness ore bows).

There was an nice looking stock iron sword in one of the pics in game informer as well , even if they've both got rubbish stats I'll probably still use them...

Be interesting to see how they handle skill advances with the bow because we won't be spamming enemies with multiple arrows like in Oblivion. I hope it isn't done by only the number of arrows that hit enemies and gauges something more telling of skill like bonus points for head-shots and sneak attacks etc.. In Oblivion even when I'd chosen a stealth class my marksman skill would be levelling much slower than blade and eventually overtaken by it, so I hope there's some sort of change there.

Also is area specific damage confirmed (headshots, torso etc.)? This was in both of the fallout's so I'm guessing it would be in Skyrim...