Black Bow | Elden Ring Wiki

Please add in the "Where to find" section that it cannot be obtained if the location has turned into Leyndal, Capital of Ash.

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This bow + rotbone arrows = lore friendly confessor weapon

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This is the best PVP dex bow in the game. If you want a PVE dex bow, try the Albinauric Bow.

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20 Dex requirement but doesn't move past D scaling, gg From

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Massively overrated, and probably the sole reason people think that bows are non-viable in this game. Barrage wastes arrows too quickly, it does less damage than regular shots even with skill boosting talismans, and so it's non-efficient, easily outperformed by regular jump shots. Regular longbow/pulley bow are more preferable to me, because Mighty Shot and Rain of Arrows are much better and rational skills: Mighty Shot being good at stealth kills, clearing dungeons, stance breaking etc, RoA is dealing huge damage to large enemies and applying status effects absurdly fast. And there is just no way this thing is better than Lion or Golem greatbow.

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The bow isnt on the roof in 1.0 if anyone else playing without wifi wants to use i am yet to find it in 1.0

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Seriously great job describing exactly where it Canberra located. Because there’s only a couple dozen rooftops.

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For me, there’s one part about this bow especially that is rarely talked about in terms of strengths. The more obvious stuff is that it keeps the damage of longbows but gains flexibility and speed from its short bow like characteristics (making it kinda just outclass short bows). But the main thing is Barrage on a longbow. Some say other arts are better at applying statuses but I feel these people are forgetting every other Ash of War that can apply faster requires setup and usually either a unreasonably big break in the enemy’s attack, or starting the fight with the Ash and not using your bow for the rest of the fight. What Barrage is good for is being very good for applying statuses in the heat of combat and easily being ready to evade your enemy. It is the best Ash for applying statuses with your arrows without need a massive opening, you can just do it and pay attention to your enemy to know when to pull out and start dodging. That’s why I think it’s “the” bow for direct combat. Use a katana, getting some hits in and stacking bleed, enemy does a attack and clears you back, use barrage to layer on some bleeding arrows, and then roll right under the lunging boss and switch right back to melee. That’s the kind of stuff the Black Bow is for, not for just loading some poor dragon with rot before the fight and then never using your bow again.

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There is a lot of misinformation regarding the "strenghts" of this bow.
Yes, it has some moves (jump/roll shos) of shortbows; however, standing shots are longbow style and therefore slower to pull and to recover from.
Mounted shooting is longbow style too.

Barrage is okay if you have arrows to waste and can stand still for prolonged ime, otherwise, piercing shot or other heavy hitters will be better at applying statuses.

This stuff should be said in the guide.

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There is a lot of misinformation regarding the "strenghts" of this bow.
Yes, it has some moves of shortbows; however, standing shots are longbow style.
Mounted shooting is longbow style too.
Barrage is okay if you have arrows to waste and can stand stillfor prolotime, otherwise, piercing shot or other heavy hitters will be better at applying statuses.

This stuff should be said in the guide.

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Easily the best bow in the game. Trivializes light bows and greatbows too clunky.

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The fact of Bow-type damage and Shortbow-type shooting makes it the best choice, the other one being Lion Greatbow for thicc targets

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Damage seems low on paper, but it is capable of shooting arrows at higher speed than other bows in it's class. No, i aint talking about barrage. this thing can shoot in midair, after rolling and after landing. Using the airborne shot and the landing shot in tamdem has high probability of headshots against enemies running towards you + leaves you with enough mobility to never be touched. By default, it has enough dps to kill anything you aim at.

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better than light bows until you accidentally do a regular shot and your character takes forever to ready the arrow, fire it, then has 1000 recovery frames because he wants to admire what a great shot it was. composite will do about 30 less damage or so than this on a dex build but will have a more consistent speed across its entire moveset, as well as letting you use enchanted shot which is better than barrage imo

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If you have a spare one can you give it to me? I killed Maliketh and I can't get it anymore

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at least make the scaling c/b man, what did bows ever do to fromsoft?

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This thing easily invalidates the entire light bow category.

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still able to get this bow early in NG+?

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What is bow?! Baby dont hurt me no more...

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I haven’t seen many but in the arena I fought someone not only using this with light roll and sleep arrows but also doing the glitch where you fire golem arrows out of this (Not sure how this glitch works or if it’s hacks) and when you use cheese so will I. I’m glad I had a bhs halbert and a shield with holy ground to hardswap to. This is the only person I’ve fought in the arena that made me use bhs Cleanrot thrusting sword against them. I lost my first match with them then won my next two matches I fought against them. They clearly lacked good fundamentals and relied on light roll to survive more than two seconds. Please don’t use glitches in PvP as its just scummy.

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Where is this bow ?? Or did i miss it ?

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If you are going to exclusively use this bow, go up Strength and Dexterity, and then Faith up to 25, to gain access to Golden Bow and FGMS. This is because of how the arrows scale, let me explain:

Blood bone/Serpent arrows/Poison bone scale with arcane on a bow that has arcane scaling, meaning they do more bleed buildup. (Serpent bow)

Fire arrows/Golden arrows/ Holy arrows scale with faith on a bow that has faith, meaning they do more of the non physical damage on a faith scaling bow. (Erdtree bow)

Magic arrows/Dwelling arrows/Ghost flame arrows scale with intellect on a bow that has intellect, meaning they do more magical damage on a intellect scaling bow. (Horn bow)

Lightning arrows scale with dex on all bows that have dex scaling, meaning they do more lightning damage on all bows.

This continues with damage scaling for the physical portion of all arrows. (They get increased scaling with physical stats).

Rot and frostbite does not get increased scaling with any bow.

Mighty shot/Enchanted shot increase the amount of buildup of chosen status effect.

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Light roll with status arrows to become the single most annoying entity in PvP.

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the damage is a bit low against anything with decent defense, but it probably has the most forgiving moveset in the game. you can attack after pretty much every roll as long as the enemy hasn't started their next move and jumpshots are cracked

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I wish you could carry more arrows at once. I feel like I don't even get halfway few some places and Im already nearly out, even though my weapons are as high as I can get them without glitches.

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The perfect weapon for my Sylvanas playthough.

Now i just need a bunch of scream abilities and some scary looking knives and we'll be set.

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I can't talk enough about how people are sleeping on bow builds, and after my first Elden Ring bow run I am now entirely convinced that in terms of early game potential, they reign supreme. I wouldn't recommend it for a new player on a first run, because you need to upgrade your bow FAST and that obviously requires a higher level of general game knowledge to do efficiently.

The route seems to be: wrong warping into Lyndell for the Black Bow, which is still easily doable on current patch - scavenging around the map for as many low level sombre smithing stones as possible - grabbing the two most important talismans (Arrow's Sting talisman from Caelid, Blue Dancer Charm from Limgrave) - and finishing Varré's questline for an ancient dragon sombre stone and access to bird farming.

(Most somber stones 1 through 9 are easy to get just via running around, the hardest one is likely to be somber stone 7 which is blocked by Godskin Noble in Volcano Manor. I don't know if Noble is still skippable but it's easy enough to beat it with a +6 bow anyway)

The above steps are all easily accomplishable within a few hours, and by the time you're done you'll feel like a god. I no-hit literally every single shardbearer effortlessly without even trying. They all die so fast it's unreal. I've never done any of them no-hit, and I wasn't intending to. It literally just... Happened...

Now I don't want to overstate things. I haven't gotten to mountaintops quite yet, so maybe the damage will fall off to the point where it doesn't feel so strong anymore. But over 400 AR (this is with Ritual Sword and 30/59 STR/DEX) on such a safe weapon is nuts no matter how you look at it. Add status effect arrows and it gets even dumber.

Unlike with mages you don't have to worry about splitting flasks for FP so you can literally just go full 15 health flasks, but with ALL the safety of a rangey mage. In fact, you actually have far MORE range than a mage. I'm actually understating how dumb this is, because not only do you not have to bring any FP flasks, but you NEVER run out of FP like a mage build because of the hundreds of arrows you can carry. Buying arrows is a complete non issue because of how easy it is to just casually bird-farm 100k runes and buy max storage capacity of your given arrow type. All you do is kite, and win. It's that simple.

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... this feels like a reference to Madan no Ou to Vanadis's Black Bow...

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Yeah but more importantly where is the hat.

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I wish we could change the ash of war on this, yeah Barrage is cool and all but it just plays like a shortbow with a bit more damage, if it could take Mighty Shot it would play more like a true hybrid bow

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Anyone that claims archery sucks hasn't found and mastered this bad boy. This thing carried me through my archery only run with ease.

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What’s so special about this now to be so far into the game

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I dont want why this bow exists. It literally makes all bows and light bows useless with its light bow moveset and bow range/damage

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Despite having the shortbow moveset, it does not work like a shortbow on horseback. Shame.

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"Longbow carved from black wood to resemble a blade" rip simons bowblade

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Someone can trade me this bow? I just f**ked up by progressing too much

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Someone can trade with me this Bow ?
i just don't want to wait for the ng+ to get it

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Kinda dope for quality builds to have access to every status and elemental damage. Very useful tool for solo play or co-op.

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Has 171 + 137 = 308 physical damage at 99/99 str/dex.

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Just watched a clip of a dude who absolutely destroyed dragonlord with this bow

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black bow is missable after forge of giants. doing a bow only run and am stuck at malenia and radagon, I need as much dps on a lightbow because they parry and easily avoid arrows so the jumpingshot is to low dps, however since I already activated forge of giants, it is unfortunately not available anymore.

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You can get this relatively early and upgrade it to +10 if you rush for it, needing only to beat 4-5 bosses to do so. If you're doing a bow only run I suggest getting this as fast as possible as it's the best bow in the game.

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Maliketh's second phase is so insane that I pretty much brought him down only using a black bow, luckliy he doesn't have much health in NG. (I didn't know about the parry thing.)

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I wanted to type this up for anyone considering a bow build...

I've been a bow-main since release, and I see a lot of misinformation about them; discouraging others from giving them a try. I want to set things straight. BOWS. ARE. VIABLE... kinda. They're more viable during NG+, since you'll be more established. I'll be honest, bows are no where near as powerful as melee weapons. The scaling on them is terrible and the skills for bows aren't that great either. Additionally, getting to the bosses, going through mobs, can be difficult with bow-only. However, bows can still hold their own. It just takes work.

I'm commenting this on the Black Bow for a reason. You've probably been told that this is the best bow in the game; this is true. This bow has the mechanics of a light bow (i.e. enhanced jump-shot, landing-shot, sprint-shot, roll-shot, and the Barrage skill), and the damage of a regular bow. The Black Bow will be the bow that will take you through most of the game, and most of the bosses. If you want to use this bow, I HIGHLY recommend learning these mechanics and making them second-nature. As for other bows, you'll want to have at least two more for different situations. In some cases you'll want to use Mighty Shot; others, Rain of Arrows. I recommend either the Pulley Bow, Albinauric Bow, or Composite Bow (if you want to stick to light-mechanics). Quick tip about the Composite Light Bow: The scaling is actually D/D (not E/D), making this the best lightbow for str/dex builds (which I recommend building). Back to Black Bow. The barrage skill is nice. The speed at which it shoots arrows makes up for the damage decrease (lessened even more by Shard of Alexander (even beats Might Shot)); but don't rely only on it. Like I said, get down the mechanics, as they're a lot more important.

I see a lot of misinformation about talismans, especially. Let me state that I've tested each and every one of these; I know what I'm talking about here. If I'm wrong, though, let me know in the comments, please. The four talismans, I recommend: Arrow's Sting, Blue Dancer Charm, Ritual Sword, and Shard of Alexander. Each one of these will give a damage increase. If you don't want to keep Blue Dancer, Ritual Sword, or Shard, I recommend Green Turtle, Arrow's Reach, and/or Spear Talisman (yes, it actually affects bows). CLAW TALISMAN DOES NOT AFFECT BOWS. I see a lot of people saying to equip Claw Talisman, but do not! As much as I wish it increased the jump attacks, it doesn't.

Lastly, make sure to allocate just enough points into Faith to be able to use Golden Vow and Flame, Give Me Strength!

Quick notes:
- Barrage deals more damage than Mighty Shot, using this setup, in the time it takes to shoot a Might Shot.
- Roll-shot is AMAZING!
- To do a landing-shot, immediately after you land from a jump-shot, fire again!
- Again, CLAW TALI DOES NOT WORK ON BOWS!
- Don't rely only on Bleed Arrows; use regular arrows, as well.
- You can buy regular arrows (the 2nd strongest raw damage arrow) from the merchant at Church of Elleh.
- Instead of farming sheep, kill the Bell Bearing Hunter. You'll be able to buy thin bones at the Roundtable.

Hope this helps! I will keep checking in on this post to answer any questions, if needed.

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i used a rebirth to check stats

9str/20dex (base req) 202 AR
25/25 227 AR
30/30 238 AR
40/40 256 AR
50/50 272 AR
60/60 283 AR

so from base req to 60/60 on a +10 black bow you only get 81 more AR. if youre going bow only like i am then id recommed about 30/30 ish at most and put the rest into lots of hp/fp/sta. high endurance will help a lot as barrage uses a lot of stamina and you can shoot more with extra endurance which will likely get you more dps than some more AR

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this should have E/S scaling tbh

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lets face it in this game they barely did anything with archery to make it as appealing as melee

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Very useful against turtle builds. In my experience it's not worth trying to use bleed arrows because there's such a high chance of them rolling through the bleed proc. Best to just use golden arrows, serpent arrows, or sleep arrows if you can stand grinding for trina's lilies. Apparently using bows in pvp is BM so prepare to get t-bagged and point-downed if you lose.

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FYI, despite having the Shortbow moveset, I think most Shortbows will still shoot faster, and this bow still slows Torrent down when you're taking a shot, just like the longbow. So if you want to use a bow on horseback, stick to the Shortbow. Of course you'll want to stick to Barrage so you can stack Bleed, Rot or Frost more easily, unless you use a Greatbow. Of course this does more damage and has better range but Barrage does the heavy lifting either way, you'll just use fewer arrows.

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Honestly despite having d scalings the damage is still pretty decent overall. Does it still hurt my soul though? Yes.

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I thought this was Pharis' black bow from Dark souls and would have an s at max rank. Too bad it didnt.Scaling for bows is a bit atrocious. With the usefulness 9f a shortbow for longbow range it should at least have b scaling.

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This weapon can't be obtained after Leyndell has transformed, FYI.

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for the low low price of <198 blood arrows, you can always bleed out a boss that can bleed at any ng with this :)

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Improve the scaling (D/D really?), make the primary R1 do a bit more damage, give us to option to infuse it, and give the arrows a slight homing towards the end of their trajectory (but only for lock-ons and not free aim, just like sorceries), and this will be the best bow I've ever seen in a Souls game. As it stands, the moveset is utterly amazing for a longbow.

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I am the bone of my sword

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Look at how the massacred my boy. D/D scaling? Really?

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The Albanauric Bow +25 does more damage. But the Barrage art from this Black Bow, plus the fact that you can shoot quicker makes this bow imho way better.

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Great for status buildup arrows using its Barrage skill. The Pulley Crossbow is a bit better for status buildup but it does a lot less damage.

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So with the weapon art on this- if you have blood arrows or poison arrows, do they proc really fast?

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Why black Bow? We all know its the Black Bow of Pharis from DS1/DSR.. why change the name??

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can you still access at Lyendell Ash city?

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Remember the good old days when this bow had an S scaling in dex back in DS2?

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Remember the good old days when this bow had an S scaling in dex back in DS2?

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D/D at +10?
Why the horrible scaling? :(

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This bow is my favourite. Deals good damage if you jump, shoot and after landing immediately press attack button while moving — the player will shoot as if after rolling, meaning you can do 2 quick bow attacks. These attacks are much faster than just shooting while standing still or moving on the ground. It could be a bug, but I couldn't do the same with Albinauric and Serpent bows. So, as i said: Jump -> Shoot -> Hold down the stick/wasd to move in any direction (works like charm if moving forward -> Upon landing shoot again -> Voila, two rapid bow shots.

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I want this bow really early in my run. But, from what i read, you can't get into the capital without great runes or something? So I have to spend a while without it?

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Softcaps for damage for this bow at +10 seem to be 36 STR (54 virtual) and 58 DEX for 319 AR; No Damage enhancing runes were used, standard 20 cost arrows. Strength leveling falls off hard beyond this point while DEX drops to 2 points spread over 3 levels for a while rather than 1 point per level. Dex is still worth leveling, just less.

It's AR is almost exactly in the middle of Long Bow and Short Bow but has all the benefits of both the light and standard bow classes while on foot.

Very solid PvP bow and decent weapon for 'bow only' runs against bosses. Has a mediocre weapon art which takes away from it's PvP potential but has the Long Bow range with the running, dodge, quick draw, and roll attacks of the Short Bow.

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Upgrading from base level to +9, player has 24 STR and 35 DEX
+0: Physical 70 +14. STR E, DEX D
+1: Physical 80 +18. STR E, DEX D (scaling on both increased slightly)
+2: Physical 90 +22. STR E, DEX D (scaling on both increased slightly)
+3: Physical 100 +26. STR E, DEX D (scaling on both increased slightly)
+4: Physical 110 +31. STR E, DEX D (scaling on both increased slightly)
+5: Physical 120 +36. STR E, DEX D (scaling on both increased slightly)
+6: Physical 130 +41. STR D, DEX D (DEX scaling increased slightly)
+7: Physical 141 +47. STR D, DEX D (scaling on both increased slightly)
+8: Physical 151 +53. STR D, DEX D (scaling on both increased slightly)
+9: Physical 161 +59. STR D, DEX D (scaling on both increased slightly)

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Its worth noting that this bow DOES NOT allow you to shoot while running with the horse. It still slows you to a walk like other longbows.

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Less complicated instructions: Go down the shortcut lift from the East Capital Rampart site of grace, then go down the lift downwards across the street. Go onto the roof just to the right of the stairwell, then turn left (going in the same direction of the stairwell) and follow the rooftops until you've jumped across a gap to continue by rooftop. The bow will be right there.

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70 dex
+9 161 base + 69 scaling D / D Scaling
+10 171 Base + 77 scaling D / D Scaling

Flexible bow with low damage. Kinda worth, but since you can get barrage elsewhere not that good

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After trying out the black bow and comparing it to the long bow, it actualy acts a bit like a shortbow where you can let loose a quick shot after dodging, backstepping or from running! not sure how useful it is so anyone want to explain?

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Leveled it up to +5 and still only D/D scaling.... is it still worth upgrading? Pure dex build and not happy with the damage output

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This bow is upgraded using Somber Smithing Stones, not Smithing Stones.

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Pharis?

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I found it! It’s in the Capital. You’ll have to have gotten 2 great runes to be able to enter. Then if you make your way to the Avenue Balcony Grace it’s on a rooftop sorta near there… it’s a Longbow with the mobility of a Shortbow, but the only drawbacks are that you still slow down while shooting off of Torrent as with normal Longbows, and that you can’t change its Ash of War. Overall though it’s a phenomenal bow!

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It is near the lower capital church grace, go down the ladder go and through the doorway to a knight past him there is a praying guy go up the stairs next to him and take a left there should be some zombies and skeletons, then finally another staircase but don't use it instead take the alley way that is filled with dirt which will eventually let you go to the roofs and it will be on one of them

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It's near the lower capital church bonfire/SoG. In the area around the abomination on a rooftop

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The Black Bow can be found in the capital, on a roof not far from the Avenue Balcony grace. It does not upgrade with Smithing Stones, but rather Somber Smithing Stones. It also seems to have very long range even compared to other bows.

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А я его нашёл! во дворе Leyndell, Royal Capital. От благодати "Балкон с видом на бульвар" поднимаемся обратно на главную дорогу и идем к Восточным воротам. Не доходя до ворот спускаемся вниз по лестнице и идем налево к подъемнику. Спускаемся вниз, по крышам домов прыгаем (справа) вот вам и черный лук на трупе.

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Is this even actually in the game? I haven’t seen any information for it besides here.

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I’m also dying to know.

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What's the point of adding a page with zero info? How do you know this bow even exists in Elden Ring? I've yet to see any videos or images of it in-game.

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Anyone know the location?

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Where do you find this?

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