Are you picky about what arrows you use? Do you only use one certain arrow for certain situations in your role-playing? Perhaps you only use matching arrows with matching bow? Do you poison you arrows alot? Do you find some arrows are stonger than others even though they're not strengh-wise (I do for some reason. Glass at times seems dominate over others. Don't know why) I perdominatly use Ebony, Glass arrows. Elven as my backups. For some reason, my character doesn't like Dwemer arrows (they bounce off Centriums too)
What kind of enchaments do you use? Personally, my daedric has fire at 20. One ebony with soul trap and another ebony that reduces magic and gives a shock to boot. I'm always caring at least 3 bows.
For Thy Archers! Tell us you ways!!
I always upgrade to the strongest arrows as soon as i can but i try to reserve them for harder opponents and use my elvin arrows for general cannon fodder npcs. Being the greatest assassin in skyrim i of course regularly poison my arrows with a scary amount of sick satisfaction as i fire them from the shadows unseen by my prey. I found the bows this time around to be vastly improved and use them as my primary means of attack, coupled with a very high skill in archery and sneak i can kill most enemies with 1 poisoned arrow to the mush!!!!
As you level up, they become more frequent. Dragr will start using Ebony. Rarely do you see NPC's with Daedric. Usually you have to buy them. The Fletcher in Solitude has them sometimes, along with a Daedric bow (if you don't have the smithing to make one)
Another hint is to give your follower "one" arrow of your choice and he/she will use that arrow. Then when the person/creature is dead you can pick the arrow out of them. It's a real slow, methotical way to get a 'high level' arrow like Daedric, but those bad boys are spendy. You can also plant a powerful arrow in one of the guards/archers in Solitude, then pick them out of the target. I did this, but it didn't work for me. Mason, I believe, wrote about this. Easy way to get quite a few arrows of your likeing.
I play as an archer from the first time, she is my one and only character. I used Ebony for a long time but I felt that Lindariel is way too strong now so I changed it to Dwarven, which is my favourite (best looking for me). However I never dropped my Ebony bow, witch won the hardest battles for me. Now I am carrying 997 Ebony arrows (saved up a bit hehe) and 368 Dwarven arrows. Always use a match of bow-arrows, and always have some poisons at hand. Paralysis is my favourite, it makes a battle fairly easy. With weaker enemies I used to give a shot of paralysis for 10 secs, then my companion Meeko does the rest. Groupwork! LOVE Archery in this game!
Great topic
Oddly enough, my last three or four Oblivion characters were - in one way or another - orientated around bows. Yet I've barely picked up a bow in anger in Skyrim yet!
So thats a definite future character. As such I'm interested to see tips, ideas, suggestions on this thread