What happens if you attempt to use elemental arrows with an elemental imbued bow?

Question

What would happen if you imbued a bow with an elemental damage imbue then loaded your quiver with arrows of the same or a different element?

Would it allow you to increase the damage if both elements are the same? Allow you to do multi element damage if they are different? Or would it not even fire the arrows?

Answer 1

I just tested this myself since I could not find any information online, using my Basic Frost imbued (ice damage) Elvish Bow.

• When using Flash Arrows to try and apply different elements of damage, the damage is split 50-50 between physical and energy damage, with no ice component. This corresponds to the arrow 14-14 physical-elemental damage.
• When using Shiver Arrows to stack ice damage, ice damage is higher than physical damage and it seems to correspond with the 45-55 split physical-elemental damage.

This makes sense since Shiver Arrows have 14-14 physical-elemental damage, and Basic Frost converts just 10% of the physical damage to elemental.

Total damage output is the same as if using a regular bow though, but arrows are fired in all situations.

Comments

So, if the imbued element does not match the ammo element it is just like shooting the ammo regularly. If the imbued element does match the ammo element the elemental damage is actually increased and the physical damage is lowered? Did I understand that correctly?

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Yeah that's correct! Sorry if it wasn't clear.
To clear this out too, the % elemental from your bow imbue applies fully to the physical part of the arrow damage! Since only half of the arrow attack is physical, one could think the imbue% could be halved but it seems not to be.
This was my takeaway after 200 arrows.

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Very interesting!