Elden RIng has a ton of builds you can create, and by far, the least used weapons are the bows in the game. When you think of bows, you usually think of them as a second way of defending yourself or even a way to easily farm for Runes. A lot of thought was put into bows and crossbows in this game, and most people overlook just how good they are.
You will need a ton of arrows and bolts to use bows and crossbows. To farm for arrows and bolts, there are only 3 main methods. You can buy them from specific Merchants around the world, farm the crafting materials so you can craft them, or just find them worldwide.
You must take advantage of all these ways to get enough arrows to fight whatever you will. Not all enemies you fight will be weak to arrows or bolts, but it is good to have as a reaction in case you need to hit something from a farther distance.
1. Buy them from specific Merchants
There are 30 different shops in the game, but not all sell arrows or bolts. The ones that do are usually the traveling merchants around the world. They are all in their designated spots and never move, so once you find them, they show up on your map, and you know exactly where they are.
Every merchant sells similar items, but you will run into that merchant that finally sells you the item you want. Every time you find a merchant, make sure to check their stock and make notes on what each of them sells.
2. Farm the crafting materials for specific arrows
The new addition to FromSoft games is the option to craft items. This is huge because it adds another layer of options to the game. The best part of the crafting menu is the number of arrows you can craft once you find the designated cookbooks. You need to find the recipes before crafting, but that hunt makes it rewarding.
The materials worldwide are everywhere, so you could go through the whole game collecting materials and get a recipe book. You then see something that takes the material you have been collecting, and you are all set with whatever you want to craft. All you need to do is farm the materials, and you can craft a whole arsenal of arrows and bolts.
We have a list of arrows in the latter part of the article that tells you exactly what recipe book you need for specific arrows or bolts if you are also interested in that. It can get a little confusing to read, but just find the arrow or bolt you are looking for in the list, and it will let you know exactly what you need to do to get it.
3. Find them around the world
This is the worst way to farm for arrows on this list because of how few arrows you can find. At most, you will probably find 30x of 1 specific arrow, which won’t last long if you use it as your main weapon. Yes, you can find a bunch of arrows on bodies, but this is almost as slow as trying to farm enemies for arrows.
It is not bad if you explore and rack up a ton of them for your use later on, but if you want to farm for them this way, you probably want to stick with the other 2 options on this list. We recommend an arrow playthrough on your second playthrough because you will have racked up enough arrows in your first playthrough to have a full arsenal of arrows.
Just try not to rely too much on finding them for your source or them because it is not super reliable. Stick with crafting and buying if you want to do serious farming for them.