With character draw way up and from a high vantage point, sometimes you can see creatures very far away.
With proper angle and height advantage, it appears that I should be able to strike these creatures with an arrow. But no matter how many times I've tried it just looks like the arrow disappears into the body.
Is there some sort of maximum range to arrow shots? Or am I just missing?
I've ruled out the possibility that maybe the health bar isn't showing up because of distance. I'm using a soul trap weapon and shooting a creature that dies in 1 hit just to be sure.
34 Answers
You can fix the arrow range in your "skyrim.ini" file.
Add: [Actor]
fVisibleNavmeshMoveDist=XXXXX.0000
If for some reason you already have "[Actor]" somewhere in there, just add the next part into that section.
What this does it fixes arrows that can't hit anything past a certain range. E.g., When you shoot something from really far away and it never hit, but when you get a little bit close, it hits. I recommend setting the value (XXXXX.0000) to something around your Actor fade distance (~10000).
Also, the arrows by default are aimed slightly above where your crosshair is. You can fix it with these lines:
Under "[Combat]" add:
f1PArrowTiltUpAngle=0.0
f3PArrowTiltUpAngle=0.0
According the the changelog of the Unofficial Skyrim Patch (which resolves the problem for PC users):
1Arrows do not cause damage at long range even if they appear to have hit the target. This is due to an internal distance check in the game that is wrong. This issue has now been fixed through the use of an "ini snippet" which is now included with the USKP distribution. (Bug #136)
This video (screenshot below) seems to indicate that there is no maximum range for a bow shot. I'd still be interested in testing it for horizontal range, but for now I'll just assume that I'm bad at aiming (or just haven't tried enough times).
Yes, archery is maxed to do damage at like 65 yards. Shooting anything beyond the "max range" will not damage enemies; they will pass right through. So archery does have a maximum range, which is why sometimes you seem to be shooting things and not hitting them, but when you move closer you can hit them. Extend the range in the .ini file so archery works like it should work, not "ghosting" an arrow once it passes the 65 yard mark.
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