Famous Video Game Bow Names: Iconic Weaponry in Gaming History

Short answer: famous video game bow names split into six franchise clusters, and every one of them leans on a different naming logic.

• Skyrim / The Elder Scrolls — the Nightingale Bow, Auriel's Bow, the Glass Bow of the Stag Prince
• World of Warcraft — Thori'dal the Stars' Fury, Rhok'delar, Rae'shalare
• Elden Ring & Souls-likes — the Lion Greatbow, the Erdtree Bow, the Black Bow
• The Legend of Zelda — the Bow of Light, the Great Eagle Bow, the Royal Guard's Bow
• Destiny 2 — Wish-Keeper, Leviathan's Breath, Trinity Ghoul
• Horizon, Tomb Raider & Crysis 3 — Aloy's Hunter Bow lineage, the Competition Bow, the Predator Bow

The full stat-by-stat comparison, with weapon type and core in-game effect for all eighteen, sits in the 1-minute matrix further down this page.

Free Interactive Tool

Build Your Own Video Game-Style Bow Name

ArcheryEra's Bow Name Generator opens below set to its Video Games category by default — pick a Temperament and an Elemental Spirit, press Generate, and get an original name assembled the same way the eighteen bows on this page actually got theirs.

Open the Generator on Video Games →

Skyrim / The Elder Scrolls: Nightingale Bow, Auriel's Bow & the Glass Bow of the Stag Prince

Skyrim's named bows share a pattern worth pointing out early: the name usually tells you the mechanic, not just the material. All three of the game's most-discussed unique bows follow that rule, each in its own way.

Karliah hands over the Nightingale Bow once the Thieves Guild quest "Blindsighted" wraps up. Its Nightingale Storm enchantment freezes a target for 10 to 30 points and shocks it for another 5 to 15, which matches the stealth-and-shadow identity of the questline it comes from.

Auriel's Bow sits a tier above it. Rediscovered deep in the Forgotten Vale during the Dawnguard DLC, it fires Sunhallowed Elven Arrows, blessed by Knight-Paladin Gelebor. Loose one into the sun during daylight and it triggers a sunburst that deals triple damage to undead; a Bloodcursed counterpart runs the inverse effect.

The Glass Bow of the Stag Prince is the outlier here: no quest attached at all. An NPC named Falas Selvayn simply carries it at the Ramshackle Trading Post, so getting it means pickpocketing him directly or tricking him into equipping a planted weapon instead. Base damage is a modest 16, one point above a standard glass bow. The real draw is the Blessing of the Stag Prince enchantment, which stacks +5 Health and Stamina for every 20 animals killed, capping at +25 after 80. The Hircine reference in the name lines up neatly with that hunting-themed mechanic.

World of Warcraft: Thori'dal, Rhok'delar & Rae'shalare

WoW's legendary and epic bows lean on a different naming logic than Skyrim's. Less about what the weapon does. More about what the grind to earn it says about the character carrying it.

Thori'dal, the Stars' Fury drops from Kil'jaeden in the Sunwell Plateau raid at roughly a 6 to 7 percent chance. Its signature trait has nothing to do with its modest 7–10 damage range. It generates its own magical arrows on the draw, so a Hunter, Rogue or Warrior carrying it never touches a quiver again. That single mechanic is why it still gets farmed for transmog appearances well over a decade after Burning Crusade shipped.

Rhok'delar, Longbow of the Ancient Keepers is Hunter-only in a stricter sense. The original class-quest chain requires defeating four demons scattered across the world, then soloing Onyxia with no pet assistance, before the bow can even be crafted from an Ancient Rune-Etched Stave and Enchanted Black Dragon Sinew. At 89–166 damage and item level 75, it was a genuine best-in-slot weapon at launch, described in-game as a living weapon that spontaneously sprouts blossoms.

Rae'shalare, Death's Whisper is the newest of the three, dropping from Sylvanas Windrunner herself in the Sanctum of Domination raid during Shadowlands. Blizzard's own developers have said the item was bumped from a planned epic rarity up to legendary specifically because they wanted a Hunter-exclusive weapon evocative of Sylvanas's own archery. Equipping it grants the Wailing Arrow ability.

Elden Ring & Souls-Likes: Lion Greatbow, Erdtree Bow & Black Bow

FromSoftware runs the opposite naming logic from WoW. The name almost always describes what the bow is physically made of, or who carried it. The mechanical payoff stays buried in the item description instead of the title.

The Lion Greatbow, decorated with the lion-mane motif of General Radahn himself, hits 120 physical damage at base (294 fully upgraded) and requires 22 Strength and 18 Dexterity to wield two-handed. Its Radahn's Rain weapon art rains a flurry of arrows across an area for 32 FP, and it grants a 20 percent damage bonus to Radahn's Spears. That's a set-bonus-style mechanic baked directly into the lore of who used to own it.

The Erdtree Bow deals 40 physical and 50 holy damage, scaling all arrow damage with Faith rather than the more typical Strength or Dexterity. That's a deliberate design choice: the item text says it was created in tandem with the Golden Arrow specifically to prevent undead revival. It sits in Leyndell, Ashen Capital, up a ladder west of the Erdtree Sanctuary Site of Grace.

The Black Bow is the mobility pick of the three. Carved from black wood into a blade-like shape, it deals 70 physical damage but keeps a shortbow's ability to fire immediately after rolling or sprinting, at longbow range. It's found on a rooftop corpse in Leyndell, Royal Capital, and becomes permanently unobtainable once Maliketh falls and the capital turns to ash. That's exactly the kind of missable detail community wikis and forum threads flag constantly.

The Legend of Zelda: Bow of Light, Great Eagle Bow & Royal Guard's Bow

Zelda's bow names split cleanly into two categories. Divine artifacts that recur across multiple games under the same name. And single-game equipment tied to one character or one faction.

The Bow of Light is the recurring one. It appears across Spirit Tracks, A Link Between Worlds, Breath of the Wild and Age of Calamity, always as a story-locked weapon rather than something a player finds and keeps. In Breath of the Wild it posts 100 attack power on 100 durability that functionally never depletes, making it the strongest single-shot bow value in the game. Zelda herself gifts it for the final battle, and it occupies its own dedicated inventory slot.

The Great Eagle Bow is Revali's signature weapon across Breath of the Wild, Age of Calamity and Tears of the Kingdom: a 28-power bow that fires three arrows simultaneously in a spread for roughly 84 effective damage per shot. In Breath of the Wild it's a gift from Kaneli after clearing Divine Beast Vah Medoh. In Tears of the Kingdom it's traded from Teba for a Swallow Bow, three diamonds and five bundles of wood.

The Royal Guard's Bow is the faction-specific pick: a prototype Sheikah weapon found exclusively inside Hyrule Castle, running a base power of 50 with a 1.5x fire rate and 30-unit range against the standard 20. It visually mirrors the more common Royal Bow but in a darker purple-and-black finish. That marks it as ancient Sheikah military hardware rather than a divine relic.

Destiny 2: Wish-Keeper, Leviathan's Breath & Trinity Ghoul

Destiny 2's exotic bows all name themselves after the perk, not the archetype. That pattern holds across all three of its most-discussed bows.

Wish-Keeper is a Strand Precision Frame combat bow whose Snareweaver perk builds toward a special suspending arrow off precision hits and final blows, paired with Silkbound Slayer for bonus damage against anything already caught in that suspension. It's obtained by completing the "Starcrossed" exotic mission, which guarantees Deepsight Resonance on the first clear, making the weapon craftable immediately.

Leviathan's Breath is the heavy-slot outlier: a Void combat bow whose Leviathan's Sigh perk turns a fully-drawn shot into a concussive blast that knocks enemies back on impact, regardless of whether the arrow lands a kill. Originally a Season of the Undying quest reward, it has since become purchasable directly at the Monument to Lost Lights.

Trinity Ghoul, introduced in the Forsaken expansion, runs the Lightning Rod perk. A precision kill charges the next shot to chain arc lightning across nearby enemies on impact, and its Forked Lightning catalyst expands that trigger to any Arc final blow, not just precision ones. In-universe, the bow belonged to Guardian Marin Mansanas before passing into general circulation.

Horizon, Tomb Raider & Crysis 3: the Other Iconic Game Bows

Not every franchise gives its bows a single proper name the way Skyrim or WoW does. That gap is worth flagging directly, rather than papering over it with an invented title.

Horizon Zero Dawn is the clearest case. Aloy's starting weapon is simply the Hunter Bow, a gift from her adoptive father Rost, and the game names every subsequent bow by tribe and tier: Carja Hunter Bow, Banuk Hunter Bow, and so on, rather than a single legendary title. It's a naming convention built around craft tradition instead of individual legend, which tracks with the game's own tribal-society worldbuilding.

The 2013 Tomb Raider reboot runs a literal crafting-tier system instead of named artifacts. Lara starts with a Makeshift Longbow found on a corpse, upgrades to a Recurve Bow once the first cache of bow parts turns up, receives a Compound Bow directly from Jonah at Shipwreck Beach, and finally unlocks the Competition Bow from the second bow-parts cache. That last one is a high-tech skeletal-frame design with nine available upgrade slots. Rope, fire and, later, explosive arrows layer onto whichever tier is currently equipped.

Crysis 3's Predator Bow earns its name mechanically rather than narratively. It's calibrated to the Nanosuit specifically so firing it doesn't break the suit's active-camouflage cloak, something no other weapon in the game can claim. Three switchable draw weights trade fire rate for damage, accuracy and range. Four arrow types, Carbon Impact, Electric-Charge, Super-Thermite and Airburst Fragmentation, cover everything from a silent retrievable shot to area denial against entrenched enemies.

Damage and power figures above come from each game's own internal balancing and are not directly comparable across different titles. A 120 in Elden Ring and a 100 in Breath of the Wild aren't measuring the same scale, the same way a level in one MMO doesn't translate to another.

How Do You Choose an Ideal Video Game Bow Name?

The eighteen bows above split into three repeatable naming patterns once the marketing language is stripped away. Pick the one that matches what the name is actually supposed to signal about the character carrying it.

Elemental themes (frost, lightning, holy) and mythological attributions (a deity, a title borrowed from folklore) tend to layer on top of whichever base pattern is picked, rather than replacing it. Auriel's Bow is both a proper-name epithet and a solar-elemental mechanic at once. That stacking is exactly what ArcheryEra's Bow Name Generator automates with its Temperament and Elemental Spirit dials, run against a Video Games-specific word bank.

⚠️ When Not to Trust a Cross-Game Damage Number

Avoid If: you're comparing the raw damage figures on this page across different franchises as if they sit on one shared scale. They don't. Each game balances its own numbers against its own enemy health pools, difficulty curves and damage formulas, so a 120 in Elden Ring says nothing about how it would perform inside Destiny 2's combat math.

Frequently Asked Questions