Bloodcursed Arrows feel like a waste of Auriel's Bow

[ScrollsOfTamriel]

I just finished the Dawnguard questline for like the fifth time and I keep coming back to this: why does the game give you this legendary artifact bow and then lock its actual utility behind a sun damage gimmick that only works on vampires?

Like, the regular Auriel's Bow is fine. Good damage, solid enchantment, looks cool. But the whole point of getting those bloodcursed arrows is supposed to be this big payoff, right? Except in practice you use them maybe three times total - once or twice during the final quest, and then... what? You're never fighting vampires again unless you're doing radiant bounties. The sun damage effect doesn't scale with your archery perks or any of your gear, so it's not like you can build around it.

Compare that to literally any other Daedric artifact. The Mace of Molag Bal, Mehrunes' Razor, even Spellbreaker - they're all useful in every situation. But Auriel's Bow feels like it was designed for one specific problem and then the game moves on. I get that thematically it's supposed to be anti-vampire, but mechanically it just feels incomplete.

Does anyone else feel like they made the wrong call on this one? Or am I just not using it right?

 

[DragonbornVet]

Yeah, I get the frustration, but I think you're underselling regular Auriel's Bow a bit. It's got solid base damage and that enchantment procs pretty reliably - it's genuinely one of the better bows in the game even without the bloodcursed arrows. The sun damage thing is more of a "nice to have" than the core appeal.

That said, you're right that the arrows feel wasted. The problem is Dawnguard's design - you kill Harkon, the DLC basically ends, and suddenly there's no vampire population to justify the gimmick. If the game threw radiant vampire contracts at you regularly (like it does with bandits), the arrows would feel way more relevant. Instead they're just a trophy.

The real issue is that Auriel's Bow doesn't compare to something like Mehrunes' Razor because Razor is always useful - instant kill chance, scales with your perks, works on everything. Auriel's is situational by design. Not really a balance thing, just different design philosophy. Daedric artifacts tend to be "solve any problem" tools, while Auriel's is more thematic to the Dawnguard storyline specifically.

If you're on PC, there's probably a mod that makes the bloodcursed arrows actually scale or adds more vampire content post-DLC. But vanilla? Yeah, they're kind of a letdown after all that buildup.