Last updated: 15 September 2026

KCD2 Best Bow Guide Ash Longbow, Ranyek's Bow & Where to Find Them

A bow in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 rewards patience the way a sword never does — draw speed, stealth, and Agility investment matter more than raw power alone, and the gap between a good bow and a great one comes down to a handful of named weapons you either buy from a specific merchant or loot from a specific quest. This guide compares the top bows by power and requirements, covers where to actually get each one, and explains how bow combat differs from crossbow combat so you can pick the ranged weapon that fits your build rather than defaulting to whichever one you found first. For the full breakdown of every weapon category — swords, maces, axes, and crossbows — see our Best Weapons Guide; this guide goes deep on bows specifically.

01How Bows Work in KCD2

Bows and crossbows follow different logic in KCD2, and picking between them is a real build decision rather than a matter of taste.

• Bows fire faster in succession than a crossbow and reward Agility investment — a well-trained archer nocks and releases the next arrow quickly, but accuracy at range depends heavily on your Bowmanship perk level. A bow in untrained hands is genuinely inaccurate.
• Crossbows hit harder per bolt and are far more forgiving for a low-skill character, since a crossbow's accuracy depends much less on your stats than a bow's does — the trade-off is a slow reload between shots.
• A bow's Power stat determines base damage and how much Strength you need to draw it effectively; a bow drawn by a character below its Strength requirement fires with reduced accuracy and power. Every bow also has an Agility requirement affecting draw speed.

The practical takeaway: a crossbow is the safer pick early on or for a character who won't invest heavily in Agility and archery perks, while a bow is the stronger long-term investment for a stealth- or ranged-focused build willing to level Bowmanship.

02Best Bow Overall: Ash Longbow

The Ash Longbow is the highest-power standard bow available in the game, at 230 Power against 200 or lower for every other longbow on the market. It requires 22 Strength and 16 Agility to use effectively, and can be bought directly from Master Wenceslas in southeastern Kuttenberg — no quest or unique loot condition attached, just enough coin (and it isn't cheap).

The Ash Longbow's raw power alone is high enough to score one-shot kills on unarmored or lightly-armored targets with a clean headshot, and pairing it with the "He Shot First" Marksmanship perk — which buffs the first arrow you fire in a fight, on any bow — makes an opening shot hit even harder, which is why it's the standard recommendation for a stealth-archery build built around picking off enemies one at a time before a fight breaks out into the open. The Strength requirement is the main gate — a character below 22 Strength will draw it slower and less accurately, so treat the Ash Longbow as a mid-to-late-game upgrade rather than an early buy unless your Strength is already there.

03Best Free Bow: Ranyek's Bow

Ranyek's Bow is the best bow you don't have to pay for. It's obtained during the main quest "The Devil's Pack" by finding and looting Ranyek's body — a guaranteed pickup rather than a random drop, so it's available to every playthrough that progresses that quest.

At 200 Power it deals less raw damage than the Ash Longbow, but its lower Strength requirement (14, against the Ash Longbow's 22) makes it usable effectively much earlier in a playthrough, and multiple guides note it has a faster draw speed that makes it the more comfortable all-around combat bow of the two even for players who could afford the Ash Longbow's Strength requirement. If your build isn't committed to heavy Strength investment, Ranyek's Bow is the more efficient pick.

04Other Notable Bows

• Elm Longbow (200 Power, 18 Strength / 14 Agility): Sits between the two options above — a premium purchase from the same merchant as the Ash Longbow, at a higher price, for the same 200 Power that Ranyek's Bow offers for free. Guides consistently note it isn't worth the extra Groschen once Ranyek's Bow is available, though it's a reasonable buy if you haven't reached that quest yet and want more power than a starting hunting bow.
• Cuman Chief's Bow (180 Power, 12 Strength / 15 Agility): A solid mid-tier option with a notably low Strength requirement relative to its power, making it accessible earlier for a character built more around Agility than Strength.
• Poacher's Bow and Dogwood Hunting Bow (170 / 160 Power): Early- to mid-game hunting bows with low stat requirements across the board. Good starting options while leveling Bowmanship before committing to one of the top-tier bows above.

Whichever bow you settle on, arrow choice matters as much as the bow itself: Black Arrows are a strong general-purpose combat arrow, Piercing Arrows (and their upgraded Better Piercing variant) are built specifically to punch through armor better than ordinary arrows, and cheap Ordinary or Crude arrows are fine for practicing accuracy without burning your good stock.

05Archery Perks Worth Prioritising

Bow accuracy and draw speed both scale with your Bowmanship skill level and its associated perks, so a strong bow in the hands of an untrained archer underperforms a weaker bow used by a character who has invested in the skill.

Prioritise perks that improve draw speed and steady-aim duration first — they have the most direct effect on landing shots reliably at range, which matters more moment-to-moment than raw Power once you're past the early game. Our Best Build guide covers the full Longbow Marksman playstyle in more depth, including which perks and stat priorities to chase if you want ranged combat to carry a build rather than supplement melee.