Weapons

Every weapon worth naming in Skyrim reaches your hands by one of three roads. Most of the famous ones are handed over, looted or stolen at the end of a quest, which means somebody has to die or be pleased first. A smaller set is hammered out at a forge from materials the add-ons introduced, which means a smithing level and a shopping list. And exactly one is drawn on paper: a schematic that a Dawnguard engineer has to be shown before the weapon can exist. This guide sorts the folder's four weapon pages by that road, because the road tells you what you need before you set out: a quest log, a perk, or a piece of paper.

Won in quests: the unique weapons

Our unique weapons ranking runs eighteen deep, and every entry has a special model and an enchantment you cannot copy at an arcane enchanter. The table keeps the ranking's order but adds the one thing it buries in prose: who has to be dealt with to get each weapon.

Rank	Weapon	What it does	Who or what stands between you and it
1	Blade of Woe	Dagger, absorbs 10 health a hit	Astrid; kill her in the Abandoned Shack instead of playing along
2	Keening	Dagger, absorbs 10 health, magicka and stamina	Arniel's radiant quest at the College
3	Dwarven Black Bow of Fate	Bow, 50% chance to absorb 25 of each stat	Kagrumez on Solstheim, which needs the resonance gems scattered around the island
4	Dawnbreaker	Sword, 10 to 15 fire plus a chance to blast nearby undead	Meridia's Daedric quest
5	Auriel's Bow	Bow, 20 sun damage, tripled against undead	Touching the Sky, near the end of Dawnguard
6	Bloodskal Blade	Greatsword, power attacks throw a 30-point energy wave	A draugr dungeon in a Raven Rock side quest, in front of a stone door
7	Champion's Cudgel	Warhammer, 50% chance of 25 fire, frost and shock at once	An Empire-marked hammer for heavy two-handers
8	Volendrung	Warhammer, absorbs 50 stamina and swings like a greatsword	A Daedric artifact
9	Nightingale Bow	Bow, 30 frost and 15 shock a shot	Becoming a Nightingale in the Thieves Guild line
10	Soulrender and Bloodscythe	Paired scimitars, each absorbs 15 health and magicka and strips armor, only when wielded together	Haknir Death-Brand's blades, Dragonborn add-on
11	Mace of Molag Bal	25 stamina and magicka damage, fills a soul gem on a kill within 3 seconds	The House of Horrors in Markarth
12	Chillrend	Sword, about 30 frost with a 2-second paralysis chance	Swings faster than the axe below it
13	Hoarfrost	War axe, 15 frost to health and stamina, may freeze the target solid	A frost enchantment with an extra roll
14	Dawnguard Rune Axe	10 sun damage, rising with every undead killed since the last sunrise	Dawnguard add-on; resets each dawn
15	Ebony Blade	Two-handed katana, absorbs 10 health, up to 30	Mephala's quest, then killing friends to upgrade it
16	Rueful Axe	Battleaxe, 20 stamina damage a hit	Killing Barbas at the end of A Daedra's Best Friend
17	Zephyr	Dwarven bow that draws 30% faster	The Dwemer ruin of Arkngthamz
18	Sanguine Rose	Staff, summons a Dremora Lord for 60 seconds	A drinking contest with Sam Guevenne in A Night to Remember

Two of these are choices rather than pickups. The Rueful Axe costs a talking dog, and our quests guide sets it against the Masque you get for sparing him. Auriel's Bow has its own page, below, because the bow is only half of what the quest hands over.

Auriel's Bow: a quest weapon with two ammunitions

Auriel's Bow is found in Darkfall Cave during Touching the Sky, after the Dragonborn has served as a Moth Priest. Its enchantment deals 20 points of sun damage, three times that to undead, and it draws so fast that nocking and loosing takes under a second; with Deadly Aim a sneak shot on the undead reaches nine times damage, and the full Overdraw perk doubles it again. It improves at a grindstone with Refined Moonstone, better still with the Elven Smithing perk. What makes it a two-part reward is the arrows. Gelebor turns elven arrows into Sunhallowed arrows, and one fired at the sun calls down a rain of light like Storm Call. Serana, once the questline is over, blesses arrows into Bloodcursed ones, and one of those fired at the sun blots it out for the rest of the day so vampires can walk in daylight. Firing a Bloodcursed arrow at the sun is also the achievement.

Forged: the Dragonbone set

Dawnguard added a tier above Daedric that you make rather than find. Our Dragonbone crafting page lists nine recipes, all built from dragon bone, ebony ingots and leather strips, and notes that the edge over Daedric is only a few points, so nobody has to throw away a hard-won Daedric set. The armor that goes with it, and the smithing perk ladder that ends at dragon material, is in the armor guide.

Weapon	Materials	Weight	Value
Dragonbone Arrow	1 firewood, 1 dragon bone	0	9
Dragonbone Dagger	1 dragon bone, 1 leather strips	6.5	600
Dragonbone Sword	1 dragon bone, 1 ebony ingot, 1 leather strips	19	1,500
Dragonbone War Axe	1 dragon bone, 1 ebony ingot, 2 leather strips	21	1,700
Dragonbone Mace	2 dragon bone, 1 ebony ingot, 1 leather strips	22	2,000
Dragonbone Bow	2 dragon bone, 1 ebony ingot	20	2,725
Dragonbone Greatsword	4 dragon bone, 1 ebony ingot, 3 leather strips	27	2,725
Dragonbone Battleaxe	3 dragon bone, 2 ebony ingots, 2 leather strips	30	3,000
Dragonbone Warhammer	3 dragon bone, 2 ebony ingots, 3 leather strips	33	4,275

For damage the page gives 25 for the arrow, 36 for the dagger, 23 for the bow, 29 for the greatsword, 30 for the battleaxe and 33 for the warhammer. Its figures for the sword, war axe and mace are being rechecked and are left out here.

Built from a schematic: the Enhanced Dwarven Crossbow

The Enhanced Dwarven Crossbow looks and hits like the ordinary Dwarven crossbow but ignores half of the target's armor, reloads faster and fires a quicker bolt. It cannot be found. Sorine Jurard, recruited to Fort Dawnguard during A New Order, runs a repeating side quest called Ancient Technology in which she sends you into Dwemer ruins for bolt schematics; the sixth errand is the schematic for this crossbow. Bring it back and she teaches the recipe, which needs the Dwarven Smithing perk and only works at the forge inside Fort Dawnguard: one Dwarven Crossbow and two Quicksilver Ingots. A Dwarven Metal Ingot at a grindstone improves it, and the same perk doubles that improvement.

Weapon questions

Which of these need an add-on?

Dawnguard brings Auriel's Bow, the Dawnguard Rune Axe, the Enhanced Dwarven Crossbow and the whole Dragonbone tier. Dragonborn brings Soulrender and Bloodscythe, the Bloodskal Blade and the Dwarven Black Bow of Fate. The rest are in the base game, and the Skyrim hub sorts every page by the edition it needs.

Which weapons pair well in two hands?

Chillrend with Dawnbreaker, the Death-Brand scimitars with each other, and Chillrend with the Blade of Woe are the pairings our dual-wielding page favors; the builds guide explains the stamina cost of swinging two at once.

Are the Daedric artifacts here?

Only the ones that are weapons. Volendrung, the Mace of Molag Bal, Dawnbreaker, the Ebony Blade, the Rueful Axe and the Sanguine Rose sit in this ranking; the full set of artifacts, and how many of the fifteen our page tracks, is in the items guide.