Dark bow

The dark bow is a ranged weapon that requires level 60 in Ranged to wield. It is only received as a drop from Dark beasts. With an attack speed of 9 (5.4 seconds) and 8 on rapid (4.8 seconds), this bow stands out as the slowest weapon in the game. It fires two arrows per attack, and has an attack range of 10 (unaffected by longrange).

Assuming that both weapons are set to the Rapid attack style, the dark bow has a firing time of 2.4 seconds per arrow, whereas a shortbow such as the magic shortbow (i) takes only 1.8. Because of this, the dark bow is only fairly popular for Player killing. It has the highest max hit of any weapons in the game by means of special attack (although Twisted bow and Dharok's greataxe can hit harder with regular attacks and Dragon 2h sword is able to deal more total damage with its special attack).

Combat styles
10 tiles is the maximum distance for any attack in RuneScape. The dark bow's attack range on Accurate and Rapid is 10, therefore Long Range has no effect other than for training Defence.

Special attack
The dark bow has a unique special attack comprised of two different attacks, both of which consume 55% of the player's special attack energy. The 1st special attack, Descent of Darkness, deals up to 30% more damage with a minimum of 5 damage per arrow. The animation shows two arrows fired at the target, surrounded in a black shroud.

If the player has dragon arrows equipped, the 2nd special attack, Descent of Dragons, is used instead. This attack deals up to 50% more damage with a minimum of 8 damage per arrow, while capping the max hit at 48 damage per arrow. The animation shows two black dragon heads fired at the target.

Colouring
Players can use dark bow paint, purchased from Bounty Hunter for 500,000 points, to recolour a dark bow. This process makes the bow untradeable. To remove the colouring and make it tradeable again, players must use a cleaning cloth on the bow to return to its regular state (the paint will be lost).

Dropping monsters

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Trivia
Dark bows cannot be used in Barbarian Firemaking. Attempting to do so will result in a chatbox message saying, "The innate darkness of the bow sucks all heat from your firemaking attempt. You realise that this type of bow is useless for firelighting.".