Arrows

[Captain Canard]

As I keep leveling up and expanding outward on the map, my selection of arrows keeps growing, but I find myself going back to the old trusty and easy to craft scrap arrows. In most cases, I'm not seeing an advantage of using higher-level arrows like the copper, bronze, or fossil arrows, because usually it still takes the same number of arrows to down an enemy. For example, a single bronze arrow might take a lion creature down to 10% health, requiring a follow-up shot to finish it, whereas a scrap arrow may take it down to 40% health, requiring the same number of total shots to finish it off. A bronze arrow is a bear to craft, while a scrap arrow is easy to gather the components for. I just raid the scavenger base outside the starter zone for scrap metal, and I'm always picking up twigs, so it's easy to have hundreds of scrap arrows on hand. Not so for bronze, fossil, poisoned copper, etc.

The exception is those specialty arrows like bone arrows, explosive arrows, shroud arrows, etc. For bone arrows, I visit the first Hallowed Halls and mine bones and glowy grreen stuff from the bone piles. The other arrows take a little more work, but I save those for special occasions like bosses, mobs, etc. For the "day to day" exploring defense round, the old scrap arrow works just fine.

Am I the only one who does this? Am I missing something with these other arrows like copper and bronze, like enemy weaknesses to certain metals? From my experience, they are just not worth the work (gathering, smelting, etc) to craft them.

[Captain Canard]

Originally posted by Kappa:

Bow feels way underwhelming imo

I dunno, I can easily one-shot a lot of enemies, especially if I land the headshot or back shot at a distance. There are also the "trick" arrows like bone which passes through multiple enemies, and explosive arrows that stun, have splash damage, etc. The shroud arrow is also pretty good on some enemies, especially if they tend to stand around a bit before charging.

Originally posted by PaPaKat:

just fyi you would be better off using just plain wooden arrows for the simple fact that they do 10 damage as compared to the 4 damage with magical arrows and are really simple to craft while out exploring.

I didn't realize the magic arrow was that weak. I think the flare arrow has more damage than that, lol. It's too bad we as characters can't craft a simple scrap scrap arrow on our own, as I feel that would be easy to do IRL.

I will say that now I've unlocked the iron arrow, the double damage is worth the mining it in many places, unlike the copper arrow (weak) and the painful to craft brass arrow. It is weird to me than arrows don't scale better. Any metal-tipped arrow should be a whole lot more damaging than a sharp stick IMO, but they really aren't. Either that or lesser arrows should maybe not scale with more powerful bows. It's not recommended to fire wood arrows from a compound bow IRL, for example, because the launch force can break them on release.

[Blinky Dorf]

That's the problem with linear scaling gear: Everything has to be better than the previous item in the lineup. If they instead had arrows with different elements and special effects as opposed to raw damage, all the arrows could be interesting and viable. But instead we have this weird combination of "the next arrow is simply more damage, but some are just ridiculously hard to craft or arbitrarily change damage types"

[Blinky Dorf]

For example.

-Bronze Arrow (18 dmg): Mine copper. Mine tin. Smelt copper. Smelt tin. Smelt bronze. Craft arrow.
-Fossilized Bone Arrow (17 dmg): Mine bones. Craft arrow. Also does split pierce/cutting damage, which is better against a wider variety of enemies.

Ergo, not only is the fossilized bone arrow simply easier to craft (and is acquired in the same region), but is actually better for general use because of the damage split.

[Germansubcommander]

@Captain Canard Yeah it does feel odd, I have noticed that with the same bow, same shots that Copper arrows seem to take the same amount of shots almost that wood arrows do sometimes to down an enemy, which makes no since. I was running copper arrows for awhile just for the ease of material access because bone arrows require feathers and well I don't like to grind for materials just to have fun. That being said, is why I went full Eternal Ice Arrow build... (sorry for the long read, figured it might help you)

I have come to the same conclusion that Ice damage in the wizard tree does indeed not affect damage output that the Eternal Frost Arrow does.
You can test your arrow damage by shooting any object you use to craft items in your base and it will never damage it. I am 95% ONLY Eternal frost arrow build (level 31) and I have tested and found Dexterity is the only thing that will buff the damage of said arrow besides the bow (Note: I do have a bow that does +8 ice damage and that one pairs better with the arrow.) I tested this theory by adding the the Skills "Iceman" & "Subzero" in the Wizard tree to see the effect vs regular damage and critical strikes and the damage stayed the same as if I had never even added the skills (Note: maybe others have seen different and I would like to know testing methods as well as skill tree picked.)

I HIGHLY recommend getting the following from your Skill tree if you are an Ice arrow build: "Dessert Tree", Graceful Stride, Multishot, Ranger, Blink & Emergency Blink (you can still aim your bow while Dodging). I also run a Mages Chest & boots, the rest are archer gear, Ring of Rapacity, Superior ring of stamina. It is a heavy kiting build build and I rarely use melee. Note though that the damage the bow takes from using the ice spell is Heavy and I run with 3 bows for that reason (this is what you sacrifice for using the multishot and the ice arrow it seems). This build helps me stockpile materials for building high end arrows, I use to fight bosses, because the skill Multishot excessively eats arrows to the point where you are not paying the game, just grinding for arrow crafting materials (my time is limited & I would rather spend time building then crafting/ mining arrow materials)!

[AtticusX]

I usually stick with my highest levels of enemies. Currently I use steel arrows, with a few poison steel arrows for bosses. I use the Infinite frost arrows for lower levels. Then I have my lvl 2 explosive arrows, flare arrows for cave underground areas, and sometimes the stun arrows.

[PaPaKat]

Originally posted by AtticusX:

I usually stick with my highest levels of enemies. Currently I use steel arrows, with a few poison steel arrows for bosses. I use the Infinite frost arrows for lower levels. Then I have my lvl 2 explosive arrows, flare arrows for cave underground areas, and sometimes the stun arrows.

the explosive arrows are also good for AOE and large mobs...use them all the time in Hollow Halls.

[Kappa]

Originally posted by Captain Canard:

Originally posted by Kappa:

Bow feels way underwhelming imo

I dunno, I can easily one-shot a lot of enemies, especially if I land the headshot or back shot at a distance.

Could it be you play in solo and non hard difficult?

I play 4p and being able to hit for 600/700 with a arrow feels really underwhelming, especially when I can cleave 10 enemies for the same amount ( and no consumables ) and my friends can fireball/chainlightning/wand in a more efficient way.

Currently I'm playing daggers because I like the animations and the exlusive move upon parry. I tried to also use a bow, but even with the bow perks and 21 dex I can't do much damage.

[Captain Canard]

Originally posted by Kappa:

Could it be you play in solo and non hard difficult?

Yes, solo at normal difficulty, though I'm not sure what solo has to do with it. Unless you're concerned that none of your melee friends get to have any fun as you snipe all the enemies at range, lol. In my build with my skill tree, the bow is the most devastating weapon I have.

That said, I'm really not a two-handed "slow mo" melee player, but rather sword (mace) and board / daggers for my close range. And when getting mobbed, they do a good job, but I just like the skill required to land a headshot at distance. Wildly swinging a mace in a circle is kinda fun, but it doesn't require too much skill. The main skill in melee is turning a block into a parry, which is a different type timing than landing a shot on a moving target (no auto-aim).

[Kappa]

Originally posted by Captain Canard:

Originally posted by Kappa:

Could it be you play in solo and non hard difficult?

Yes, solo at normal difficulty, though I'm not sure what solo has to do with it. Unless you're concerned that none of your melee friends get to have any fun as you snipe all the enemies at range, lol. In my build with my skill tree, the bow is the most devastating weapon I have.

That said, I'm really not a two-handed "slow mo" melee player, but rather sword (mace) and board / daggers for my close range. And when getting mobbed, they do a good job, but I just like the skill required to land a headshot at distance. Wildly swinging a mace in a circle is kinda fun, but it doesn't require too much skill. The main skill in melee is turning a block into a parry, which is a different type timing than landing a shot on a moving target (no auto-aim).

DMG increases depends the players ( in addition to difficulty settings ) but I see now that enemy health seems only a matter of difficulty settings ( I mean, on hard difficulty it only increases boss health by 50% and enemy damage by 50%, though one could increase past that limit with a custom difficulty )

Anyway, Rather than me oneshotting enemies ( which doesn't happen even with 21 dex and a lvl 33 maxed bow ), it's more about casters to it simply better no matter the situation ( their only weakness is playing alone without a frontline, but being a group it's not an issue ).

My situation is that on the one hand in solo I can cleave enemies no matter the build ( 2h, S&B, D ), and on the only flying ones I encounter are the undeads one ( that cast 2 white homing bolts ), mostly because playing daggers I have friend animals that eventually blast enemies ( and flying animals/creatures that mind their own business if there are no enemies ).

So while I can use the bow due to average dex ( unfortunately, there's no way to max out dex as a dagger user, without renouncing to important feats locked in the STR/CON trees ), it feels more like an extra one might do because it pleases them ( like I do like parry enemies and merciless them rather than putting my autoattack macro on and leave the character alone ).

I'd probably give the bow a shot ( ehe ) again ( after all, all the arrows are being destroyed cause nobody uses them or like bows ) just to see how it works out for solo purposes on flying enemies.

[Gab]

Originally posted by Captain Canard:

As I keep leveling up and expanding outward on the map, my selection of arrows keeps growing, but I find myself going back to the old trusty and easy to craft scrap arrows. In most cases, I'm not seeing an advantage of using higher-level arrows like the copper, bronze, or fossil arrows, because usually it still takes the same number of arrows to down an enemy. For example, a single bronze arrow might take a lion creature down to 10% health, requiring a follow-up shot to finish it, whereas a scrap arrow may take it down to 40% health, requiring the same number of total shots to finish it off. A bronze arrow is a bear to craft, while a scrap arrow is easy to gather the components for. I just raid the scavenger base outside the starter zone for scrap metal, and I'm always picking up twigs, so it's easy to have hundreds of scrap arrows on hand. Not so for bronze, fossil, poisoned copper, etc.

The exception is those specialty arrows like bone arrows, explosive arrows, shroud arrows, etc. For bone arrows, I visit the first Hallowed Halls and mine bones and glowy grreen stuff from the bone piles. The other arrows take a little more work, but I save those for special occasions like bosses, mobs, etc. For the "day to day" exploring defense round, the old scrap arrow works just fine.

Am I the only one who does this? Am I missing something with these other arrows like copper and bronze, like enemy weaknesses to certain metals? From my experience, they are just not worth the work (gathering, smelting, etc) to craft them.

I used the explossive II arrow, it's very good, specially with group of enemies but it destroy everything in it's path that's including your house if you accidentally use your bow

[Reggie]

I have hundreds of each type of arrow in storage, never used any of them, i use the basic wooden ones you can craft on the go, saves the drain of having to get mats for whatever other arrows and also no need to keep going back to base, just need twigs and i always have 400-500 wood arrows on me.

[q4TEKS]

Originally posted by Blinky Dorf:

Fun fact, they actually do NOT scale with your wizard tree stuff! Bow damage is always Dexterity, no exceptions. Even bows that have added "magical damage" suffixes don't scale; it's a flat addition on top of the base bow damage. Keen Games really shot themselves in the foot with the strict perk synergy they implemented.
However, you can get the perk that restores 20 mana on bow crits, and that helps a bit with mana expenditure. I find that larger mana pools work better than mana regeneration when it comes to the eternal arrow.

interesting, has the developer ever said anything about this, because setting the basic damage of the eternal arrow so low and then strengthening it via the skill tree and specialization should be the actual intention, i guess that was forgotten to be implemented. i didn't know that it doesn't trigger because it actually works quite well. they should also introduce a quiver that serves as an “arrow” pouch, if you increase the number of different arrows more and more, this clutters up the pouch more and more, if this is absolutely necessary with consumable ammunition then you should introduce a pouch for it that has a higher cap than a stack for the respective type of arrow.

[Captain Canard]

Originally posted by q4TEKS:

they should also introduce a quiver that serves as an “arrow” pouch, if you increase the number of different arrows more and more, this clutters up the pouch more and more, if this is absolutely necessary with consumable ammunition then you should introduce a pouch for it that has a higher cap than a stack for the respective type of arrow.

Yes, I would love this!

On the other hand...

There is a part of me that would find a "hard survival mode" for the game to be intriguing. This means no magic bags or pouches that can carry hundreds or thousand of arrows, but rather a realistic quiver that holds 20 arrows max (less for specialty arrows). It would also mean no more carrying around raw meat for ages, along with a supermarket's worth of prepared food. If you want to eat, you need to hunt and cook on the go. If you want more arrows, you need to make them on the go. Conversely, one should not die of hunger 10 minutes after consuming a huge steak. And one should be able to reuse arrows a certain number of times (pulled from the body of your kill).

Anyway, it would make for a radically different game experience, and I'd only want it as an option, not a requirement. Normally I'm just playing for fun, and the ability to carry hundreds of arrows does help with that, especially for arrows that require a bit of a "grind" to make in the first place.

[Kal]

I prefer whatever is in my bag from looting lol