bowyer

[Quack]

seems a pretty limited workshop since you can have access to metal crossbows pretty soon.. I wonder if a metal crossbow is reliant on the weaponsmith skill or the bowyer skill

[Fel]

Weaponsmith skill is used when making metal weapons, but the thing is that a crossbow's material only matter when using it as a melee weapon, and even then it's rather bad at being one even if you use steel (since silver can't be used for it).
Since only quality matters for the shooting part of the weapon, it is completely fine to make crossbows out of bones that are usually easily produced in large amounts, making it very simple to train your bowyer even very early on and have masterwork crossbows to use.
You can even sell the lower quality crossbows (resulting from training your bowyer) as one of your early trade items as they are usually not too heavy.

It might seem a bit useless since the default for ores is "ores everywhere" now, but the old default made ores a lot rarer so alternatives that work just as well were valued a bit higher than they are now.
They are also pretty decent if you don't have much wood and no coal-bearing ores since that pushes metal stuff beyond getting access to magma smelters and forges.

[Quack]

Originally posted by Fel:

Weaponsmith skill is used when making metal weapons, but the thing is that a crossbow's material only matter when using it as a melee weapon, and even then it's rather bad at being one even if you use steel (since silver can't be used for it).
Since only quality matters for the shooting part of the weapon, it is completely fine to make crossbows out of bones that are usually easily produced in large amounts, making it very simple to train your bowyer even very early on and have masterwork crossbows to use.
You can even sell the lower quality crossbows (resulting from training your bowyer) as one of your early trade items as they are usually not too heavy.

It might seem a bit useless since the default for ores is "ores everywhere" now, but the old default made ores a lot rarer so alternatives that work just as well were valued a bit higher than they are now.
They are also pretty decent if you don't have much wood and no coal-bearing ores since that pushes metal stuff beyond getting access to magma smelters and forges.

ooo ok thanks, I assumed wrong then, it is pretty useful if it works this way.. I'll care more for more bowyers now