Throwing vs Crossbows

[obama]

Which is better ?
One one hand, throwing is cooler, since ammunition seems to be way cheaper and it also stacks with melee builds quite nicely, since throwing damages gets a bonus from melee strength.
On the other hand crossbow ammunition is real powerful, like bolt of mass destruction and the tentacle bolt, these are powerful enough even without the skill.
So it crossbow skill worth it?
If yes, for which builds ?
Is throwing affected by crossbow ranged bonuses?
And is ranged-only a viable strategy ?

[Haldurson]

Throwing is better if you have a strong melee build. Otherwise, Crossbows are better. But you should be using both (albeit sparingly), saving your best weapons for bosses, zoos, and Dredmor.

Damage bonuses on crossbows only affect crossbow attacks. That's really the only limitation.

The thing is that no matter whether you choose to take the crossbow skill or thrown weapons skill, if you try to use them as your primary attack, you'll run out of ammo. Taking the skill will help, since you'll be more likley to be able to recover ammo, the higher the relevant skill is. But you'll still run out. The best use of those skills then, is for AE attacks against zoos, and single-target attacks against bosses (including Dredmor) and harder or more dangerous enemies (eg. anything with a corruption melee attack, anything that drains mana, anything that has an attack that you are especially weak to). You don't necessarily need to kill everything with those attacks, so long as you soften them up sufficiently.

Ranged-only, if you are talking about just thrown and/or crossbow is not viable. But if you take the relevant skills, you'll conserve ammo, which is not the only benefit from taking those skills, but it certainly is a really good advantage.

Crossbow certainly is not a useless skill. I'd take it as part of a crafting build, with both tinkering and perception. I would not take it if I have a melee build. You might also take it as part of a mana-heavy mage build, so that you have an alternative damage source should mana become an issue in major battle. But mostly, I'd take it as part of a crafting-heavy build.

Regardless of whether you take it or not, you still will want to have the best crossbow you can get. Furthermore, you also do not want to get rid of all of your thrown weapons. They still are good as a supplement to bolts, especially the ones with AE attacks (gas bombs are particularly good against zoos because you know the monsters are going to continuously walk through those clouds, if you are doing things right).