The Tavern

Been having my best game ever as a Centaur Hunter, but I just ran out of arrows. Is there a decent way of getting more, or am I doomed to fumble around D:1-2, hoping some random low-level dudes drop stacks of them? My main sources of them thus far have been gifts from Trog, and randomly-found stacks.

Did you know you can enchant arrows? You can wield them and read scrolls of enchant weapon to increase their bonus, which in turn makes them less likely to mulch. You can also work on your melee skills a little and bash some of the low-level dudes instead of shooting them.

Happy Corner wrote:Did you know you can enchant arrows? You can wield them and read scrolls of enchant weapon to increase their bonus, which in turns makes them less likely to mulch. You can also work on your melee skills a little and bash some of the low-level dudes instead of shooting them.

Yeah, I guess I was lucky to have lasted as long as I did, meleeing zero enemies.

And don't I need certain scrolls to enchant my arrows? I don't know if I've even found any of either of those types. And wouldn't they end up enchanting my bow instead of my arrows?

Also, assuming I had some piles of arrows and the scrolls, would it be more cost-effective to enchant each pile once, or to enchant my best pile as much as possible?

ClefAria wrote:And don't I need certain scrolls to enchant my arrows? I don't know if I've even found any of either of those types. And wouldn't they end up enchanting my bow instead of my arrows?

Either type of enchant weapon scroll will do (I or II). Enchanting arrows is actually kind of tricky - you're right in that if you just read the scroll, you'll enchant your bow. But it's possible to wield your arrows instead. When you hit the 'w' key to wield a weapon, you normally get the list of your weapons. But if you hit the * key (shift-8) at this point, you will get your full inventory list and be able to wield anything in it. So you can select your arrows and actually be walking around wielding them like that. It's actually a poor idea to try to bash an enemy with them... but if you read an enchant weapon scroll while your arrows are wielded, their bonus will go up.

ClefAria wrote:Also, assuming I had some piles of arrows and the scrolls, would it be more cost-effective to enchant each pile once, or to enchant my best pile as much as possible?

Since your problem is running out of ammo, what I would recommend is enchanting the biggest pile of arrows you can - it'll probably be a +0 pile, but you might be lucky and get a sizable pile of ammo that already have a bonus. Save up your enchant scrolls, so you can raise the pile to a high bonus all at once. They should last long enough for you to find even more ammo and/or build up other ways of killing enemies.

Also, if you enchant your +0 arrows to +1, you can then drop and consolidate those with any +1 arrows you already had, wield the new large stack and enchant that to +2. Rinse and repeat until all your arrows are being wielded and enchanted together.

If you are really poor on ammo, don't train trap skill, and try disarm arrow traps. You can also simply walk on them, but you will loose lot more HP.
Or as mentioned, use melee on weak enemies, flee when one to resistant comes (an early orc knight won't kill you, but if you en up using 30 arrows on him, with 25% chance of mulch...).
Also centaurs are fairly good at throwing, so pumping some XP in and using spears, blowgun and javelins early/mid-game if you didn't find much arrows is viable.
And if you are VERY conservative, you can try to always have two or more enemies in you line of fire, so if the projectile miss the first, it will maybe get the second, dealing extra dmg per turn, but more than that, you will have to shoot one time less so you can conserve ammo. Another trick, if there is lava/deep water behind the enemy, instead of using "ff", use "f.", so if the projectile miss, it won't drop in.

I feel your pain; the dungeon never seems to generate arrows for Hunter types, does it? And it always feels like they mulch quicker when you're a dedicated archer. I know this isn't actually the case, it just feels that way, but even so.

I didn't actually know the process for arrow enchanting, so thats some useful info.

Whilst I'm here... Am I the only one who thinks that X-Bows seem to be vastly superior to normal bows?
Weaponlab doesn't seem to cover ranged. Knowledge Bots state that Bows have an intrinsic -2 to accuracy and deal 3+1d7 damage with 11 delay; and X-Bows have +2 Acc, 5+[?] damage and have 15 delay. (is Bolt damage for the [?] the same as arrow damage?) This seems to reflect in that bows seem to miss quite alot.

I suppose I rarely see a hunter/bow type that actually gets a longbow, so that might level the playing field.

Well... at the very least you can count on Javelins being awesome.

You start with a shortsword for a reason. Use it to hit things so you don't need to shoot everything.

eharper256 wrote:Whilst I'm here... Am I the only one who thinks that X-Bows seem to be vastly superior to normal bows?

x-bows let you use steel and silver ammunition while bows only have one type of arrows, wooden. Do you really think nobody has noticed that other than you?

(no offence)

An idea is to hit CTRL+F and search for "arrow" - it will give you the location of any arrows spotted in the dungeon. maybe theres a big stack hiding under a corpse somewhere.

Also you can auto travel through the CTRL+F interface which is pretty darn convenient.

Also, in autopickup_exceptions.txt, you can add

Code:: ae = <arrow

so you autopickup all arrows as you come across them.

Don't forget to trip all arrow traps and disarm them all for extra ammo.

TehDruid wrote:x-bows let you use steel and silver ammunition while bows only have one type of arrows, wooden. Do you really think nobody has noticed that other than you? (no offence)

Bolts can also have the penetration brand, which I've never seen on an arrow. Your ammo lasts even longer when you can hit a whole line of enemies with one shot!

Grimm wrote:Also, if you enchant your +0 arrows to +1, you can then drop and consolidate those with any +1 arrows you already had, wield the new large stack and enchant that to +2. Rinse and repeat until all your arrows are being wielded and enchanted together.

Crawl should probably actually automatically consolidate ammo on enchantment. The "drop and pick up the ammo you just enchanted" trick seems unnecessary; I can't think of any case where you wouldn't want to do this.

Well, I just stuck with the bow I started the game with, and fact is I've seen like 4 crossbows in my entire months playing this game on and off (this is my first character who made it past level 10, though, so I don't know if they're more common later).

Crossbows (and bolts) are more common deeper in the Dungeon, when you start running into yaktaur packs. They're like centaurs, except not as fast. But they make up for that by hitting a LOT harder.

Crossbows have started generating earlier in the past five or six months, so you're likely to start seeing more. I've seen them circa D:4, in the sweaty paws of kobolds.

omegasean wrote:An idea is to hit CTRL+F and search for "arrow" - it will give you the location of any arrows spotted in the dungeon. maybe theres a big stack hiding under a corpse somewhere.

Also you can auto travel through the CTRL+F interface which is pretty darn convenient.

Yeah, that is extremely convenient. I found 64 arrows with Ctrl+F! Also enchanted the pile once--how much does each 'level' of enchantment reduce the 'mulch' odds?

EDIT: Oi...Nessos just annihilated me just as I started to enjoy my newfound enchanted arrows. Still 4,000 points more than my previously best character, though. Thanks for the nuggets of wisdom, everyone!

ClefAria wrote: Also enchanted the pile once--how much does each 'level' of enchantment reduce the 'mulch' odds?

http://crawl.develz.org/info/inline.php?q=mulching says you get an extra "survival roll" of X/(3+X) if your arrows are +X. I thought it was x/(x+1) but perhaps that was last version only, or I could be making it up.

Depending on how common EW scrolls are for you, I'd stop around +4 or +5.

German war term. Nice.

That's a joke.

TehDruid wrote:
eharper256 wrote:Whilst I'm here... Am I the only one who thinks that X-Bows seem to be vastly superior to normal bows?

x-bows let you use steel and silver ammunition while bows only have one type of arrows, wooden. Do you really think nobody has noticed that other than you? (no offence)

Well, no, I wasn't even figuring that into the equation, but yeah, that's another string to their crossbow. Not to mention Penetrating Brand Bolts, which as noted, don't generate on arrows that I can see.

I was mainly asking if there was any reason to prefer regular bows in Crawl; because literally the only thing I see that they have is less Delay, and that's not even especially significant.

..Well there is longbows, and according to people who know this game better than I do, a longbow of holy wrath (only avail as a TSO worshipper) is the highest damage weapon in the game when used on vunerable targets.

njvack wrote:Crawl should probably actually automatically consolidate ammo on enchantment. The "drop and pick up the ammo you just enchanted" trick seems unnecessary; I can't think of any case where you wouldn't want to do this.

Hooray!

njvack wrote:
njvack wrote:Crawl should probably actually automatically consolidate ammo on enchantment. The "drop and pick up the ammo you just enchanted" trick seems unnecessary; I can't think of any case where you wouldn't want to do this.

Hooray!

You're welcome. I also changed the wield menu to make it show missiles when you're carrying scrolls of enchant weapon.

I could hug a dev.

galehar wrote:
njvack wrote:
njvack wrote:Crawl should probably actually automatically consolidate ammo on enchantment. The "drop and pick up the ammo you just enchanted" trick seems unnecessary; I can't think of any case where you wouldn't want to do this.

Hooray!

You're welcome. I also changed the wield menu to make it show missiles when you're carrying scrolls of enchant weapon.

Hooray yet again!

The Tavern

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