Kobold Hunter w/Xbow. How would you go about it?

[FDru]

My observations/reflections and problems:

Bolts are rare early game so an alternate weapon is necessary, and bolts are to be reserved for great threats (ogres, scorpions, gnoll and orc packs, etc).

However, without training, using another weapon is a death sentence. So training up something like Short Swords gives me some melee killing power.

But short swords are so incredibly weak and I have no option of heavy weapons. So training up stabbing maybe? Woops, now I need to train up stealth and can't wear heavy armor. Alternately, I could train up some magic skills to compliment stabbing but finding any that are useful can not be counted on so this is not a reliable strategy...

I almost always take Nemelex for an alternate source of damage (and summoning decks are also useful to protect my soft body, not to mention awesome experience and trowel cards). So far this has paid off well but once or twice I ended up in the Abyss, and in trunk it seems like guaranteed death (but now I figured out how to disable armor sacrificing so hopefully this will happen more rarely from now on, and I only triple draw from decks of escape). I suppose Trog could be a consideration (does Berserk work with range?), and the obvious Okawaru, but I'd probably end up sticking with Nemelex for fun factor.

So far my best is a cleared Lair, Orc Mines and XL 17 or some such, but most of my KoHu character have met an early death, only about 1/3rd of them making it to the Lair at all.

So to summarize: not sure of optimal god choice. Short Swords seem iffy despite the high affinity (and stabbing doesn't play well with Xbows if I'm not mistaken, one relying on STR and the other DEX), not to mention the stealth problems, so a viable alternate weapon suggestion would be helpful. I like wearing heavy(ish) armor but I'm not sure if it's causing me more problems than it solves, since anything above ring mail seems to destroy stealth (should I just eschew stealth completely? It seems like it's "obviously good to have" for a ranged character, and with such a good affinity, but that could just be ignorance talking).

TIA

[adozu]

i'd say also carry a blowgun, especially if you later take an ammuminition god.

it's pretty deadly early on (where bolts are the most rare) and ammunition aren't particularly rare. later on if you're willing to train throwing a bit (and kobolds shouldn'ìt have a big problem with that) you can put to use cool stuff like needles of frenzy but i guess this is less useful to a character already heavy on ranged attacks after the earlygame.

[tasonir]

I've tried quite a lot of crossbow hunters, as I've had characters who have used the other 3 weapons, but never gone far with a crossbow user. I feel it's somewhat unfairly hard to start with one, as others have already mentioned, you really have to do something else and then later on you can switch. Going hunter and then trying to raise melee is fine, or you can just start as melee and have higher skills, and then add crossbows when you get to it. If you do start as a hunter, and die enough times, you might eventually find a game where you run across 5-7 stacks of bolts by lair and might be able to actually get good use out of the crossbow

I might try out the staff kobold option, that does sound interesting.

[Davion Fuxa]

To answer the topics question: I wouldn't use Crossbows on a Kobold Hunter - maybe on a Kobold Arcane Marksmen I might use Crossbows but for a Kobold Hunter I would probably go with Slings.

My feelings is that Kobolds have very poor synergy with using Crossbows due to them having a small size (restricted from using all 2 Handed Weapons except Lajatangs and Quarterstaves) and not being a Strength centred species (Crossbows aren't Dexterity based weapons). Being an Arcane Marksmen gives them Hexes to help them out a little bit in either adding more punch to Short Blades or to possibly let them hold out long enough to find a Stave type weapon.

Of course, being Kobolds I likely wouldn't even care about using Ranged Weapons anyway. Kobold Artificers are just too much fun to pass up.

[ZoFy]

Crossbows aren't really strength based weapons either, so...

...Aren't they? Both wiki and Henzell agree that xbows rely more heavily on str than on dex in reaching min delay, and their damage is independent of stats. From my experience with an xbow SpHu, i invested every stat point into str and actually needed all (or almost all) of that investment to reach "quite fast" attack speed.

[Davion Fuxa]

As was stated, Crossbows have ammunition problems in the start of game, but I'll also add that since Crossbows fire very slowly on a low-Strength species that has no natural Strength gain with low skill training; you'll likely need to hit things with a Melee Weapon if picked on a Hunter - of which your restricted by your small size and weapon rarity in the case of Staves. They aren't a 'bad' weapon to pick up later on into the game after having trained up Strength and Crossbow skill suitably while having decent backup plans set up in Melee or Spells but that's a different story then starting out with them from scratch.

[daggaz]

Kobolds get a nice big bonus on both slings and shortblades, both of which litter the early dungeon in spades. Its kind of doing it the hard way (nothing wrong with that) to ignore this fact, especially in light of the lack of early crossbow ammo, as already pointed out in the OP.

I wouldnt even bother with crossbows unless I found a really nice artifact crossbow and/or a good 2handed weapon, and usually this isnt going to happen until well into the mid-game at the earliest. At that point, you should already have your base skills up to the levels you need to survive, and you can then afford to pump crossbows. Still, slings at 6 is more than enough to really soften up approaching monsters or kill anything that runs away (that you didnt/couldnt poison).

As for the comment on heavy armor... who cares? Kobolds do fantastic with evasion. This lets you play the stabbing card, and by now you have a good shortblade for the job, plus min delay. Getting stealth and stabbing to 10 is simple once you get started on the mid-game, and that is more than enough to carry you for quite a ways, at which point, further boosting comes just as easily.

I dunno, the xp bonus on crossbows for kobolds just always seemed like a trap to me, at least with respect to starting the game...

[Psieye]

I'm of the view that if you have good crossbow aptitudes and you can start with one, you should start with one. Sure you aren't going to actually use it all that much. But a big part of crossbows is that you can't easily find one until much later on. The same can be said for longbows, but you at least get early bows to start getting some use out of the ammo. Crossbows, you have all this ammo lying around in the dungeon that most characters can't use. As a crossbow hunter, you start with an endgame base weapon type.

Kobold aptitudes let them afford to pick up a 'mostly redundant' skill and still do fine. With their aptitudes, they can capitalise on anything the RNG gives them, be it renewable invis evoke or a sling. I once had a Kobold be simultaneously good at the majority of playstyles in Lair - blaster, stabber, regular melee, ranged. That's not recommended but it shows Kobolds can meet the skill requirements of playstyles very quickly.

[hopelessDelvder]

Are bolts really that rare in the early game? Rarer than stones and arrows, I'm sure, but I see a lot of bolts on the floor.

Also, if they are, isn't that just tedium? Crossbows are quite rare, and I can understand why that is, but I don't think it necessarily follows that bolts should also be rare.

[BlackSheep]

Floor spawns are probably similar to arrows and bullets, but centaurs and arrow traps appear much earlier than yaktaurs and bolt traps.

[FDru]

Are bolts really that rare in the early game? Rarer than stones and arrows, I'm sure, but I see a lot of bolts on the floor.

It feels like I'm picking up on average about 20 bolts before the temple. It's not uncommon to find some, but it's rare to find enough to use them on everything (though one run I had like 350 bolts at the end of the Lair, probably not surprisingly that ended up being my highest level KoHu).

Anyway, training up throwing along with Xbows has worked out pretty well, with the excessive amounts of throwing ammo in the early game, and Trog is... interesting. Kind of annoying not being able to fully utilize Berserk but I'm training up staves to be able to hopefully get some more use out of that.