RFS-81

[SpitBall]

You seem to have some weapons that I'm not finding - are you playing some kind of modified game?

I hear you about the realative weakness of some Bard instruments as the characters and monsters increase in level. But, still, the Bard using Strings of Seduction and Banshee's Howl is quite effective - plus I depend upon him for healing, which leaves the Bishop and Psionic the option of using their Divine spells for Guardian Angels (which have saved many a life), Instant Death, and Eye4Eye spells. I use the Bishop to keep the Bard (and the rest of the party) well rested - In fact, their initiatives are such that the Bishop always goes after the Bard, so I can use him at full power every round that the Bishop feeds him stamina. The Bard's Silence Lyre seems more effective than the Psionic, or Bishop with their silence spells - although, now that the Bishop has gained a level or two on Ascension Peak, he is doing better with silencing.

As for the melee range - I usually have to walk up the beasties to give the fighter, samurai, RFS-81 and Vi a chance to slice them up.

[Wereboar]

The bows he mentioned are all in the standard game.
Eagle eye bow is ranger only, IIRC from Bela.
Strong bow can be found in several places. IIRC one is fix hidden in upper rapax castle.
I'm not sure about hunters bow, but i think it's the one you find in the sea caves.

[Krull]

I must confess I don't see what's so special about the Eagle Eye Bow. It does an extra 40% damage, 1% to kill and adds +10 to the Eagle Eye skill and costs about 44,000 gold. The Strong Bow and Siege Arbalest are about 1/6 of the cost and has 5%/6% to kill and 40%/30% extra damage respectively. Am I missing something?

Ferro sells all three and, as Wereboar says, Bela sells the Eagle Eye bow so can get it sooner than the other two. He's also correct about the Hunters Bow as I'm fairly sure it's in Marten's chest in the Sea Caves.

[SpitBall]

I met Bela but probably didn't pay attention to the Eagle Eye because I don't have a Ranger. Haven't ventured over to the Rapax areas yet, so haven't hooked up with Ferro.

As for ranged weapons, I find that the Medusa and Ta-Li stones are some of the most effective against high level monsters like those on Ascension Peak. I also like the Fear Bolts because when some monsters run far away, they leave the current battle and you can hunt them down later. This was essential at times because it allows you to "split" large groups that might prove too difficult for a low-level party. For mid-level beasties, the Barbed Arrows were nice, because they drained stamina faster than HP, so monsters would become unconscious before I moved up and let the Melee take over. The Viper Arrows and Lightening Bolts are great, but hard to keep well-stocked.

Another thing - my Bard has powercast, even though he has no spells - I assume it works with the instruments because the game seems to treat them as Magick, i.e. he can be silenced and they are reflected by Eye4Eye.

[ 04-12-2005, 01:45 PM: Message edited by: SpitBall ]

[babar]

Originally posted by Krull: I must confess I don't see what's so special about the Eagle Eye Bow. It does an extra 40% damage, 1% to kill and adds +10 to the Eagle Eye skill and costs about 44,000 gold. The Strong Bow and Siege Arbalest are about 1/6 of the cost and has 5%/6% to kill and 40%/30% extra damage respectively. Am I missing something?

well you have to be strong to use strong bow and subject to dropping it when hexed and siege arbalest is a heavy, clumsy weapon (-3 to init). The to hit/init mods for EEB are also a little better than strong bow. Does it make up for the lesser kill %? Crash on to Dominus with an elven bow and don't worry about it (elf not included).

On the other hand, I don't know what's so great about a great bow.

[SpitBall]

In the end, I gave the double-shot to the Fighter - and bought up all the Hunter Bolts I could find in Arnika. Strangely - he now shoots 3X at each turn and gets 2 turns per round. When using his regular bow (not double-shot) he shot 2X at each turn (2 turns per round). Why does the double-shot only add 1 shot per turn, isn't that a 1.5 shot crossbow? I'm not really complaining, as he can score upwards of 50 HP damage per turn with the new crossbow, which is almost as good as his melee, but I'm a bit confused as to why its not giving 2X the shots. Maybe he still needs to improve his Bows skill?

[LewyRay]

I may be wrong, but I think the 2x crossbow only adds one shot to what you are already getting...so if you normally would shoot twice, you would not shoot 3 times with the 2x crossbow. Of course there are factors such as dex, speed, init, bow skill, etc.

btw: with her high dex,spd, and bow skill, my bard is shooting her 3x crossbow 5x's twice per round. With Hunter bolts she is dishing out close to 200hp of damage! So if we are willing to keep practicing with it, the potential is there.

[Klutz]

Originally posted by LewyRay: I may be wrong, but I think the 2x crossbow only adds one shot to what you are already getting...so if you normally would shoot twice, you would not shoot 3 times with the 2x crossbow. Of course there are factors such as dex, speed, init, bow skill, etc. btw: with her high dex,spd, and bow skill, my bard is shooting her 3x crossbow 5x's twice per round. With Hunter bolts she is dishing out close to 200hp of damage! So if we are willing to keep practicing with it, the potential is there.

Correct. The Doubleshot Crossbow adds 1 extra shot to each attack sequence your character gets, and the Tripleshot Crossbow adds 2 extra shots. So when your character's stats would normally dictate getting 3 shots per attack sequence, they would get 4 with the Doubleshot Crossbow and 5 with the Tripleshot Crossbow. The other "doublestrike" weapons like the doublestrike dagger and Bloodlust work exactly the same way.

I consider the Tripleshot Crossbow to easily be the deadliest ranged weapon in the game due to exactly what your bard is seeing. Now try that with a Ranger with 125 in Ranged Combat, better bolts, and their natural critical hit ability, and you will see real ranged carnage. Too bad you just can't carry around enough ammo to keep that up...

[SpitBall]

Thanks, that clears it up a bit.

I did give the double-shot to the Bard for a while, but finally chose the Fighter because he uses it every round that he is not in melee range, whereas, the Bard is often playing an instrument, so doesn't get to regularly unload with the 2X bow. This dynamic has been in place from the beginning - both have consistently used bows for their ranged attacks - so the Fighter is more skilled than the Bard and generates more damage per bolt, plus the Fighter wears the Helazoid Pendant and hits with almost every shot.