Ranged weapons
Bows, crossbows, slings, blowguns and thrown weapons let you hit something before it can hit you back. Done well, ranged combat can soften an opponent badly before melee even starts. Done badly, you spend the fight reloading while you get clubbed in the face.
This page covers the basics of ranged weapons. For thrown weapons (axes, daggers, javelins as projectiles), see throw.
The basic loop
You need three things: a ranged weapon, ammunition, and a target.
reload <weapon>— load ammunitionaim <target>— line up the shotshoot— fire
Aiming lets you choose between an easy general shot and a difficult shot at a weak point. The difficult shot is slower but hits much harder. The critical areas aim is especially powerful when combined with a damaging combat style like savage.
Reloading and being attacked
You cannot reload while something is hitting you. The classic ranged loop assumes someone — or something — is keeping the enemy off your back:
- A frontline party member tanks while you fire from behind. Most parties expect this from their archers.
- A controlled minion (charmed pet, summoned creature, raised undead, golem) holds the line for you.
- You sneak in unseen, fire once, and disappear. Rangers who train move silently and hide in shadows can pull this off solo.
Solo archery against tough opponents is hard. Plan around it.
Skills that matter
The weapon-family skills:
- archery — bows
- blowguns — blowguns
- slinging — slings
- crossbows — crossbows
And the universal ones — these affect every ranged weapon:
- sharpshooting — accuracy and effect overall
- timing — rate of fire
- find weakness — critical hits
- enhance criticals — critical hits
- marksmanship — high-level shooting mastery
- focus of a marksman — passively grows with practice, eventually speeds up the loop
Most are taught by guilds with a ranged tradition (rangers, some warrior guilds). Animal lore helps when you're shooting at animals.
Your dexterity helps a lot. Strength matters for bows — some bows have a draw weight you must meet to use them properly.
Combat style and combat points
Your combat style affects ranged weapons too: faster styles shoot faster, hard-hitting styles hit harder, defensive styles are slow. The savage style combined with the critical-areas aim is a classic high-damage opener.
Assign most of your combat points to attack to shoot and reload quickly. Without attack points you fire rarely if at all.
Ammunition
Bows take arrows, crossbows take bolts, slings take stones or bullets, blowguns take darts. Ammunition comes in many variants: regular, flame, poisoned, magical, divinely made, and more. Magical and well-crafted ammunition hits more reliably and harder.
You can sort and reload using descriptive words — anything visible in the arrow's description, you can filter on. For example:
get all flame arrow to quiver reload bow with poisoned sheaf arrow from quiver drop all not poisoned arrow from quiver get all made by misrobo from corpse to quiver
Wear and breakage
Bows lose stiffness with use and may eventually break. This is normal. Only the most powerful magical bows are immune. Treat ranged weapons like any other gear: repair them before they fail. See Equipment damage.
Where ranged combat shines
- Opening a fight before the enemy reaches you. A flame arrow can take a chunk off a tough monster while it's still charging.
- Hunting from cover. Some prey is easier to drop at range than to wrestle.
- Supporting a melee party from the back row.
Pure archery as a sole strategy works, but takes more investment than melee. Most ranged characters carry a melee weapon for the moment the enemy closes.