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E3 - Crossbows


Fatman

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It's been over a decade since I last played Exile 3. I'm planning to specialize one of my characters with crossbows but I remember hearing from someone that crossbow's effectiveness is actually governed by the thrown missile skill instead of the obvious archery skill. I want to know if this is true before I dump a bunch of skill points into archery for my crossbow user.

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Short version: what Slartibus said above.

 

Long version:

 

Crossbows are marginally more effective than bows, in terms of damage and hit chance. That might be hard coded, or it might not.

 

From the CBoE sources, barely anything improves ranged damage. Not any of the skills, and not launcher bonuses. Ammo bonuses help; as does Bless status, though not by much; and finally the Accuracy item power. Damage and hit chance both decrease with distance, and with the number of foes in the way, and also both go down precipitously at point blank range.

 

Poisoned bolts might be useful in some situations. OTOH they have high nuisance value, since you must first unwield any melee weapons, or the poison won't be applied to the bolts.

 

...

 

I suppose a part of five or six archers, with poisoned ammo, might be effective. One archer is probably going to be pretty useless though.

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So my characters will never be as good as an empire archer even if they have completely maxed out dexterity, archery skills, equipped with the best crossbow/bow and best arrows/bolts... Now I think I know why I never bothered with ranged combat with the exception of spells in the past.

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In my experience, missile weapons are marginally useful if there's nothing else you can do...if you are in a narrow tunnel when only the fighter in front can hit, and people are queued up behind, for example. I'd not put many points in their at all unless I'd given up on playing fairly and was using the editor (towards the endgame, or when fighting golems, usually). But throwing the odd rock, or dart of returning...may as well...

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