Archery Question

[SaxMonkey]

If I am reading everything right (and I can't find Synergy's Item List at the moment for some reason...), the Composite Bow is as good as it gets for archers? That is of course, except for the Ceremonial Bow thing in the Fang Clan Village... I realize that bow rocked. But... I don't have it.

 

Without 'circumventing' game concepts, is the Composite Bow the best available bow? If so, it's kinda weak. That's why I suspect there's a better one, and I just missed it in my first go-round.

 

Thanks.

[Lilith]

Uh, there are several bows equal to or better than the Composite Bow in terms of raw damage, including the Submission Bow, Blessed Bow, Composite Longbow, Blessed Longbow, Ebony Bow, Farsight Longbow, and of course Heartstriker. Synergy's item list is here ; it's linked from Strategy Central in the forum header.

 

Also, longbows are almost always better than regular bows for doing damage. Even if their base damage looks lower, it'll rise faster as your Bows skill increases.

[SaxMonkey]

Ok. Thanks.

 

I guess not having an archer in my party the first time made me completely ignore them all.

 

Thanks a bunch.

[Student of Trinity]

Somewhere front and center in all our strategy guides should go Jeff's rather less than obvious formula for damage. As I understand it, every weapon or spell does damage equal to some number of dice N, the dice having D sides. The thing that isn't obvious is that N is a sum of some base value for the weapon or spell, plus some corrections from the wielder's or caster's abilities. And these corrections can be huge: the sum of strength, melee weapons, and blademaster skills, or the sum of all four of intelligence, mage spells, spellcraft, and magery.

 

So this means that Blessed Uranium Short Sword doing 20-40 points gives you a base of 20 towards your N, making for a total N of around 50 perhaps at high levels; but it has only 2-sided dice, for a total damage of 50-100, making 75 points on average. Whereas a Wet Pasta Wavespear whose stated damage is a measly 1-9 points would give a base of only 1, making total N still just 30 or so; but with 9-sided dice, total damage would be 30-270, and average damage would be 150. That's twice as good. So high level characters should fight with wavespears over daggers, no matter how bad the wavespear and how good the dagger.

 

Too bad there aren't really any wavespears. But that's the principle as I understand it.

[Lilith]

Most of the information we know about the damage formula comes from the Blades of Avernum manual, I think, but we have fair reasons to believe it works roughly the same way in the rest of his recent games.

 

The way the formula operates led to an amusing situation in Avernum 4 where the stick, having a base damage of 1-4 (while all other weapons were multiples of 2 or 3), could at very high levels become the most powerful weapon in the game. Unfortunately the stick only does 1-2 damage in Avernum 5.

[Quiconque]

Correction: the Stick was the most powerful MELEE weapon in the game. It was categorically inferior to halberds (and the Heartstriker).

[scottk]

So I was wondering why the Heartstriker was doing more damage than Eliviri's bow, even though the latter said it did more damage. Is there a ranking somewhere of this hidden damage attribute to which you refer?

 

What about the best sword? I thought I was doing more damage with the frozen blade than the radiant soulblade, but I could be imaging it.

 

For that matter, the Slith bloodspear has the highest damage rating, but I now gasp in quiet horror at the thought of all those possibly superior pole weapons I sold.

 

Ahh help!

[Randomizer]

The slith bloodspear is the best for base damage. The chaotic halbred is a jinx blade for cursing opponents if you aren't playing on torment difficulty.

 

The flaming blade does fire damage which can do more damage against some creatures or no damage against fire resistant ones. The Vahnatai blade (Lake of Trials) does poison damage.

[Lilith]

Quote:

Originally written by scottk:
So I was wondering why the Heartstriker was doing more damage than Eliviri's bow, even though the latter said it did more damage. Is there a ranking somewhere of this hidden damage attribute to which you refer?

Just divide the maximum damage by the minimum damage to get the damage multiplier. For example, if a weapon does 10-20 damage, its multiplier is (20 / 10) = 2. Higher multiplier = better than.

[belabi]

So right now I have a composite long bow on my nephil rogue. He's level 23, his skill with bows is 12, his strength is 9. I even have some extra sharpshooting happy items equipped on him. BUT HE SUCKS. On average he does 10-20 damage.

 

I've been cultivating his snipe skills since the start, but it doesn't seem to be doing any good. Help! He's dragging my party down, and I think it's too late to convert him to a sword and shield type of fighter.

 

I don't know, I wish he wasn't so lame Tips on how to improve / what I should do next time I restart the game?

[scottk]

Quote:

Originally written by Thuryl:

Quote:

Originally written by scottk:
So I was wondering why the Heartstriker was doing more damage than Eliviri's bow, even though the latter said it did more damage. Is there a ranking somewhere of this hidden damage attribute to which you refer?

Just divide the maximum damage by the minimum damage to get the damage multiplier. For example, if a weapon does 10-20 damage, its multiplier is (20 / 10) = 2. Higher multiplier = better than.

I am eternally grateful!

[scottk]

Quote:

Originally written by belabi:
So right now I have a composite long bow on my nephil rogue. He's level 23, his skill with bows is 12, his strength is 9. I even have some extra sharpshooting happy items equipped on him. BUT HE SUCKS. On average he does 10-20 damage.

I've been cultivating his snipe skills since the start, but it doesn't seem to be doing any good. Help! He's dragging my party down, and I think it's too late to convert him to a sword and shield type of fighter.

I don't know, I wish he wasn't so lame Tips on how to improve / what I should do next time I restart the game?

What's his dexterity? Strength doesn't matter - dex does.

[Lilith]

Also, keep in mind that some enemies just aren't very vulnerable to physical damage. It's not a bad idea to give your archer magic so that they can still be useful against such enemies. I find that archery and priest spells are a good combination, since Smite costs too many spell points to be a primary damage source and you can never have too many healers.

 

With 12 Bows skill and around 10 Sharpshooter, your archer should be doing respectable damage; when blessed, mine does around 40-50 damage to weakened, unarmoured enemies. (Don't forget to use your battle disciplines! One of the most important things your archer can do is whack an enemy with Shield Breaker or Leg Sweep from a distance.)

[belabi]

Oh, damn. His Dexterity is 8 =\

Oh and he only has 2 sharpshooter, but that's a special skill, isn't it? Like you can't level that up with skill points, can you?

[*i]

Yes, you can level up Sharpshooter. You just need to train in 6 dexterity and 8 bows or thrown first. Note that you must actually train in these: Item, trait, or race bonuses do not apply. After this, you may get train in it.

 

Note that you might want to wait until the Azure Gallery and buy training in Sharpshooter from the Fang Clan Outpost first. You can only buy three levels of skills that you have not trained. For example, if you train in something twice, you can only buy one level.