Are bows worth it?

[Mackinstyle]

I'm a huge fan of archer characters so I made one and was excited to finally find a bow. The problem is that after a lot of throwing star + dagger use, I can't see how a bow, that uses both slots, is even worth it?

Is there something about how they work I'm missing? In terms of numbers, throwing stars do more damage than my current bow + arrow, so why shouldn't I just use those instead?

My only thought is that there are some REALLY good bows at some point. Just not sure, yet.

[Blomquisten]

Ye I totally felt the same way, I was waiting for my rogue to get a bow and become a real archer but then I realized my shuriken's are just simpler and better.

There is the enchanted arrow's though so that might be the only difference except for looks and feel.

[Mackinstyle]

Problem is that, to my knowledge,

SpoilerShow

you get to use an enchanted arrow just once before it becomes a normal arrow

. Doesn't seem worth it.

[Zadkiel343]

SpoilerShow

Mages can re-enchant the arrows/quarrels

[mrgaming4cheap]

My rogue strategy was to put 12 points in assassination. That gave her reach. So now she has a dagger in one hand a a shuriken in the other.

[robobot]

As you increase the Missile Weapons skill, bows become much more powerful. Eventually, my archer was attacking twice as fast as my melee characters, and he was shooting two arrows with every attack because of the Volley skill. Also, arrows never miss, unlike melee weapons, and they seemed to have a nice critical hit chance.

And as was stated above...

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Mages can learn arrow-enchantment spells.

So yes, I think that bows are quite useful.

[FrameUp]

I went the shuriken route, but right now I have a total of 7 shurikens. And I'm dragging around 3 times that in arrows probably...
so it seems that ammo for bows is in greater supply (at least in my experience)
Right now I get 7 shots (less on double throws), then i'm futzing around in inventory to queue up something else to toss...

That being said, shurikens in one hand and a fire bomb in the other for emergencies is working well.

[rossman86]

Hoestly I don't feel bows are worth the sacrifice in versatility. They would be alot more tempting if I didn't have to use both hands. If you want to go ranged it just makes more sense to have a throwing knife/star/axe in one hand and a bomb in the other hand. Sure the best bow in the game using enchanted arrows is stronger, but that bow is hidden while throwing axes and bombs are fairly common so there's no chance to miss your best items with throwing skills. The other annoyance with relying on enchanted arrows is that in longer fights with large numbers of enemies, it's a real pain to re-enchant spent ammo while circle strafing and dodging monsters in real time. My other problem with ranged weapons is that most melee enemies in this game close ground on you so fast that I feel it defeats the purpose of being ranged. If rogues didn't have the 12 point reach skill in assassination I might feel differently. As it stands I had a great run using a back line dagger rogue with bombs in the offhand for when my mage's damage wasn't enough ranged power.

[Pyros]

You don't need to reenchant, or even enchant at all. At the end of the game, only my mage was doing more damage than my archer, and not by all that much(fire mage too). Bow was hitting for 40-70 per arrow, 2shots per cooldown, and cooldown was like 3-4secs(same as dagger on my frontline rogue, about 1.5as fast as dismantler sword). It would also crit often with 50missiles(which isn't hard to get since that's the only skill worth raising as a ranged backline anyway) for 120-140. In comparison my mage was hitting for 160-180 with fireball and the orb that boost fire dmg, but had to input commands and had limited mana pool. And that's a human rogue, a mino rogue with the skull trait would probably do half more that damage.

Bow is in my opinion extremely strong, it doesn't miss, it shoots fast, it does a lot of damage, you get many arrows fairly fast and obviously it's ranged.

Bombs are cool but they're in fairly limited supply. If you only use them for hard fights it's probably fine, but you can use bow on any fight.