Archery and arrow making discussion

[Selwyne]

So I wanna know what other players think about this. ATM I am a lvl 17 predator with a pristine maple short bow (which proudly displays a little tag "made by Selwyne" !) I think it is just totally cool that i can make and use an item that is acceptabe to be used by a player my level. BTW, I am also a level 18 craftsman.

But here's where I start to frown a bit. When I fight, I seem to use about 3 or 4 stacks (100 per stack) of arrows an hour while adventuring. Obviously they are merchant bought arrows, since it would take me more than an hour, I think, to make that many arrows. That just doesn't seem right! The price on store bought arrows seems ok, 5 silver for a stack of iron arrows. However, 15 to 20 silver per hour for arrows is certainly more than I can loot or quest for cash in an hour. However it is relatively easy to make 20 silver crafting stuff for resale to the merchant, thank goodness! hehe!

The other things that bother me about crafting arrows are the small amout of arrows I get for the combines I make. One combine by a different class than myself for eolith tempers, two combines myself at the forge, and i get THREE arrowheads???? Two combines by another class for stroma resin, two combines by myself at the woodworking table and i get ONE maple stave??? Another combine by another class for stroma something or other, two combines by myself at the sewing table, and I get ONE burlap fletching???? Combine all that, and i get only 20 arrows???

Hmm!

So can I hear from some other folks on this? What have you experienced? What do you think is fair to ask for, when the nice folks at Sony get around to tweakin this?

[Aguirre]

I am a 17/17 Bard/Craftsman and couldn't believe how long it took to make 60 arrows, and those were tin arrows!

I also could not notice any damage being done at all with my arrow combat ability (singing shot).

Hope this is improved a bit or changed in some way. At this point I am not using arrows.

As a predator (or mayb iron arrows does the trick) do you do good damage?

[Moonshade]

Well, at least you get multiple arrowheads and only use one of them for the 20 arrows. Imagine if you only got 1 arrow per arrowhead. :eek:

[Yawp]

I made my first batch of arrows last night, Selwyne, and had a very similar response. In my case, I was making the basic tin arrow, I couldn't believe how many subcombines and running around I had to do in order to produce the arrows I made.

A word about how I do things, though --

The first time I make an item, I tend to end up running around a whole bunch while I figure out what I need. Imagine this -->
Tin arrow heads! Cool! Let's see -- I need a tin bar and . oh, need to go make a fossil temper, I guess. Hmm. The lead is in the bank ... (etc.)

The second time I make an item, I remember that I need item xyz for subcombines and bring them from the bank. I still end up with major inefficiencies running back and forth from one piece of equipment to another.

The third time I make an item, it's usually because I need a whole bunch of that thing. Then I'm very sytematic and have all my ingredients in inventory, including fuels and liquids and secondary components. I move systematically from one peice of equipment to another, and I usually end up taking about as long to make several stacks of an item as I spent the first time I tried the recipe.

So, the point of all this is that I do, indeed, find it fiddly and time-consuming to make stuff in EQ2. On the other hand, I love getting it organized and coming up with methods for streamlining and working smarter.

[Selwyne]

Well, at least as a predator i do decent damage with the bow. Using store bought iron arrows i back shot for 80 to 90 dmg, and open shot for about 35 damage. Both of those together on a pull, plus my regular archery damage, tend to take a significant amount of hp off the mob before he gets to camp! )

Another thing that would be really nice to have would be a quiver i can put in the ammo slot that will hold LOTS of arrows, hehe!

I guess I feel that for the trouble involved in making those arrows, we should get a bit more of a payback. I am thinking that they oughta take maple turned lumber instead of staves to make. That way each combine of turned lumber results in three shafts instead of one. The burlap fletching combine should also yield three items. Then if the final arrow combine yielded somewhere around 50 or so arrows, we would have a feasable recepie to use.

Alternatively they could make player crafted arrows have some HUGE advantage over vendor arrows, such as double range, triple damage, something along those lines.

BTW, has anyone noticed any difference in damage using vendor arrows as opposed to player crafted arrows?

[Dreadalus]

That's odd, Aguirre. I was a 17/17 Bard/Craftsman (yesterday :)) and I'm doing great damage with my Singing Shot. Store bought iron arrows give double 45-50 damage about 3/4 of the time. With a long-range bow (37), I can get two arrows and a Shriek into the beastie before it lays a paw on me.

Selwyne, I've not noticed any difference using the hunting arrows (except that it's slashing damage — maybe better against skellies?), but using bodkin arrows it seems like I never miss...