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Archery

Having looked at Scootle's old archery page, I've been inspired to take on a similar format. You will find this page broken down into basic areas of interest: choosing a bow, basic archery, advanced archery, fletching (crafting arrows), tillering (crafting bows), woods, and supplies.

Many thanks go to: Scootle, who started this trend and built some of the first in-depth pages on the subject; Bezyan, who inspired Scootle and got him started; and Delgareth, who picked up Scootle's research and carried it on to fruition. Much of the basic information for fletching and tillering on this page is a verbatim repeat of Delgareth's pages, although it has been reformatted for ease of reading, in the form of the tables used for the fletching/tillering instructions.

Choosing a Bow

So you want to be an archer? Well, first you have to decide what type of bow you would like. It isn't impossible (or even that difficult, really) to devote oneself to all types of bows, but a good Ranger knows to be diveres in their weapon choices so they are ready to meet any sort of challenge. As is noted in the Scout's Guide, it is highly recommended to have one each of blade, blunt and bow ... so adding in in the other 2 bow types is recommended only for those who either aren't concerned about achieveing mastery quickly or plan to do a lot of hunting, to train their weapons quickly.

The four principle qualities of a bow are: balance, suitability for strength, load time and stealth. Moving "up" from short bow to longbow and composite bow you will see (generally) a decrease in balance and stealthiness as well as an increase in suitability (for bows, this is their "draw weight", basically) and load time. Short bows make excellent weapons for snipers and archers who tend to stay close to their targets, composite bows are prime for hunters who keep their distance while in the open and are more interested in delivering as much power per shot as possible. Longbows provide a moderate mix of all qualities, being the general all-purpose bow.

Knowing the above, it is merely a question of what sort of hunter you want to be, and pick the bow which suits your style. When you've decided, we will move on with what to do with your new weapon.

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Basic Archery

So now you have a bow, but what do you do with it? Archery in and of itself in DR is rather simple once you understand the mechanics.

First, a bow is no good without ammunition. All bows in DR use the same arrows, just as all crossbows use the same bolts and all slings can use the same stones/bullets. The main difference comes with the arrowheads. We'll go more into the differences of the arrowheads later, under Supplies, for now just rely on the tried-and-true all-purpose arrowhead, the barbed arrow. These can be bought at Milgrym's Weapons in Crossing as well as <XXX> in Riverhaven. Other places have them as well, but since these are the two main starting points, they are the ones you will see first.

Arrows can be stored almost anywhere, but keeping them in a readily available container where you could reach them with GET will make it easier to load. A quiver is not necessary but there are reasons for having a quiver, one of which is noted under Advanced Archery: quick-loading.

Like all physical combat in DR, archery revolves around facing. The critter you face is presumed to be your target unless you specify otherwise. If you aren't facing anything, then by just typing AIM you will automatically turn to face the next available creature in the room, same as if you type just FACE NEXT or ENGAGE. Remember, all combat in DR ignores other characters, in order to avoid accidental CvC (character vs character) incidents. In order to aim at a PC (player-character), you will have to specify their name with any and all verbs involved with the weapon.

An unloaded bow is like an unloaded gun: not much of a weapon unless you plan on either throwing it at your enemy or bludgeoning them with it. You can load by typing just LOAD, with the bow in your hand, but this assumes you want to pull an arrow from wherever you store them. If you instead use LOAD MY ARROW, it will work if you have an arrow in your left hand or if they are all in the container where you store your arrows. Rule of thumb: if you can type GET MY ARROW and get them from the container where they're stored, then they should load just fine. If not, try moving them to a more accessible place. Basically, don't put them inside a container which is inside another container or not in your inventory.

The round time (RT) involved with loading a bow varies based on it's type and how you load it. As a general rule, you get 3 sec RT for short bows, 4 sec RT for longbows and 5 sec RT for composite bows. Loading a bow with an arrow in your hand reduces the RT by 1 sec. Also, some bows have an inherently quicker load, giving them a 1 sec RT reduction on the load. Two of these would be the Nisha short bow and the forester's bow (longbow). They get 2 and 3 sec RT, respectively, instead of the normal 3 and 4. If loaded from in-hand, they would get 1 and 2 seconds. Quick-loading is the same as loading from in-hand, and will be discussed later.

Now your bow is loaded, time to deliver the arrow to its target. You don't have to aim, as long as you are already facing a target. But taking a shot without aiming is called a snapshot and is highly penalized for accuracy. Snapshots are fine when you are hunting way below your level of skill and merely wish to deal death quickly, especially when using a short bow and able to load quickly. But for most circumstances, you will be better served in aiming at your target first. Simply type AIM and you will begin aiming at the creature you are facing. If not facing one, you will face the next available one (when hunting in a group, use ASSESS to make sure you are not targetting someone else's prey by accident). You can also specify a creature, including its ordinal placement in the room: AIM RAT or AIM THIRD GOBLIN. If you specify a atarget and are abbreviating the creature's name, make sure there doesn't happen to be a PC hunter whose name starts with the same letters, or you could make enemies quick. Just ask Snare how much fun he had whenever a group of snaer hafwa invaded. <wince>

You can wait as long as you want while you aim and the longer you wait the better your aim gets until, approximately 12 seconds after your aiming began, you get a message which says "You think you have your best possible shot now." At that point, your aim is as good as it gets. If you wait too much longer after full aim is reached (roughly 30 seconds) you will automatically stop aiming and have to start over.

Once you feel you have waited long enough (or have achieved full aim) you can type SHOOT or FIRE to loose your arrow and send it on its way toward your target. This will strike (if successful) a random part of the body on your target. There is a way to reduce or even eliminate the randomness of the strike location, but that will be covered under Advanced Archery as well. The arrow may lodge, in which case you can't have it back until after the creature is dead or after the arrow wiggles out on its own, over time (the deeper it lodges, the longer this takes). You can also attempt to pull it out of the creature while it still lives, but this is very difficult and not recommended for the young to even attempt. The arrow could also miss the target clean or strike so well it removes a limb entirely in which case the arrow drops to the ground because there was nothing left for the arrow to lodge in. In either of those latter two cases, you could pick the arrow up right away using GET ARROW and load it again, if you wished.

Repeat the process of loading, aiming and shooting until you either run out of arrows ... in which case you will *quickly* come to appreciate why an archer also trains a melee weapon and defense skills ... or the target is dead. Stow your bow, retrieve your arrows using GET ARROW (works same as if they were on the ground, as long as the target is dead), then skin the creature if it can be skinned, and search it for treasure.

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Advanced Archery

There are a few tricks of the trade available to more advanced archers. Some are available to anyone and just won't be effective unless you have the skill to use them. Others are available only to specific Guilds and/or skill levels.

One technique available to all is targeted shooting. Aim your shot as normal, but rather than just typing SHOOT, type SHOOT [target] <body part>. You will notice target is in brackets, meaning it is optional. If you don't specify, the system will assume (as usual) that you mean the creature you are facing. When specifying a body part, you must also specify left or right, when applicable: hands, arms, legs and eyes. So when facing off with that blood wolf, you could instead use SHOOT RIGHT LEG and try to hobble that wolf rather than just taking your chances for where the arrow strikes.

Another technique available to all Guilds is loading or unloading a bow while hidden. Simply load your bow while in hiding and if a successful check of your hiding/bow skill against the perception of anyone/anything in the room is made, your bow will be loaded and you will still be in hiding. The traditional hiding timer applies to this (once any hiding act is performed, no more exp can be gained from them until a certain amount of time has passed) until that timer is eliminated in favor of a different method, coming soon thanks to GM Veyl.

There are two techniques available to Barbarians and Rangers. One of them is quick-loading, which was mentioned above. If you keep your arrows in a quiver, regardless of where on your body it is worn, and have enough agility you get the same RT loading from the quiver as you would loading from in-hand. Basically, a 1 sec RT reduction from the base amount for each bow type.

The second technique available to both Barbarians and Rangers is that of dual-loading. If you saw the movie Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, you will likely understand what this entails. Specifically, the scene where Legolas loaded two arrows into his bow and fired them simultaneously. To do this, all mechanics are the same except one: to load the bow, you use LOAD MY ARROWS (notice the 's' at the end of 'arrows', this is important). In order to do this, you not only have to be a member of one of the two mentioned Guilds, but you must also have adequate skill in the type of bow you are attempting to load, which so far has shown to be 201 ranks of skill. Both arrows will strike at the same time, which means the second shot gains no advantage from any balance losses or other such affects from the first shot, both shots are judged based on the creature's initial condition at the time the dual-shot was loosed. Also, your aim only affects the first arrow to strike, the second is treated as if it were a snap-shot.

Finally, an advanced technique available to Rangers and Thieves: sniping. Sniping is the same as regular archery, really. Except instead of FIRE or SHOOT, the verb you use is SNIPE ... and you must be hidden at the time you make the attempt. Other than that, all other mechanics conditions apply. Your hiding, stalking and bow skills are involved in checking to see if you manage to stay hidden after making the attempt. Stalking your target before sniping helps to increase your chances of success but is not necessary. Sniping resets the timer involved with hiding/stalking (this timer will be going away soon, as mentioned above) and "breaks" your stalk, allowing you to stalk again on the next shot and continue to learn.

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Fletching

Three skills are involved with fletching and tillering: foraging, mechanical lore and bow. For arrows, your highest bow skill is used. Your foraging skill comes into play when looking for the wood to craft your bow. You could, however, rely on someone else to find the wood for you. The only important thing is using a wood appropriate to your skill: will it make the most use of your bow skill, and will you have enough mechanical lore to carve it. For making that choice, refer to the woods chart under Supplies.

With as little as 10 ranks of bow skill, you can start crafting arrows (fletching). With as few as 20-30 ranks, your product will be equal to the minimal-quality store-bought varieties. Besides the wood itself (arrows are carved from sticks) you will need a carving knife, a wood shaper, flight glue, flights, flight shears and arrowheads.

The basic principle of arrow quality is thus. The more bow ranks you have at the time you carve the arrow, the better the arrow will be, up to the cap of the wood type you are using. However, only the tens place and higher of your skills is noted. If you were to carve arrows at 61, 63, 67 and 70 ranks of skill, all of the first 3 would be exactly the same and only the fourth would be different (next level better). So every time your bow skill reaches the next multiple of 10, your product quality will improve. If, however, you were carving the arrow from pine, which has a cap of 50, then as soon as you reached 50 ranks, your product quality will never increase again, because you have reached the wood's cap.

Moving on to another wood, one with a higher cap, will allow additional skill to be effective. This is where foraging and mech lore come in, giving you the ability to find those harder words and have the skill necessary to carve them. Theoretically, you could carve ebony with a mere 50 ranks of mech lore, and it wouldn't decrease the quality available from your bow ranks, but your chances of making a mistake during each step of the process is high due to your low mech lore ranks. The more mech lore you have, the less likely you will make a mistake during each step. As a general rule if you make a single mistake during the carving process, regardless of how far along the process you are (even the very last step), you should discard the arrow and start over. The quality loss from a single mistake just isn't worth it. Also arrows which aren't exactly alike (and no two flawed arrows are ever alike) won't combine into a group when placed in a container together.

Below you will find a chart showing the steps of the process for carving the arrow. It shows each step as well as what should be in your right or left hand during that step.

Note: due to a strange effect of the system, although the stick becomes a shaft immediately following the first carving step, the stick will remain a stick in the display of what is in your hands (in the Wizard) until you either finish the process (at which time it will become an arrow) or you do something to cause the items in your hands to shift around such as typing SWAP or stowing then retrieving the shaft. Don't be fooled, remember that it is a shaft so if you want to look at or appraise it, you must refer to it as a shaft, not a stick.

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Tillering

Crafting a bow (tillering) is very similar to fletching. For the most part, just read the above section concerning fletching and replace any references to "arrow" with "bow" and it applies equally. The only exceptions being a few: bows don't combine when grouped like arrows, the bow skill of the type being carved is used rather than highest skill overall, minimum skill required is 20 ranks with store-bought quality arriving at about 50 ranks, longbows are carved from limbs rather than sticks (short bows are still carved from sticks, however) and the only equipment you need besides the wood itself is a carving knife and a wood shaper.

Other than that, the charts for the process, following the same layout principle as the fletching chart, are below.

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Woods

Below you see the current wood cap charts I have from Delgareth's old site, but they are practically a moot issue now. Not only due to the impending total rewrite of the Fletching system, but mainly due to the (relatively) recent change to fletching where the quality of fletched bows were cut roughly in half. Specifically, the difference between a bow you carve at X ranks and the average store-bought bow was cut in half. Without knowing for sure what the GM's are using as a baseline, I can't project the caps to fill in the blanks, as it is not a linear relationship from what I have seen.

But the chart is still useful in that you can still count on it, for now, to know how the woods relate to each other and at what levels of skill they max out at. Over the coming days, I will be carving then appraising bows/arrows made of the woods I can already cap and post those, as well as the appraisals of the bows/arrows I make as my skill grows, between now and when the new fletching system is released. TO make things simple, I combined in the information from his other chart, telling how relatively easy/hard each wood is to work. The rating for ease of finding was based on foraging at the Ranger Guild in Crossing, so I left that data out. Ease of working is in parenthesis after the name of the wood type where it caps.

Further, fletching has changed twice since this data was originally compiled. The first change cut the difference in potential between a storebought bow and a fletched bow in half. The base for storebought is very low, relatively, so the effect might as well be called "cut in half" even though that's not entirely exact. The second change came when the rewrites of foraging and substances were released ... all appraisal values changed and apparantly wood caps changed a bit too (lowered). In the following chart, "old" refers to bows made before either change and "new" means following both changes. I have no data ffor bows made in the interim, between the changes, I apologize for that. The only data I *do* have is 1687 kronars for a longbow, 1125 for a short bow, both carved with 200-209 ranks.

Finally, I removed the notations for difficulty of carving. As a general rule, the harder a wood is to forage, the harder it is to carve. Bear in mind every rule has its exceptions, but so far this one seems to hold pretty well.

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Supplies

Coming soon, a run-down of the basic supplies.

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