Archery and Thrown Weapon posts
These posts were from the Ranger Board, but they apply really well to Xaerre.
Title: 'mms' // Bigcheese <15> Fri Jan 18 21:34:42 2002
I might not be the best source to ask about mms, but all three of my theworms I've had (one was demoted, the second suicided, and third suicided to get out of running for MC) have all had maxed mms, archery, and tw, so I know a fair bit.
if you're starting mms at a low level, it's a whole lot easier now then it ever has been. You can now get a 'catty' from the ironman replacement, which is a weapon much like xbow but needs filling up every now and then. You need to be level 5 and under to get it, but you can get mms to 30 in just a couple of training sessions.
xbow is still the best way of getting mid-range mms skills - less weight, cash, and difficulty then using bows or tws. Love it like a firtborn, for it will be your closest friend for the couple of hours it takes to get from 30-60 (mms raises really -fast- for rangers).
Now, with bows, the damage done is decided by your archery ability, along with the normal stuff (strength, opponents ac, etc). Most of the time I'm levelling my str at the same time as my mms, so I can't really say if mms has an effect to damage - anyone care to fill me in here?
Anyway, the bow list:
Elvish bow, from listhal guards. Comes with it's own snazzy arrows, and also my favourite quivers (seems to hold more then ranger-made quivers). Best start bow. Tastes like chicken.
Short bows - ranger made. Good if you can't get an elvish bow.
Fine short bow, from brannon - expensive version of a short bow - but it has 'fine' before the title of it. Which means, as it suggests, it's slightly better then ranger made. Another good start bow.
Long bow - ranger made. These are nice for about 25 mms onwards. Cheap and easy bows.
Fine long bow - from brannon, for those people with stature concerns and like their bows with long names. It's 'fine' - slightly better then longbows in fact. Same skill area.
Great bow, from Drakh. Waste of money and time buying/killing for it. Only slightly more damage then a long bow, and an annoyingly high cost (1k)
Non-unique silver longbow - from someone who's name sounds like Lelyia or somesuch. It's okay for it's cost... about the same damage, give or take a bit, as a normal rangermade long bow
Fine hand-crafted bows. My favourite bow I don't have to kill for - really cheap, really powerful, and it's relatively easy to find Marika (you type 'track marika'. You shouldn't have much trouble there, unless you're still into the 'bang the rocks together' stage) Useful for any skill (after 30/40), this is what I usualy use to get high skills. Unless I want to kill for something better or make a...
Great bow - ranger made. Bloody annoying to make these bows, but nice damage (around 30 per hit), makes this a good bow if you're willing to put in all the effort. But for that amount of effort you could just kill carcera of Lelyia and get better bows.
Dark bow - from carcera. Until recently, my favourite bow of all time - it, ahem, rawks. This with some nice big weapon, a hunga or two, dread wolf to tank... about 5 rounds max per kill ;)
Unique silver longbow - Lelyia person. Apparently the best bow, I've only used it once though. It adds an extra 20 archery, and since archery = damage, this is veeery nice. However, there's only one of them, and it's quite tough to get.. I'd stick with dark bow.
Okay now, thrown weapons.. lesse... the order and such is kinda obvious.
Hungas at 100 tw do 37 damage per hit nomatter what armour, but they break easily. The best for tw and mms raising are probably throwing knives or flasks of oil. Throwing knives get the most throws per coins, and do a fair amount of damage at that, and flasks of oil are one-time uses, but do shed loads of damage and is a fire type weapon. Blast a few frost giants with it to get some quick and easy skills.
Aliases? Umm, lesse... there's not much here to know. I use 1 letter aliases for nock arrow, shoot arrow at 'enemy' (I'm not sure what I currently have nicked for enemy), get all arrow, put all arrow in quiver. With the put all arrow in quiver alias (which I have at '4'... 1,2,3,4 respectively) can be used by typing 4, then 4 2 for 'put all arrow in quiver 2' and so on :) oh..and replace 'enemy' with whatever thing you have for nicking your opponent (I use alias t nick 'enemy', then I type 't ogre' or whatever so all my aliases work). For thrown weapons, all you need is throw knife at enemy, and wield weapon (and nick the current weapon you're using). Preferably have those as one letter aliases next to each other, so you can quickly hammer them out without losing time.
Tactics with mms? Well, the main strength of it is that you can use it alongside anything else, and with a combinationg of other things - you can wield a weapon and fire arrows, fire arrows and throw knives, or for those really quick typers with squeeky-clean alias systems, do all three in one round. As such, mss skills go up quickly. Another strength is that if you
fire arrows, it takes some time before an enemy to become aggressive to you, so you can keep hitting until the monster fights back, run, elude, and start shooting again for easy kills and skills. However, there are weaknesses about mms. You can't carry much else while carrying lots of arrows or hungas. Not to mention how expensive these things are (20-40 coins per arrow, 1.7k per hunga), and that they break relatively easy (hint - stick with steel tipped arrows. Flints have a higher chance of breaking).
The optimum for damage I've found is to carry 8 arrows, 8 hungas, a bow, and a weapon. if you're quick with the aliases, that's around 100 damage per round. Big killing potential. However, no way of carrying much loot.
Hope this helps.
Killcrazy - likes writing posts around two pages long.
End of note number 93.
Title: 'oh, and' // Bigcheese <15> Fri Jan 18 22:25:07 2002
Apologies for the spelling mistakes and incorrect syntaxes I'm sure I've done in the previous post. But anyway.. getting arrows. You can get them from Brannon (9w 4s allw 6s e s sw 2s) - he runs out rather quickly however.
Marika has more arrows, and snazzy bows. If you're looking for some freebie arrows however, listhal guards carry them around. Along with the best quivers, and starter bows. To a slightly lesser extent, the guard walking around the roof in drakh has some, and if everything else is dead and you have a huge compulsion for arrows, Carcera has some (hint - tame a random wolf, get him to kill carcera, don't join in. Salvage the arrows from the wolfies corpse), and that ranger-lady-with-a-name-beginning-with-L-that-I-can't-remember also has some. You can also make them, but this takes lots of time. Buying steel arrowheads from the tinker instead of using flint arrowheads helps if you're going to go to these lengths.
Hope this helps.
