Crossbows!

[Mila]

Crossbow in no way shape or form suck XD...

I started out a typical ranger... using only the bow and arrow combo which I love and rocks without a doubt... but while I was leveling my woodcrafting I discovered those cool status effecting bolts and I became interested in using my xbow with my ranger.... so once I hit 25 I bought a power crossbow and a crapload of bolts and set off to level my marksmanship. I fought in tahrongyi and then in buburimu and in a couple hours, my marksmanship was close to maxed; I was ready to go level.

I crafted a whole bunch of acid, bloody, blind, and sleep bolts and I also brought a whole lot of those cheapy crossbow bolts and made my ammo switch macros. It was only decent at first. I'd start off the fight by hitting my acid bolt macro to weaken defense(which I set to switch back to the cheap bolts after I took my shot, my main ammo until 30) The damage was slightly lower than the bow and arrow combo, but as many ppl forget that the delay for Xbows is considerabaly shorter than heavy longbows so the damage was comparable. If I took damage I used the bloody bolts to heal myself, this is a really nice trick indeed. ^^ At 28 I got to use my archer's dagger and so my damage went up considerably... At 29 I ran out of regular bolts so I used mainly acid bolt which had higher attack anyway so my damage was bumped up again.

...and then I hit 30

I know around level 30 is when rng really starts to take off anyway with barrage and beserk(blink if ur subbed nin but I am a rng/war :D). but then I switched my macros to make holy bolts my default ammo... awesome.

I was getting around 50-70 damage plus an additional added effect of 10-30! Oh and I weaken the enemy's defense now so the melee do more damage too... oh I blind the enemy too so the tank takes less damage... oh I can hold off an enemy using sleep bolts if we get in trouble... oh I use bloody bolts so the whm doesn't have to use as much mp when I pull hate. Very nice.

And the price isn't much more than using arrows... especially if you synth them yourself. I farm elementals for my crystals so my costs are really low... acid bolts are about 5k to synth 4 stacks.... bloody are about 3k for 4... blind and sleep are more expensive but those aren't used as much... regular bolts are only 500 gil a stack and they did decent damage for the levels I used them... and finally the awesome holy bolts are only 4k for 4 stacks!! you can't tell me that's bad. Add about 2k for crystals if u don't farm them(wich is really easy! Same on you XD) and double them if you don't synth at all :sweat:

so... Xbows are NOT only for training marksmanship.. I do the same or more damage with a crossbow as I do with the bow and arrow combo plus I get a whole bunch of tricks (it's the rdm in me, I know :sweat: ). Oh and it looks cool lol.

I'm not leaving Bow and arrow for the Xbow (what drama eh? :sweat: ) I plan to use them both equally rather than jonly using xbow for skillup to use guns. I can't wait til I can macro darksteel bolts into my WSes and barrrages ^^

now excuse me... I have to go farm for my level 30 gear now

[greysenn]

They're not bad. Holy bolts are definetly the scorpion arrow of the bolt collection. You pick up a lot of versatility going to Xbows and if you have a melee heavy party, the acid bolts more than make up for the damage lost.

Holy bolts start to lose some of their potency one the heavier longbows come around at 40 and 50. I'm sure they'll take a nice hike with the Oth bow at 6x, but thats a long ways off.

What you lose though..
Accuracy
Barrage Damage
WS Damage

Guess it depends on your party setup and what you're fighting. The holy bolts definetly rip undead nicely from the effect damage.

[Timoham]

Even though I use a gun and bullets, I always keep a bow, scorpion arrows, sleep arrows, sleep bolts, holy bolts, bloody bolts, acid bolts, a crossbow, and a boomerang at all times. Adds great versatility. But even still, you really can't compete with bow/gun ammo with an xbow past 30 imo.

[poweryoga]

cross bows most definately concentrate on the additional effects. Bow arrows concentrate on accuracy and elemental damage.

Bolts do a lot of damage, whereas bow damage comes from the bows themselves.

its your prefernce IMO.

[Regulat0r]

I would rather use bullets or bolts but... god the price to dmg ratio is HORRIBLE >< well, for darksteel bolts and silver bullets anyway.

[Hisdon]

this is why I plan to make RNG the last job I do, so I can be pimp as I can be, use all 3 weapons, and still have funds for the top line gear

[Spider-Dan]

Originally posted by Mila
And the price isn't much more than using arrows... especially if you synth them yourself. I farm elementals for my crystals so my costs are really low...

Not to get off on a tangent, but if you are farming earth elementals for crystals used in synthing... this is ridiculously time-inefficient. Earth crystal stacks are simply too cheap to make earth elementals a worthwhile farming target.

In fact, when talking about crafting in general, 99% of the time, farming the components directly is a waste of time. The economics are pretty simple:

If you did your normal gilfarm method and just bought the components with the proceeds, you can have more components with less time spent.

If the preceding statement is not true, then farming those particular components and selling them would more efficient than what you usually gilfarm, so you should be farming those component items as your standard moneymaking method, anyway.

[Mila]

Most of the time I just farm my wind crystals and make the stacks of lumber from that. Wind clusters are ridiculously easy to farm in tahrongyi... in about an hour I can get 5-10 clusters which run about 1.5k so that's about 7.5-15k made(saved) in an hour... I know that's not terribly good but it's also terribly easy, I don't even have to be concentrating at the screen most of the time... I do other crap while I wait for the elementals to so it's basically free money. As for the earth crystals; well I never actually make it a point to get those because they're so easy to get from leveling(most of the leveling prey tends to be earth based) and also killing the odd earth elemental when I happen to run across one, I never hunt them down.

Sorry if I made it seem like it was the earth c I use while synthing of the bolts themselves that save money (although they do, farming them would just be rediculous), it's the wood that saves me money. If you ask me 10k an hour isn't too bad considering how little work I put into it and I can be doing my homework ect at the same time... I also save additional gil from making the wood myself both from pure price and the fact that I get 1 free stack from HQ synths per 2 stacks regular synth (3 for the price of 2).

...that said... any tips on OTHER things to farm? I've done silk, onions, cotton, beetles, bees, cockatrices, rams, beastmen, and dhamels in the past... they were pretty good... but I found I like farming clusters and synthing better, more efficient i dunno... but definately more fun. Just out of curiousity... how much gil do ya make when ur farming?

[PhoR]

Originally posted by Mila
Crossbow in no way shape or form suck XD...

And the price isn't much more than using arrows... especially if you synth them yourself. I farm elementals for my crystals so my costs are really low... acid bolts are about 5k to synth 4 stacks.... bloody are about 3k for 4... blind and sleep are more expensive but those aren't used as much... regular bolts are only 500 gil a stack and they did decent damage for the levels I used them... and finally the awesome holy bolts are only 4k for 4 stacks!! you can't tell me that's bad. Add about 2k for crystals if u don't farm them(wich is really easy! Same on you XD) and double them if you don't synth at all :sweat:

Well seeing as how I go through a stack of bolts at more than twice the speed as a stack of arrows, it is considerably more expensive, even at your prices (i can't craft them so it would definitely be way more expensive than bow+arrow for me)
Scorpion arrows are only 2k a stack on my server even at the AH. Holy bolts are almost twice that price (may just be because they don't sell very fast becuase few people use them on my server), and I go through them twice as fast, so that's a 4X price increase in order to use X-bow. Not worth it in my opinion.
It's nice to switch to X-bow for the status effects, but I wouldn't spam holy bolts the enire fight. :sweat:

[Timoham]

Atleast on midgardsormr, if you can't HQ2 or 3 a stack of something consistantly it's more expensive to make it than to just buy it off the AH. Only problem to that is supply. >.<