Larian Studios Forums Beyond Divinity (English) Help/Tips/Tricks Bows and crossbows

I forgot! Are bows good weapons? I like very much them and I give many skill points to my crossbow. Of cours my DN has a terrible two hands axe: can I finish the game with this configuration? I'm a wizard and my DN a warrior

Bows are decent weapons.
But you'd need to ask someone who's already tried out a bow char on how well it works.

And you can finish the game with just about any char combination. Some people on this forum have a done it with melee/melee others mage/mage still others bow/melee or bow/mage.

Don't confuse bows and crossbows - they use totally different skills (other than the arrow skills).

I never did as well with either as with melee. Melee weapons can be sharpened a whole bunch of times and become quite powerful - I never had a bow or xbow that came anywhere near a highly sharpened melee weapon in terms of doing high damage.

Obviously they have the advantage of doing damage at a distance, but so do the magic spells of course and magic can paralyze the enemy - so with money and potions plentiful in this version of BD I see no benefit to play an archer other than for role-playing purposes, to do something different or just to enjoy that style of play. Quite a change 'cause I lived and died by the bow with my Divine Divinity warriors for the first half of the game.

Only played bow - I had a wonderful crossbow, but my char looks so clumsy in that. A bow is more aesthetical IMO. Specially the Shadow ones or the longbows.
Am in Act 3 and have one with 41-120, so far the best one and not orange, requires high agility though => 46. Kiyana takes out crystal gargoyles within 3 shots, before they come close enough. Right now I'm using my DK to run circles, so enemies chase after him and I love watching her take them down.

She killed the Temple outskirts in Act 3 in single sneak, hit&run tactic - butchered the dangerous Blood Knights with her Shaman hammer spell and bows, all on her own.
Kiya

I agree, melee is more practical - but I wanted to try out something else. Put pts into acc. reload, point blank, critical hit.

Raze tried out crossbow - maybe he will share his XP.

Nice ariana. I'm finding the same. My slashing DK tank is killing far faster then myself. I reckon I'll be using a bow till I get the good spells then re-train. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/up.gif" alt="" />

My crossbow does 52-111 base damage. I've only recently seen a bow that did comparable damage to a crossbow (not as good as Kiya's). If the damage improves for bows, I would probably switch in a new game.

I try to avoid having my DK run around as a distraction, but needed to do so for a couple of the blood knights around the temple in act 3. I would run away to give him enough time to cast a healing spell then attack again, or run around if the blood knight was just about dead and I didn't want to use a potion for the DK.

After fighting an air elemental and 2 blood knights (separately) north of the temple, I headed towards the wall to gather loot, when I heard my hero start firing arrows. I quickly healed and started running north... to find some loot and a spell book from the now dead mage Looc (checked the trophy list to get the name).

My characters were both melee for much of act 1. This worked well for melee opponents, but not that great for ones that attack from a distance or frequently run away. If I was continually chasing someone, they were the ones controlling the fight, at least until they ran out of stamina.

I have a 47-135 shadow bow and a 55-153 normal bow for the shadow resistant enemies. Even with normal arrows these bows can carve through most enemies long before they get within range of my heros axe. When you reach act 3 and realise that you will never be able to use your money anyway, drop the "convert arrows and sell them doctrine" and instead just use them. then you will have a one shot-one kill weapon even agains the nasty things you will meet later in the game.