Arbalest

Version 0.13: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Name	Crossbow
Skill	Crossbows
Damage	5
Accuracy	+4
Base delay (%)	15 (150%)
Min delay	7, skill req. varies
Hands	2H
Size	Medium
Ranged?	Yes

A piece of machinery used for firing bolts, which takes some time to load and fire. It does very good damage in combat.

This weapon falls into the 'Crossbows' category. It uses bolts as ammunition. Note that while the base damage is 5, the base damage of a bolt is added to give an overall base damage of 14.

Crossbows are powerful ranged weapons, capable of launching bolts for high damage and with excellent accuracy. However, the complexity of their design gives them a significantly lower rate of fire than bows, but sufficient skill, strength, and dexterity will nearly make up for this. Be aware that crossbows and bolts are fairly uncommon early on, making ammo conservation a legitimate issue. They become common in the Vaults and the later portions of the Dungeon once yaktaurs start appearing. Note that using shields will conisderably slow your attack speed.

Crossbow users benefit more from a high strength score than bow-users, but benefit less from high skill levels. Because of this, while crossbows are more powerful than longbows in the early game, they become less effective in the late. However, crossbow-users have access to bolts of penetration, which are significantly more powerful than the bow-user's unique arrow of dispersal.

	Common	Dwarven	Orcish
Mundane
Magical
Artifact		N/A	N/A

	Unrandart crossbows
Hellfire
Sniper

History

The unrand crossbow Sniper will be removed in 0.14, while Hellfire will be revamped to fire bolts that will actually explode in hellfire.