Ranged Weapons

Version 0.29: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Ranged Weapons is a skill that governs launchers, weapons which fire missiles from a distance. This includes slings, bows, and crossbows. Being able to attack enemies from any unobstructed tile in line of sight is a large perk, especially for faster characters. However, not only are they weaker than their melee counterparts, but ranged weapons suffer penalties when wearing heavy body armour. Note that while monsters lacking the Don't Melee flag are unable to use ranged weapons in melee, players may do so without an explicit penalty.

All ranged weapons use dexterity instead of strength for damage calculations.

List of Ranged Weapons

Name	Dam	Hit	Delay	Minimum delay	Hands	Size	Prob
Sling	7	0	14	7 (14 skill)	One	Little	10
Shortbow	9	+2	15	7 (16 skill)	Two	Little	10
Longbow	12	0	17	6 (22 skill)	Two	Medium	10
Arbalest	17	-2	19	10 (18 skill)	Two	Little	10
Hand crossbow	17	+3	18	10 (18 skill)	One	Little	10
Triple crossbow	23	-2	23	10 (26 skill)	Two	Small	2

Armour Penalty

Ranged weapons are uniquely penalized down by armor encumberance. The more encumbered you are, the slower you attack. The penalty, in decaAut, is as follows:

[ (e)^2 / 2250 ] * [ (90-2A) / (S + 3) ]

For e = encumberance rating, A = Armour skill, and S = strength.

Therefore, lower strength species without armour skill suffer more from heavier armour.

Commands

The commands used by the player to perform ranged attacks are:

• v: After selecting a target or tile, press f to shoot a missile.
  • Pressing . after selecting a target will fire the missile, stopping at the tile selected.
• f: As v, but fires any amount of items (which includes your ranged weapon).
• Q: Quiver an action, for use with other commands.
• Tab: If wielding a launcher, attack the nearest monster with the quivered ammo, moving if necessary.
• Shift-Tab or p: Attack the nearest monster with the quivered ammo, without moving.

These commands can also be used for actions not traditionally called "ranged combat", such as spells and abilities.

Brands

Ranged Weapons have a different set of brands. Most of these are similar to their melee version.

• Chaos - Causes random effects
• Electrocution - Deals additional electricity damage
• Flaming - Adds up to an additional 50% fire damage
• Freezing - Adds up to an additional 50% cold damage
• Penetration - Projectiles can pierce through enemies, hitting everything along its trajectory
  • Exclusive to artefact hand crossbows, arbalests, and triple crossbows or the storm bow
• Speed - Attacks take 66.6% normal time
• Venom - Poisons target
• Vorpal - Increases damage by up to 20%.

Ranged weapons may also get pain or holy wrath (but not distortion) from Kikubaaqudgha's and The Shining One's capstone gifts.

Retired Weapons

Over the years, a few ranged weapons have been retired or reworked into new forms:

• Fustibalus - removed with the removal of the Slings skill in 0.29
• Blowgun/Needle - effect was moved on to the throwable dart in 0.24
• Bow - Split into shortbow/longbow in 0.15.
• Crossbow - Split into hand crossbow/arbalest in 0.15.

Returning Weapons

• Darts - removed in 0.15, re-added in 0.24.
• Sling - split into hunting sling and greatsling (fustibalus) in 0.15, merged back in 0.29.

See also

• Throwing
• Ranged Combat

History

• In 0.29, ranged weapons were reworked. Prior to this:
  • Ranged weapons were split into Slings, Bows, and Crossbows, with their seperate skills. Slings crosstrained with Throwing.
  • Launchers required ammo to use (stones/sling bullets, arrows, bolts, respectively). Okawaru gifted ammo, and enemies using launchers would have plentiful amounts of it.
  • Weapon stats as a whole were drastically different. They scaled off strength instead of DEX, and were not especially encumbered by armour.
  • Fustibali existed as an upgrade to slings, slings were named hunting slings, and Throwing weapons were informally considered ranged weapons (as they were more similar; Throwing went mostly unchanged).
• In 0.27, monsters with ranged attacks got unlimited ammunition (except nets). Throwing ammo was reduced as a result.
• In 0.24, throwing weapons were streamlined. Darts replaced blowguns/needles, boomerangs replaced tomahawks and brands were simplified.
• Prior to 0.18, each weapon had a strength weight percentage that determined how the weapon would benefit from your strength and dexterity. Additionally, more types of ammunition could have brands of their own.
• Prior to 0.15, ranged combat was significantly more complicated; among other differences, min delay was heavily influenced by your stats. Additionally, 0.15 introduced greatslings (later called fustibali), hand crossbows, and triple crossbows, and removed the old version of darts.
• Prior to 0.14, daggers, spears, hand axes, and clubs could be thrown.
• Prior to 0.11, ammunition could have its own enchantment bonuses.
• Prior to 0.6, darts could be fired from an early version of hand crossbows instead of being thrown by hand.