Sniper

Version 0.30: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

The sacred weapon of Toth-Mos, first apostle of the god Ashenzari. It grants the wielder a fraction of Ashenzari's own vision, ensuring that every shot will land true.

the +27 heavy crossbow "Sniper"

+27 heavy crossbow (modified triple crossbow; base delay 25)

Heavy brand
See invisible
Never misses

Desirability

Sniper is essentially the dark maul of ranged weapons, with an incredible enchantment, but sluggish delay. At skill 27, you'll have a delay of 1.725 - this equates to a 75% of shooting at 1.7 delay, and 25% of shooting at 1.8. You'll also have a 34.5 base damage weapon enchanted to +27. For overall damage per turn, this is roughly equal to a +9 branded triple crossbow.

Attacking slow comes with a big risk. For every bolt you shoot, enemies will (often) have 2 turns to move. Fast enemies, like orbs of fire, can move thrice. Be wary of using this against especially fast enemies, or foes with dangerous ranged abilities. In dangerous situations, use potions of haste and/or Okawaru's Finesse to speed up your shots as much as possible.

On the flip side, perfect accuracy is valuable against monsters with high EV, like spriggans or Ereshkigal. If nothing else, you can use Sniper as a swapout. No matter how heavy Sniper may seem, it only takes 1 turn to swap to another ranged weapon.

History

• Prior to 0.30, Sniper was a +9 vorpal triple crossbow, with base delay 27.
• Prior to 0.18, Sniper had an enchantment of +15 and lacked perfect accuracy.
• Prior to 0.15, Sniper was a standard crossbow with a +15 enchantment and the vorpal brand, but it was given a slower-than-normal rate of fire.
• Prior to 0.14, Sniper had a +10,+0 enchantment level and the venom brand.