Shortbow

Version 0.18: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Name	Shortbow
Skill	Bows
Damage	9
Accuracy	+2
Base delay (%)	13 (110%)
Min delay	6 at skill 14
Hands	2H
Size	Medium
Ranged?	Yes

A curved piece of wood and string, for shooting arrows. It does good damage in combat, and a skilled user can use it to great effect. "You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth." -Khalil Ghibran, _The Prophet_, "On Children". 1923.

This weapon falls into the 'Bows' category. It uses arrows as ammunition. Note that while the base damage is 9, the base damage of an arrow is added to give an overall base damage of 16.

Shortbows are two-handed ranged weapons, capable of doing only modest damage but able to be fired rapidly even at low skill levels. A skilled bowman with a large enough stack of arrows can devastate opponents at range, but you'll likely want to upgrade this to a longbow as early as possible for a significant boost to damage with little loss of accuracy. Because they cannot be used while wearing a shield, hybrid fighters should consider using powerful two-handed melee weapons. You can find enchanted shortbows and ammunition on centaurs throughout the game.

	Image
Mundane
Magical
Artifact

History

Prior to 0.15, shortbows were simply called bows.